The Chicago Blackhawks already made a trade on Wednesday. The first one was a bit annoying for fans as it reminded them that Stan Bowman was actually a terrible GM during his tenure with the team as another first-round pick was wasted.

They sent Nicolas Beaudin to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Cameron Hillis. Beaudin is a former first-round pick that never panned out and changed the way the Blackhawks did business for a few years after. It’s a bad look. Hillis will report to the Rockford Ice Hogs upon his arrival.

A few hours later, another trade was made as the Hawks sent Evan Barratt to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for Cooper Zech. This is an interesting trade that will be a little bit tougher to dissect.

Barratt is currently in his third season of AHL hockey but hasn’t earned his way up to the NHL yet. This all comes after some very successful seasons with Penn State University. He was a third-round pick in the 2017 NHL Draft by Chicago.

The Chicago Blackhawks made a second AHL trade on Wednesday morning.

Barratt has also had tremendous success playing for Team USA in various tournaments. He has big game experience but now he is taking it to Philly. It will be interesting to see if he can become an NHL player at any point.

Cooper Zech has played with the Providence Bruins and Lehigh Valley Phantoms of the AHL over the past handful of years but has also not ever been called up to the NHL. Like Hillis, Zech is going to report to the Rockford Ice Hogs.

It seems as if the Blackhawks have something in mind here. They are trying to load up their AHL squad with what they think it needs. They believe that they can make a playoff run this season but they aren’t off to the best start (1-3-0-0). Hopefully, Hillis and Zech help them in different areas.

At one point, it was thought that Barratt was going to be an NHL player. He hasn’t earned a call-up yet and clearly, he has been passed by in this organization.

With Philly, he might get his chance at some point which is all you can hope for. At the end of the day, the Hawks are hoping that this move helps their organization move forward.

Read More

According to head writer David Andrew Greener Laws, who goes by the acronym DAGL, The Twenty-Sided Tavern, opening October 27 at the Broadway Playhouse, is “a game and an experience, and set in a sword and sorcery fantasy world that casts the audience as the fourth player.”

Inspired by role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), audience members are invited to join the actors on various quests, each of which differs from evening to evening.

“It’s completely unique and different every night, based on how the audience wants to show up,” adds head game designer Sarah Davis Reynolds. “It all depends—do they want to name the bartender ‘Steve’ or ‘Bartender MacRuff?’ That really sets the tone for the night.”

The Twenty-Sided TavernThrough 1/15: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; also Fri 11/25, 2 PM, Wed 12/21 and 12/28 2 and 7:30 PM, Sat 12/24 2 PM only, no show Thu 11/24 or Sun 12/25; Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut, 800-775-2000, broadwayinchicago.com, $40-$65

She and DAGL are both fans of role-playing games who met during the pandemic. They still play tabletop and video games together in their free time. 

“I have been playing video games my whole life,” Reynolds recalls. “I always did the ones where there were open worlds. I would literally spend hundreds of hours organizing the books that I found [in the games] in alphabetical order by genre. That fed into learning to play D&D and other tabletop role-playing games in college. I sunk my passion into that.”

In 2019, DAGL began thinking about the possibility of a hyper-interactive D&D-based theatrical show. While he had experienced podcasts and live shows incorporating a certain level of interactivity, it had never been to the extent he wanted. The pandemic forced him to put his own plans on the back burner, however. 

DAGL eventually began working for an online company employing the technology Gamiotics, which now powers The Twenty-Sided Tavern, that brought theatrical experiences to Zoom conferences. Reynolds worked for that company as well.

“Sarah went, ‘I want to make a D&D show,’ and I went, ‘I want to make a D&D show,’ so we put our resources together. We tested it out online and in person at the Philadelphia Fringe a little over a year ago,” he explains. “It just took off. We thought this was the basket that we should put all our eggs in.”

The Twenty-Sided Tavern by its very nature utilizes principles its creators garnered from improv. 

“The reason that we are so drawn to role-playing is that it is about storytelling—it gives you this sandbox where you get to say who your character is and what your motivations are,” Reynolds says. “Theater is also about telling stories and it was the core, concrete foundation that we built this on.”

But DAGL and Reynolds were adamant that The Twenty-Sided Tavern harness the chaotic energy that can frequently be found in role-playing games. Actors in the show are each familiar with three roles, and don’t know who they’ll be playing until the audience tells them. The company has about 13 actors, five of whom are onstage at a time.  

