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The Chicago Cubs and Willson Contreras have reached an agreement on a contract for the 2022 season, with a source telling ESPN’s Jesse Rogers that the catcher will make $9.625 million.

The Cubs and Contreras came to terms just before an arbitration hearing that was scheduled for Thursday. The deal is halfway between the $9 million and $10.25 million that the Cubs and Contreras had filed for, respectively, when figures were exchanged March 22.

The agreement is a bit of a surprise after Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said in April that the sides would go to a hearing. This year was an exception, a source said, due to the nature of an in-season hearing. Arbitration hearings are typically done in January and February, but the MLB lockout forced them to be heard during the baseball season.

Contreras, 30, is in the midst of his best offensive year, batting .277 with 10 home runs and 23 RBIs in 47 games. The two-time All-Star is in his seventh season with the Cubs, batting .260 with 105 home runs and 333 RBIs in 669 career games.

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If you spend any time breathing, you may have noticed polarities everywhere these days, most emanating from a belief gulf that is exponentially widening between conservatives and liberals with every Twitter post. One polarity being heightened not just in social media, but also in government chambers and around dinner tables, is the divide between LGBTQ+ people and the cisgender straights. 

This divide is certainly not new—the original Queer Eye cast tried to bridge the gap between queers and straights back in 2003 by being “Out to make over the world. One straight guy at a time,” hence offering up some skills to thrive on their reality TV show. The trope of gay men who really have their shit together (around grooming, decor, emotional regulation, and cookery) was played out as a fantasy that challenged historically cis-male obliviousness on a case-by-case basis. The idea was to gently hug and shoo away toxic masculinity in favor of a friendlier, rowdier, albeit more organized—and often more gentrified—life experience. 

Queer Eye: The Musical Parody
Through 8/28: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM; Second City UP Comedy Club, 230 W. North, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $29-$79.

The even more popular reboot of the show (2018) was almost a parody of its former iteration, all while taking things further in a good way by modeling emotional intelligence, radical acceptance, and owning trans identities. The show embraced its mission with the same corny if joyous earnestness, and also added a layer of diversity (and made many of our hopes come true) by inviting in non-cis straight people for makeovers at last. Taken in correct doses (binged), the Fab Five can act as a balm against the relentless news cycle or any feelings one might catch about humanity as a whole sucking. That is why I have loved Queer Eye, uncritically accepting its absurd premise—the one where five visibly queer people turn up in American towns, pop up in the life of their subject like a storm front, cheerfully ignore stunned locals, and joyously improve the confidence, setting, and curb appeal of an individual who may have voted for the limitation of their human rights. 

Do I sound cynical? Let me assure you I am not. I have seen every episode of Queer Eye, in all iterations, from the somewhat directionless Queer Eye: We’re in Japan!, to Queer Eye: Germany (where all of the experts were swapped out with actual German people).

And so when I heard that Second City was mounting Queer Eye: The Musical Parody right here in my hometown, and in time for Pride Month, picture my joy. Unless you happen to know my opinion on musicals. With a few exceptions (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Grease), my avoidance of musicals is palpable for a theater critic. Yes, it is ironic that I accept the blithe Queer Eye story line, yet can’t suspend my disbelief during musicals long enough to imagine how folks might opt to express their feelings in song. Why not angrily journal or call a friend instead? So you see, this is why Queer Eye: The Musical Parody is the perfect conundrum for me. 

One question I asked myself, and then, somewhat rudely, asked talented composer/music director/lyricist/orchestrator Heidi Joosten was, “Can my love of the Fab Five (and their relentless shenanigans) override my fight-or-flight urge when that first actor belts out a tune?” Joosten politely described her faith in the show’s ability to win me over. “In the same way that we set out to honor the people that we are parodying, the music for this show is meant to honor lots of people’s different tastes. We make fun of many musical theater tropes, but the music does not feel like Rodgers and Hammerstein 2.0. . . . I would suggest that anybody that’s comfortable turning on their radio is going to find something to like about the music in this show.”

But: “Can the pleasure of watching gay men crush the patriarchy one makeover at a time be enhanced with music?” I asked, clearly just unable to let this go.