Reynolds notes, “It’s a lot about prepping different characters, knowing different improv skills, [and] asking, ‘How can we get to this moment, knowing a particular character arc, when we don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen?’”

DAGL and Reynolds both appear onstage, always tweaking lines and audience choices to keep the script flowing naturally. 

“We learn so much from every night’s audience,” DAGL says. “Between my writing the script and Sarah coding the story, we’re basically doing rewrites each and every night. Our roles behind the scenes are very present.”

Onstage, DAGL acts as Game Master, laying out the figurative map of the adventure the audience embarks on. Reynolds plays the Tavern Keeper, who she describes as “the rules arbitrator. I also run the technology.”

Gamiotics employs a web-based interface so audience members don’t have to download single-use apps to their phones.

“It allows the audience to vote and compete from their phones, and I am actively running that from the stage,” Reynolds explains. “I’m responding to the audience. If they’re solving a riddle, I’m seeing if enough of them got it right for it to count as a success or not. DAGL guides the story and I guide the game.”

The Twenty-Sided Tavern was designed so that audience members have numerous access points during which to engage, according to their own comfort level.

“I always say—in a positive way—that one of the great things about the show is that we always focus on everyone maintaining the capacity to surprise everyone,” Reynolds says. “That means the audience surprising us, us surprising the players, etc. It also means that sometimes the technology surprises us. There are so many interesting elements—huge projections and sound effects. One of the challenges is making sure that everything is telling the story together and recognizing that this is not a linear thing.” 

DAGL said that the show appeals to both role-playing enthusiasts and “other parts of nerdom. We have people who come to the show dressed in chain mail, Star Trek uniforms, and Pokémon onesies. There are also people who have never played these games before.”  

He considers managing “scope and scale” to be his biggest challenge: “It’s a two-hour production; the audience comes in expecting that. There are audience members who want to follow that expectation—it’s two hours and we’re done. But there’s just so much in the show. Do we want to explore another room? Do we want to play this game longer? Do we want to follow this comedic bit for longer?”

He calls storytelling an innate part of the human experience, adding, “At the end of the day, that’s what role-playing is, whether you’re playing a single-player video game or you’re telling a story communally with a tabletop role-playing game.”

Role-playing also affords participants opportunities to learn much about themselves and their communities, Reynolds adds. “It allows you to say, ‘I want to be this character who is brave, and bold, and goes on daring quests, when in real life I’m an accountant. It allows you to find that part of you that you haven’t talked to since you were a kid.” 

Read More

Aaron Gyrion lives a comfortable life on the southwest side. The 32-year-old Garfield Ridge homeowner makes enough as a heavy equipment operator at the Department of Water Management to support a family of four on his income alone. He changes out sewer pipes and fixes issues with the municipal plumbing.

“Local 150. Every day, show up, get an assignment, go to the job, do the job, go back to the yard at the end of the day,” he said. “I do what every four-year-old kid dreams of doing: I play with trucks and heavy equipment.”

Gyrion is a steward with the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 150.

“I’ve been on both sides of the fence—I’ve had union jobs and I’ve had nonunion jobs—and head-and-shoulders above it is the union job.” 

He pointed to pensions and health insurance. When he got laid off after finishing a job for private contractors, he could call the union hall to get put on a list and get a call back when another job opened. That gave him peace of mind. 

And he said the wages speak for themselves. Gyrion makes $53.60 an hour. He’s a college graduate who went into trades after earning his degree. He bought his house when he was 25 years old.

Gyrion has been following the only statewide referendum on the November 8 ballot religiously. Illinoisans are being asked whether they want to amend the state constitution to establish a right to labor unionization and collective bargaining. That would prevent Illinois from enacting a so-called right-to-work law, which allows private sector workers to avoid paying dues if they refuse to join a union at their workplace, even if they enjoy benefits secured by the union. 

Gyrion supports the amendment. “I think workers should be free to unionize and the path to unionization should be clear and unobstructed,” he said. 

The state’s powerful Democrats also support it. There is a political committee, Vote Yes for Workers’ Rights, advocating for the amendment but not one organized in opposition to it. The state’s unions support it. 