“I believe in musical theater that you are obligated to tell an honest story. This particular show to me made a lot of sense to parody because there is no true human villain (in it),” Joosten explained. “The villain is societal expectations, and trying to just find the true person within that gets to shine. Everybody there is just trying to find the happiest version of themselves.” 

The first run of Queer Eye: The Musical Parody played to sold-out audiences in a pre-pandemic 2019. I asked Joosten if the show has changed much since. “It honors the last show that we did and it is a completely different show. We have cut characters, we have added characters, we have expanded characters. It is now a full two-act musical when it was a one-act before. It’s been exciting to see the show grow from the playground version through the pandemic as we grew as people.”

Growth is good. But, I wondered, will parody be applied in a punch-up or punch-down direction? For example, in parodying a show that already is a parody, couldn’t things veer into satire territory? Evan Mills, co-director/writer/creator, is certain that is not the case. “They are real people, and we’re parodying real lives . . . taking their qualities and just heightening it to a fun and playful level. When you start writing parodies, you immediately pick up on the things that maybe they get teased about, but then you take it and you’re able to flip it and to twist it and showcase everyone’s strengths in humor.” 

Seasoned actor Evan Tyrone Martin, who plays culture expert Karamo, agrees, explaining how the Queer Eye series has captured his admiration. “It wasn’t something that I necessarily would’ve seen myself watching initially, but once I got into it, the relationships that these men built with each other, with the people that they were helping and even with families . . . these people truly care for each other and want to help each other. What Evan and Heidi put together is so smart and really funny, but also cares so much about these people and the message that they’re trying to convey. They did an excellent job of being funny without losing the heart that exists with the show.”

I wondered if the show would involve improvisation, since it was taking place at Second City. “While there could have been pockets for a scene that we could improvise, we didn’t want to take the risk of anything feeling out of place. And we wanted to really make this a musical and not an improvised musical,” Mills explained. 

Fair enough—inviting audience commentary on LGBTQ+ identities in today’s climate (even in queer-friendly Chicago) could potentially get dicey. I picture well-meaning drunk audience members suggesting inappropriate things, like I dishearteningly once endured at a dog improv show not long ago. (Second City performer Peter Kim left the 2016 Second City e.t.c. show, A Red Line Runs Through It, in the wake of what he described in a Chicago magazine piece as “increasingly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments [hurled] at me and my castmates.)

Mills explained, “It’s significantly important that we are opening that first weekend of June. We wanted this to be a Pride show, but we also didn’t want it to just be a Pride show.” The run is all summer long, giving the show the opportunity to showcase queer identities beyond the rainbow-bloated month of June.

Martin added, “So many of the messages around Pride itself are about inclusion and acceptance and just celebrating the person that you are. And this show is all of those things.”

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Denali in her entrance look for RuPaul’s Drag
Race, season 13 Credit: Courtesy the artist

There’s an expectation for most contestants on the drag reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race that the gigs will come a’callin’—and for those who have been lucky enough to appear in the big money, Emmy-nominated seasons, this can mean constant and sometimes worldwide travel for a while after their TV appearance.

Denali is one such drag queen. The Chicagoan (via Alaska and Utah) competed in season 13 of RDR, which was filmed during the 2020 Summer of Pandemic and aired on VH1 from January to April of the next year. While Denali left in eighth place at the conclusion of episode ten, she solidified her reputation as a well-balanced performer with dancing and lip-syncing skills that kept her in the sights of her fellow competitors.  

Denali spoke to the Reader before a recent hosting gig for the international Pride Bands Alliance (an evening of symphonic band performances at the Auditorium Theatre presented by Chicago’s Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles) about ice skating, drag, and her adopted hometown of Chicago.  

Salem Collo-Julin: What brought you to Chicago originally? 

Denali: It was a funny transitional period in my life where I was like, OK, I am tired of living on the road. I was doing figure skating tours from about ages 20 to 25, and I wanted to stop living out of a suitcase and to really find a city of my own.

And I knew I was a big city kind of girl. I always wanted to be in a big city, and New York just felt like too much to me. I think for a young kid, there’s that feeling of wanting that midwestern friendly kind of deal all the time, but obviously still wanting to be in a big city. And the only city that had both of those feelings was Chicago.

And had you been actively doing drag before you moved here? 

No, I absolutely hadn’t. I moved here purely as Cordero [Denali’s name out of drag]. And then Denali was developed as I started in the club scenes here in Chicago.

I did some very bad bedroom drag and just played around with friends, but nothing serious. I wasn’t yet studying the craft. It wasn’t until I found Berlin nightclub and this really great group of friends that gave me a lot of advice—that’s where I really started to learn and grow.

Can you remember what turned your head to drag performance? Was there a performer you saw that made you think, “Oh, I want to do that”?

I lived and worked on cruise ships for a while, working as an ice skater and performer on the ships. And there’s a large queer community working on cruise ships, which was honestly the first time in my life that I’d ever been surrounded by a large group of LGBTQ+ people—which was really nice.

And we would all get together on Sundays and we would watch Drag Race. I believe it was season five that did it for me. Oh, Lord. I was in a trance. I was just like, “Oh, what is this? I’m obsessed. I love it.” 

This came at a time in my life when I felt really constrained by a lot of the things around me. I lived on cruise ships. It’s just a super limiting kind of lifestyle. You feel like you’re bound to this massive tin can at sea. And as liberating as that might sound to some people, when you’re on the ship for two, three, four years at a time, it feels really restrictive. And I just felt like the world had to be bigger and more beautiful and more colorful.

What was your queer experience growing up in Alaska and going to Utah for college? 

You know, I grew up in a Christian household in Fairbanks, Alaska. So in general, not only was it a small town, but because I grew up with those ideals, I was taught that my sexuality was taboo and that my sexuality was not to be spoken about. 

I grew up ice skating. That’s all I did. All I did was ice skate because it made me happy. And so by the time I reached age 13, I was like, I have to do something with this. And I felt very limited by my hometown. There was no professional coaching available there. So I decided to take a leap. And I moved to train and professionally skate when I was 15, which was way too young (and my mom agrees with me). 

So as surprising as it may be, Salt Lake City, Utah, was where I came into my queerness the most. I was 16 or 17, and that was where I was finally exposed to some other queer people. And they were in my ice skating, my high school, and my college. That’s where I really felt like I started to blossom and develop. I went to my first Pride there when I was 17.

There is something to that—those places where you wouldn’t expect to see the largest amount of queer people often have LGBTQ+ communities that are just so solid. 

I think it’s because there’s so much restriction in those places that the people that have gotten out of that mindset are even more passionate and more intense about making sure that they are loud and proud and things like that, because they know that around them is a lot of bigotry and hate. So actually, I’ve met some of the queerest people in Utah. 

Denali performed during the intermission of the Chicago Blackhawks Pride Night game in April.

Ice skating still seems like it’s a big part of your life and it sounds like it was something that you jumped into early on. 

My sister was a beautiful ice dancer. And of course, being the young queer kid that I was, I emulated her, and I wanted to be her. She was so beautiful. She was just the most ethereal goddess in my life. And when you’re a young gay thing, you glamorize beauty.

I said something so dumb on [RuPaul’s Drag Race] one episode. I was just like, “I love chandeliers,” when I was in costume as a chandelier. But the rest of my thoughts were edited out. While we were doing post-production voiceovers, I was able to add that as a young queer kid trapped in Alaska, I was drawn to beautiful and ornate things. And I didn’t realize that my obsession with these lamps was just my expression of queerness as a kid.

Do you feel like there’s any difference in how you approach choreography for a drag performance versus something that you’re going to be doing on the ice? 

Choreographing for the ice is a totally different mindset. You’re constantly moving [on the ice]. You take one push and you’re suddenly accelerating. Most skaters are going seven to ten miles an hour or something like that. There’s constant acceleration. It’s dancing, but you are flying at the same time.

And then for drag, [choreography is] not always all about being dynamic, but you’re trying to draw attention to yourself. You’re trying to feel the spotlight. A lot of people tell me that they thought I choreographed a lot of my lip syncs [on RDR], and some of them were, but some were just working out a few moves in my hotel room the night before. 