At the 1970 state constitutional convention, lawmakers considered enshrining labor provisions in the constitution, said Ann M. Lousin, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law who authored “The Illinois State Constitution: A Reference Guide.” She was a research assistant at the convention, and recalled a ten-minute debate about putting either a right-to-work or workers’ rights amendment in the constitution; delegates ultimately left both out.

Union membership over the past decade is higher in Illinois (14.6 percent) and in Chicagoland (13.6 percent) than it is nationally (10.8 percent), according to a recent study by the pro-union Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that nonunion public sector workers cannot be compelled to pay union dues because of the benefits they receive through collective bargaining. 

While the ruling has impacted dues-paying in public sector unions nationwide, membership has not been hugely impacted; in Illinois, that rate has only declined 2.2 percent since 2018.

Meanwhile, Gallup has found that 71 percent of Americans approve of unions—the highest since 1965. There were 58 successful union organizing drives last year, a 60 percent success rate—higher than any other in a decade. Illinois workers under 35 have seen the highest increase in unionization since 2018. 

Todd Maisch, the president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, opposes the amendment. Maisch disapproves of the foreclosure of Illinois ever becoming a right-to-work state, and he worries that the amendment would expand workers’ right to strike.

Maisch also worries about “working conditions” being ill-defined. Over decades, “enterprising unions and their attorneys are going to try to expand the heck out of [working conditions],” he said. 

Lousin said that working conditions “have been interpreted pretty broadly in labor laws over the years,” and include things like pensions, health-care benefits, hours, and job duties. 

At the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian think tank that has received funding from former governor Bruce Rauner and the Koch brothers, Director of Labor Policy Mailee Smith said the amendment “will drive up taxes and cement Illinois’s reputation as one of the worst places in the nation to do business.” 

Smith said “economic welfare” is a legally undefined term. She is also opposed to the state government being unable to consider right-to-work laws, but acknowledged Illinois becoming a right-to-work state is incredibly unlikely.

Lousin said she is unaware of the term “economic welfare” being included in any existing legislation. She said that people should be thinking about whether they want “something this broad” in the constitution, but is herself voting in favor of it, calling right-to-work laws “an anathema, a relic of the 1890s Gilded Age.” She dismissed concerns about taxes rising because of the amendment.

Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea said “economic welfare” refers to minimum wage protections and unemployment insurance. He acknowledged that the courts could define it, pointing to the centuries-long judicial and legislative debates over what the U.S. Constitution means. He recalled the yearslong state budget impasse, largely because of Rauner’s demands for labor law reform, and said the disastrous standoff was “a very, very legitimate threat against labor rights.” 

“These rights that have been obtained through the years through the hard work and sweat of many, many people—we don’t want to just leave them to the whims of shifting political winds,” Drea said. 

The amendment takes codified labor rights “enacted over lax safety standards in factories, schools, and hospitals,” and puts them “in a lockbox and secures them for future generations,” Drea said. “You just never know what a politician will do to the rights that we’ve gained.”

Gyrion said the solidarity that comes with being in a union is unparalleled.

“You’re part of a team,” Gyrion said. “It’s people in your local, in your same union, looking out for you the way that people looked out for them. The expectation is we have to take care of ourselves. We have to make sure that everybody is taken care of and nobody’s being taken advantage of. And that’s not something you get everywhere, and it’s refreshing.”

Read More

I met DJ Intel in 2010 at Bad Meaning Good, a monthly trashy movie night at the Burlington that he hosted with fellow DJ Jarrett Spiegel. In the years since, I’ve frequently run into Intel (real name Jason Deuchler) at hip-hop shows and horror movie screenings, and I’ve ended up at plenty of concerts and festivals where he performed. He seemed so ubiquitous that I sometimes wondered if I’d hallucinated him! Since March, there’s been another way to see Deuchler on the regular: he and Bric-a-Brac Records owners Jen Lemasters and Nick Mayor opened the Brewed, a horror-themed coffee shop in Avondale.

As told to Leor Galil

I guess I’ve always been a B-movie, Godzilla, Universal monsters fan since I was a kid, through my dad, who used to show those to me. My dad is also a music fan, but it’s weird, it’s more on the musical-theater side of things—I grew up listening to musicals and that kind of stuff. And then my brother got turntables when he was in junior high, and I gravitated from my interest in movies and music into DJing.