Chicago Drag Excellence was produced by Denali with TransIt Productions and filmed at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport.

You made a video in 2020 [Chicago Drag Excellence, featuring many Chicago drag performers] and released it online after the season premiered in January of last year. 

We have been in quarantine for so long, and the year prior was so difficult for Chicago drag. Nobody was working. Nobody was happy. Nobody was really doing much with their drag besides creating digital drag videos.

The video was an opportunity for us to all gather safely, laugh again, and to just feel like we were being fabulous all together. There were around 40 performers in the video, and everyone had a two-hour block, and it was a lot. I’m really proud of Chicago doing that. 

What would you tell a drag performer new to Chicago that they must do? 

One thing that you should do if you come to Chicago or if you’re trying to get into the scene anywhere is find your people. You need people, you need your sense of community not only to share skills, share wigs, share costumes, all that stuff, but it’s the whole point of drag, in my opinion. Find your tribe and find the people that you click with and grow with them. 

Read More

If you spend any time breathing, you may have noticed polarities everywhere these days, most emanating from a belief gulf that is exponentially widening between conservatives and liberals with every Twitter post. One polarity being heightened not just in social media, but also in government chambers and around dinner tables, is the divide between LGBTQ+ people and the cisgender straights. 

This divide is certainly not new—the original Queer Eye cast tried to bridge the gap between queers and straights back in 2003 by being “Out to make over the world. One straight guy at a time,” hence offering up some skills to thrive on their reality TV show. The trope of gay men who really have their shit together (around grooming, decor, emotional regulation, and cookery) was played out as a fantasy that challenged historically cis-male obliviousness on a case-by-case basis. The idea was to gently hug and shoo away toxic masculinity in favor of a friendlier, rowdier, albeit more organized—and often more gentrified—life experience. 

Queer Eye: The Musical Parody
Through 8/28: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM; Second City UP Comedy Club, 230 W. North, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $29-$79.

The even more popular reboot of the show (2018) was almost a parody of its former iteration, all while taking things further in a good way by modeling emotional intelligence, radical acceptance, and owning trans identities. The show embraced its mission with the same corny if joyous earnestness, and also added a layer of diversity (and made many of our hopes come true) by inviting in non-cis straight people for makeovers at last. Taken in correct doses (binged), the Fab Five can act as a balm against the relentless news cycle or any feelings one might catch about humanity as a whole sucking. That is why I have loved Queer Eye, uncritically accepting its absurd premise—the one where five visibly queer people turn up in American towns, pop up in the life of their subject like a storm front, cheerfully ignore stunned locals, and joyously improve the confidence, setting, and curb appeal of an individual who may have voted for the limitation of their human rights. 

Do I sound cynical? Let me assure you I am not. I have seen every episode of Queer Eye, in all iterations, from the somewhat directionless Queer Eye: We’re in Japan!, to Queer Eye: Germany (where all of the experts were swapped out with actual German people).

And so when I heard that Second City was mounting Queer Eye: The Musical Parody right here in my hometown, and in time for Pride Month, picture my joy. Unless you happen to know my opinion on musicals. With a few exceptions (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Grease), my avoidance of musicals is palpable for a theater critic. Yes, it is ironic that I accept the blithe Queer Eye story line, yet can’t suspend my disbelief during musicals long enough to imagine how folks might opt to express their feelings in song. Why not angrily journal or call a friend instead? So you see, this is why Queer Eye: The Musical Parody is the perfect conundrum for me. 

One question I asked myself, and then, somewhat rudely, asked talented composer/music director/lyricist/orchestrator Heidi Joosten was, “Can my love of the Fab Five (and their relentless shenanigans) override my fight-or-flight urge when that first actor belts out a tune?” Joosten politely described her faith in the show’s ability to win me over. “In the same way that we set out to honor the people that we are parodying, the music for this show is meant to honor lots of people’s different tastes. We make fun of many musical theater tropes, but the music does not feel like Rodgers and Hammerstein 2.0. . . . I would suggest that anybody that’s comfortable turning on their radio is going to find something to like about the music in this show.”