My brother got turntables, and I used to get home from school before him—it was one of those, like, “Hey, don’t touch my turntables. Stay out of my room.” I would go into his room and DJ until I heard the back door open at the house; I would quickly shut everything down and go back into my room and pretend I wasn’t in his room DJing. Eventually, I started buying my own records, and he was like, “Oh, you can use them, it’s fine.” Then I found a pair of turntables—which I still have to this day—at a pawn shop, and the rest is kind of history. 

A couple of my friends and I formed a crew called Chicago Tribe—we used to throw parties for 17-and-over kids, and the first one was in Forest Park at this place called the Playhouse, which is no longer there. 

We would have a date, we’d make a bunch of flyers, and then we’d bring our own sound equipment and DJ equipment. They’d unlock a door. We’d charge money at the door and throw a hip-hop party. We did that successfully for many, many years. That’s how I know a lot of people in the Chicago hip-hop scene.

Jesse de la Peña was still doing that kind of stuff. DJ PNS from the Molemen—the Molemen in general were throwing parties. Kanye and those guys from the south side, all the Nacrobats and all those dudes. I know them all from doing underground hip-hop parties. 

Abbey Pub was a big home for a lot of shows, over on the northwest side. Threw a lot of shows there. SubT was definitely a good spot. We did the original Lava Lounge on Damen and then also the second home of Lava Lounge on Milwaukee. We did Rodan for a long time. Just wherever we could find spots that would let us do it, we would do it.

Horror was always in the background. Fangoria magazine used to have a thing called Weekend of Horrors, so I was going to those conventions. Svengoolie has always been a part of my life since I was a kid. People always tend to think horror is a rock ’n’ roll, heavy-metal kind of scene, but there’s also the Gravediggaz, Flatlinerz, and some of that—I guess, for lack of a better term, “horrorcore rap.” I’ve always been a fan. Dr. Octagon, that sort of stuff.

It’s been about six months, and I enjoy every day I go in there. I hadn’t worked a person-to-person retail sort of job in a really long time, so I really enjoy having regular customers and talking to random strangers on a daily basis. I still love coffee, and I love making coffee drinks. Somehow it’s magically worked out.

It gets a little hectic sometimes. That 7 AM opening shift can be real difficult when you’ve DJed till three, but you make the best of it. I’m doing what I love, so you do what you gotta do.

Read More

According to head writer David Andrew Greener Laws, who goes by the acronym DAGL, The Twenty-Sided Tavern, opening October 27 at the Broadway Playhouse, is “a game and an experience, and set in a sword and sorcery fantasy world that casts the audience as the fourth player.”

Inspired by role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), audience members are invited to join the actors on various quests, each of which differs from evening to evening.

“It’s completely unique and different every night, based on how the audience wants to show up,” adds head game designer Sarah Davis Reynolds. “It all depends—do they want to name the bartender ‘Steve’ or ‘Bartender MacRuff?’ That really sets the tone for the night.”

The Twenty-Sided TavernThrough 1/15: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; also Fri 11/25, 2 PM, Wed 12/21 and 12/28 2 and 7:30 PM, Sat 12/24 2 PM only, no show Thu 11/24 or Sun 12/25; Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut, 800-775-2000, broadwayinchicago.com, $40-$65

She and DAGL are both fans of role-playing games who met during the pandemic. They still play tabletop and video games together in their free time. 

“I have been playing video games my whole life,” Reynolds recalls. “I always did the ones where there were open worlds. I would literally spend hundreds of hours organizing the books that I found [in the games] in alphabetical order by genre. That fed into learning to play D&D and other tabletop role-playing games in college. I sunk my passion into that.”

In 2019, DAGL began thinking about the possibility of a hyper-interactive D&D-based theatrical show. While he had experienced podcasts and live shows incorporating a certain level of interactivity, it had never been to the extent he wanted. The pandemic forced him to put his own plans on the back burner, however. 

DAGL eventually began working for an online company employing the technology Gamiotics, which now powers The Twenty-Sided Tavern, that brought theatrical experiences to Zoom conferences. Reynolds worked for that company as well.

“Sarah went, ‘I want to make a D&D show,’ and I went, ‘I want to make a D&D show,’ so we put our resources together. We tested it out online and in person at the Philadelphia Fringe a little over a year ago,” he explains. “It just took off. We thought this was the basket that we should put all our eggs in.”

The Twenty-Sided Tavern by its very nature utilizes principles its creators garnered from improv. 

“The reason that we are so drawn to role-playing is that it is about storytelling—it gives you this sandbox where you get to say who your character is and what your motivations are,” Reynolds says. “Theater is also about telling stories and it was the core, concrete foundation that we built this on.”

But DAGL and Reynolds were adamant that The Twenty-Sided Tavern harness the chaotic energy that can frequently be found in role-playing games. Actors in the show are each familiar with three roles, and don’t know who they’ll be playing until the audience tells them. The company has about 13 actors, five of whom are onstage at a time.  

Reynolds notes, “It’s a lot about prepping different characters, knowing different improv skills, [and] asking, ‘How can we get to this moment, knowing a particular character arc, when we don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen?’”

DAGL and Reynolds both appear onstage, always tweaking lines and audience choices to keep the script flowing naturally. 

“We learn so much from every night’s audience,” DAGL says. “Between my writing the script and Sarah coding the story, we’re basically doing rewrites each and every night. Our roles behind the scenes are very present.”

Onstage, DAGL acts as Game Master, laying out the figurative map of the adventure the audience embarks on. Reynolds plays the Tavern Keeper, who she describes as “the rules arbitrator. I also run the technology.”

Gamiotics employs a web-based interface so audience members don’t have to download single-use apps to their phones.

“It allows the audience to vote and compete from their phones, and I am actively running that from the stage,” Reynolds explains. “I’m responding to the audience. If they’re solving a riddle, I’m seeing if enough of them got it right for it to count as a success or not. DAGL guides the story and I guide the game.”

The Twenty-Sided Tavern was designed so that audience members have numerous access points during which to engage, according to their own comfort level.

“I always say—in a positive way—that one of the great things about the show is that we always focus on everyone maintaining the capacity to surprise everyone,” Reynolds says. “That means the audience surprising us, us surprising the players, etc. It also means that sometimes the technology surprises us. There are so many interesting elements—huge projections and sound effects. One of the challenges is making sure that everything is telling the story together and recognizing that this is not a linear thing.” 

DAGL said that the show appeals to both role-playing enthusiasts and “other parts of nerdom. We have people who come to the show dressed in chain mail, Star Trek uniforms, and Pokémon onesies. There are also people who have never played these games before.”  

He considers managing “scope and scale” to be his biggest challenge: “It’s a two-hour production; the audience comes in expecting that. There are audience members who want to follow that expectation—it’s two hours and we’re done. But there’s just so much in the show. Do we want to explore another room? Do we want to play this game longer? Do we want to follow this comedic bit for longer?”

He calls storytelling an innate part of the human experience, adding, “At the end of the day, that’s what role-playing is, whether you’re playing a single-player video game or you’re telling a story communally with a tabletop role-playing game.”

Role-playing also affords participants opportunities to learn much about themselves and their communities, Reynolds adds. “It allows you to say, ‘I want to be this character who is brave, and bold, and goes on daring quests, when in real life I’m an accountant. It allows you to find that part of you that you haven’t talked to since you were a kid.” 

Read More

Aaron Gyrion lives a comfortable life on the southwest side. The 32-year-old Garfield Ridge homeowner makes enough as a heavy equipment operator at the Department of Water Management to support a family of four on his income alone. He changes out sewer pipes and fixes issues with the municipal plumbing.

“Local 150. Every day, show up, get an assignment, go to the job, do the job, go back to the yard at the end of the day,” he said. “I do what every four-year-old kid dreams of doing: I play with trucks and heavy equipment.”

Gyrion is a steward with the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 150.

“I’ve been on both sides of the fence—I’ve had union jobs and I’ve had nonunion jobs—and head-and-shoulders above it is the union job.” 

He pointed to pensions and health insurance. When he got laid off after finishing a job for private contractors, he could call the union hall to get put on a list and get a call back when another job opened. That gave him peace of mind. 

And he said the wages speak for themselves. Gyrion makes $53.60 an hour. He’s a college graduate who went into trades after earning his degree. He bought his house when he was 25 years old.

Gyrion has been following the only statewide referendum on the November 8 ballot religiously. Illinoisans are being asked whether they want to amend the state constitution to establish a right to labor unionization and collective bargaining. That would prevent Illinois from enacting a so-called right-to-work law, which allows private sector workers to avoid paying dues if they refuse to join a union at their workplace, even if they enjoy benefits secured by the union. 