But: “Can the pleasure of watching gay men crush the patriarchy one makeover at a time be enhanced with music?” I asked, clearly just unable to let this go.

“I believe in musical theater that you are obligated to tell an honest story. This particular show to me made a lot of sense to parody because there is no true human villain (in it),” Joosten explained. “The villain is societal expectations, and trying to just find the true person within that gets to shine. Everybody there is just trying to find the happiest version of themselves.” 

The first run of Queer Eye: The Musical Parody played to sold-out audiences in a pre-pandemic 2019. I asked Joosten if the show has changed much since. “It honors the last show that we did and it is a completely different show. We have cut characters, we have added characters, we have expanded characters. It is now a full two-act musical when it was a one-act before. It’s been exciting to see the show grow from the playground version through the pandemic as we grew as people.”

Growth is good. But, I wondered, will parody be applied in a punch-up or punch-down direction? For example, in parodying a show that already is a parody, couldn’t things veer into satire territory? Evan Mills, co-director/writer/creator, is certain that is not the case. “They are real people, and we’re parodying real lives . . . taking their qualities and just heightening it to a fun and playful level. When you start writing parodies, you immediately pick up on the things that maybe they get teased about, but then you take it and you’re able to flip it and to twist it and showcase everyone’s strengths in humor.” 

Seasoned actor Evan Tyrone Martin, who plays culture expert Karamo, agrees, explaining how the Queer Eye series has captured his admiration. “It wasn’t something that I necessarily would’ve seen myself watching initially, but once I got into it, the relationships that these men built with each other, with the people that they were helping and even with families . . . these people truly care for each other and want to help each other. What Evan and Heidi put together is so smart and really funny, but also cares so much about these people and the message that they’re trying to convey. They did an excellent job of being funny without losing the heart that exists with the show.”

I wondered if the show would involve improvisation, since it was taking place at Second City. “While there could have been pockets for a scene that we could improvise, we didn’t want to take the risk of anything feeling out of place. And we wanted to really make this a musical and not an improvised musical,” Mills explained. 

Fair enough—inviting audience commentary on LGBTQ+ identities in today’s climate (even in queer-friendly Chicago) could potentially get dicey. I picture well-meaning drunk audience members suggesting inappropriate things, like I dishearteningly once endured at a dog improv show not long ago. (Second City performer Peter Kim left the 2016 Second City e.t.c. show, A Red Line Runs Through It, in the wake of what he described in a Chicago magazine piece as “increasingly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments [hurled] at me and my castmates.)

Mills explained, “It’s significantly important that we are opening that first weekend of June. We wanted this to be a Pride show, but we also didn’t want it to just be a Pride show.” The run is all summer long, giving the show the opportunity to showcase queer identities beyond the rainbow-bloated month of June.

Martin added, “So many of the messages around Pride itself are about inclusion and acceptance and just celebrating the person that you are. And this show is all of those things.”

Read More

Denali in her entrance look for RuPaul’s Drag
Race, season 13 Credit: Courtesy the artist

There’s an expectation for most contestants on the drag reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race that the gigs will come a’callin’—and for those who have been lucky enough to appear in the big money, Emmy-nominated seasons, this can mean constant and sometimes worldwide travel for a while after their TV appearance.

Denali is one such drag queen. The Chicagoan (via Alaska and Utah) competed in season 13 of RDR, which was filmed during the 2020 Summer of Pandemic and aired on VH1 from January to April of the next year. While Denali left in eighth place at the conclusion of episode ten, she solidified her reputation as a well-balanced performer with dancing and lip-syncing skills that kept her in the sights of her fellow competitors.  

Denali spoke to the Reader before a recent hosting gig for the international Pride Bands Alliance (an evening of symphonic band performances at the Auditorium Theatre presented by Chicago’s Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles) about ice skating, drag, and her adopted hometown of Chicago.  

Salem Collo-Julin: What brought you to Chicago originally? 

Denali: It was a funny transitional period in my life where I was like, OK, I am tired of living on the road. I was doing figure skating tours from about ages 20 to 25, and I wanted to stop living out of a suitcase and to really find a city of my own.