Gyrion supports the amendment. “I think workers should be free to unionize and the path to unionization should be clear and unobstructed,” he said. 

The state’s powerful Democrats also support it. There is a political committee, Vote Yes for Workers’ Rights, advocating for the amendment but not one organized in opposition to it. The state’s unions support it. 

At the 1970 state constitutional convention, lawmakers considered enshrining labor provisions in the constitution, said Ann M. Lousin, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law who authored “The Illinois State Constitution: A Reference Guide.” She was a research assistant at the convention, and recalled a ten-minute debate about putting either a right-to-work or workers’ rights amendment in the constitution; delegates ultimately left both out.

Union membership over the past decade is higher in Illinois (14.6 percent) and in Chicagoland (13.6 percent) than it is nationally (10.8 percent), according to a recent study by the pro-union Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that nonunion public sector workers cannot be compelled to pay union dues because of the benefits they receive through collective bargaining. 

While the ruling has impacted dues-paying in public sector unions nationwide, membership has not been hugely impacted; in Illinois, that rate has only declined 2.2 percent since 2018.

Meanwhile, Gallup has found that 71 percent of Americans approve of unions—the highest since 1965. There were 58 successful union organizing drives last year, a 60 percent success rate—higher than any other in a decade. Illinois workers under 35 have seen the highest increase in unionization since 2018. 

Todd Maisch, the president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, opposes the amendment. Maisch disapproves of the foreclosure of Illinois ever becoming a right-to-work state, and he worries that the amendment would expand workers’ right to strike.

Maisch also worries about “working conditions” being ill-defined. Over decades, “enterprising unions and their attorneys are going to try to expand the heck out of [working conditions],” he said. 

Lousin said that working conditions “have been interpreted pretty broadly in labor laws over the years,” and include things like pensions, health-care benefits, hours, and job duties. 

At the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian think tank that has received funding from former governor Bruce Rauner and the Koch brothers, Director of Labor Policy Mailee Smith said the amendment “will drive up taxes and cement Illinois’s reputation as one of the worst places in the nation to do business.” 

Smith said “economic welfare” is a legally undefined term. She is also opposed to the state government being unable to consider right-to-work laws, but acknowledged Illinois becoming a right-to-work state is incredibly unlikely.

Lousin said she is unaware of the term “economic welfare” being included in any existing legislation. She said that people should be thinking about whether they want “something this broad” in the constitution, but is herself voting in favor of it, calling right-to-work laws “an anathema, a relic of the 1890s Gilded Age.” She dismissed concerns about taxes rising because of the amendment.

Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea said “economic welfare” refers to minimum wage protections and unemployment insurance. He acknowledged that the courts could define it, pointing to the centuries-long judicial and legislative debates over what the U.S. Constitution means. He recalled the yearslong state budget impasse, largely because of Rauner’s demands for labor law reform, and said the disastrous standoff was “a very, very legitimate threat against labor rights.” 

“These rights that have been obtained through the years through the hard work and sweat of many, many people—we don’t want to just leave them to the whims of shifting political winds,” Drea said. 

The amendment takes codified labor rights “enacted over lax safety standards in factories, schools, and hospitals,” and puts them “in a lockbox and secures them for future generations,” Drea said. “You just never know what a politician will do to the rights that we’ve gained.”

Gyrion said the solidarity that comes with being in a union is unparalleled.

“You’re part of a team,” Gyrion said. “It’s people in your local, in your same union, looking out for you the way that people looked out for them. The expectation is we have to take care of ourselves. We have to make sure that everybody is taken care of and nobody’s being taken advantage of. And that’s not something you get everywhere, and it’s refreshing.”

Read More

I met DJ Intel in 2010 at Bad Meaning Good, a monthly trashy movie night at the Burlington that he hosted with fellow DJ Jarrett Spiegel. In the years since, I’ve frequently run into Intel (real name Jason Deuchler) at hip-hop shows and horror movie screenings, and I’ve ended up at plenty of concerts and festivals where he performed. He seemed so ubiquitous that I sometimes wondered if I’d hallucinated him! Since March, there’s been another way to see Deuchler on the regular: he and Bric-a-Brac Records owners Jen Lemasters and Nick Mayor opened the Brewed, a horror-themed coffee shop in Avondale.

As told to Leor Galil

I guess I’ve always been a B-movie, Godzilla, Universal monsters fan since I was a kid, through my dad, who used to show those to me. My dad is also a music fan, but it’s weird, it’s more on the musical-theater side of things—I grew up listening to musicals and that kind of stuff. And then my brother got turntables when he was in junior high, and I gravitated from my interest in movies and music into DJing.

My brother got turntables, and I used to get home from school before him—it was one of those, like, “Hey, don’t touch my turntables. Stay out of my room.” I would go into his room and DJ until I heard the back door open at the house; I would quickly shut everything down and go back into my room and pretend I wasn’t in his room DJing. Eventually, I started buying my own records, and he was like, “Oh, you can use them, it’s fine.” Then I found a pair of turntables—which I still have to this day—at a pawn shop, and the rest is kind of history. 

A couple of my friends and I formed a crew called Chicago Tribe—we used to throw parties for 17-and-over kids, and the first one was in Forest Park at this place called the Playhouse, which is no longer there. 

We would have a date, we’d make a bunch of flyers, and then we’d bring our own sound equipment and DJ equipment. They’d unlock a door. We’d charge money at the door and throw a hip-hop party. We did that successfully for many, many years. That’s how I know a lot of people in the Chicago hip-hop scene.

Jesse de la Peña was still doing that kind of stuff. DJ PNS from the Molemen—the Molemen in general were throwing parties. Kanye and those guys from the south side, all the Nacrobats and all those dudes. I know them all from doing underground hip-hop parties. 

Abbey Pub was a big home for a lot of shows, over on the northwest side. Threw a lot of shows there. SubT was definitely a good spot. We did the original Lava Lounge on Damen and then also the second home of Lava Lounge on Milwaukee. We did Rodan for a long time. Just wherever we could find spots that would let us do it, we would do it.

Horror was always in the background. Fangoria magazine used to have a thing called Weekend of Horrors, so I was going to those conventions. Svengoolie has always been a part of my life since I was a kid. People always tend to think horror is a rock ’n’ roll, heavy-metal kind of scene, but there’s also the Gravediggaz, Flatlinerz, and some of that—I guess, for lack of a better term, “horrorcore rap.” I’ve always been a fan. Dr. Octagon, that sort of stuff.

It’s been about six months, and I enjoy every day I go in there. I hadn’t worked a person-to-person retail sort of job in a really long time, so I really enjoy having regular customers and talking to random strangers on a daily basis. I still love coffee, and I love making coffee drinks. Somehow it’s magically worked out.

It gets a little hectic sometimes. That 7 AM opening shift can be real difficult when you’ve DJed till three, but you make the best of it. I’m doing what I love, so you do what you gotta do.

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The Chicago Blackhawks are on a four-game winning streak in a season that may very well end up ending with one of the worst records in the league. They are enjoying it while it lasts because things could take a turn at any moment based on the roster.

On Wednesday morning, a move was made that turned the vibes around a little bit. We were all reminded how bad Stan Bowman was when we learned that the Blackhawks have now traded Nicolas Beaudin to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Cameron Hillis.

That is another first-round pick drafted by Bowman that didn’t work out. He was waived before the season started and nobody took him. Now, the Blackhawks traded him to the Habs for someone who will report directly back to the Rockford Ice Hogs.

Nicolas Beaudin was a first-round pick by the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2018 NHL Draft. They had two that year as a result of a trade and the other player selected was Adam Boqvist. Both of them have now been traded away.

The Chicago Blackhawks made a trade that is going to disappoint everyone.

It is sad too because by selecting two defensemen that year, they took Kirby Dach one year later with the third overall pick instead of Bowen Byram which was always a huge mistake. That was a bad mistake either way but the fact that neither Boqvist nor Beaudin worked makes it even worse.

This is a very disappointing trade but not because of what they traded or got in return. It is another reminder of how poorly run this team was during the last regime’s final years. It is going to be hard to come back from but they are already off to a good start.

Now that Beaudin is gone, they need to move on. Forget about the fact that all of these first-round picks were either traded away or busts and move on. It is up to Kyle Davidson to continue the rebuild and that is what he is doing.

Hopefully, for his sake, Beaudin is able to find a little bit of magic with Montreal. The Blackhawks didn’t do him any favors either. At the end of the day, it is onward and upward for both sides.

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