And I knew I was a big city kind of girl. I always wanted to be in a big city, and New York just felt like too much to me. I think for a young kid, there’s that feeling of wanting that midwestern friendly kind of deal all the time, but obviously still wanting to be in a big city. And the only city that had both of those feelings was Chicago.

And had you been actively doing drag before you moved here? 

No, I absolutely hadn’t. I moved here purely as Cordero [Denali’s name out of drag]. And then Denali was developed as I started in the club scenes here in Chicago.

I did some very bad bedroom drag and just played around with friends, but nothing serious. I wasn’t yet studying the craft. It wasn’t until I found Berlin nightclub and this really great group of friends that gave me a lot of advice—that’s where I really started to learn and grow.

Can you remember what turned your head to drag performance? Was there a performer you saw that made you think, “Oh, I want to do that”?

I lived and worked on cruise ships for a while, working as an ice skater and performer on the ships. And there’s a large queer community working on cruise ships, which was honestly the first time in my life that I’d ever been surrounded by a large group of LGBTQ+ people—which was really nice.

And we would all get together on Sundays and we would watch Drag Race. I believe it was season five that did it for me. Oh, Lord. I was in a trance. I was just like, “Oh, what is this? I’m obsessed. I love it.” 

This came at a time in my life when I felt really constrained by a lot of the things around me. I lived on cruise ships. It’s just a super limiting kind of lifestyle. You feel like you’re bound to this massive tin can at sea. And as liberating as that might sound to some people, when you’re on the ship for two, three, four years at a time, it feels really restrictive. And I just felt like the world had to be bigger and more beautiful and more colorful.

What was your queer experience growing up in Alaska and going to Utah for college? 

You know, I grew up in a Christian household in Fairbanks, Alaska. So in general, not only was it a small town, but because I grew up with those ideals, I was taught that my sexuality was taboo and that my sexuality was not to be spoken about. 

I grew up ice skating. That’s all I did. All I did was ice skate because it made me happy. And so by the time I reached age 13, I was like, I have to do something with this. And I felt very limited by my hometown. There was no professional coaching available there. So I decided to take a leap. And I moved to train and professionally skate when I was 15, which was way too young (and my mom agrees with me). 

So as surprising as it may be, Salt Lake City, Utah, was where I came into my queerness the most. I was 16 or 17, and that was where I was finally exposed to some other queer people. And they were in my ice skating, my high school, and my college. That’s where I really felt like I started to blossom and develop. I went to my first Pride there when I was 17.

There is something to that—those places where you wouldn’t expect to see the largest amount of queer people often have LGBTQ+ communities that are just so solid. 

I think it’s because there’s so much restriction in those places that the people that have gotten out of that mindset are even more passionate and more intense about making sure that they are loud and proud and things like that, because they know that around them is a lot of bigotry and hate. So actually, I’ve met some of the queerest people in Utah. 

Denali performed during the intermission of the Chicago Blackhawks Pride Night game in April.

Ice skating still seems like it’s a big part of your life and it sounds like it was something that you jumped into early on. 

My sister was a beautiful ice dancer. And of course, being the young queer kid that I was, I emulated her, and I wanted to be her. She was so beautiful. She was just the most ethereal goddess in my life. And when you’re a young gay thing, you glamorize beauty.

I said something so dumb on [RuPaul’s Drag Race] one episode. I was just like, “I love chandeliers,” when I was in costume as a chandelier. But the rest of my thoughts were edited out. While we were doing post-production voiceovers, I was able to add that as a young queer kid trapped in Alaska, I was drawn to beautiful and ornate things. And I didn’t realize that my obsession with these lamps was just my expression of queerness as a kid.

Do you feel like there’s any difference in how you approach choreography for a drag performance versus something that you’re going to be doing on the ice? 

Choreographing for the ice is a totally different mindset. You’re constantly moving [on the ice]. You take one push and you’re suddenly accelerating. Most skaters are going seven to ten miles an hour or something like that. There’s constant acceleration. It’s dancing, but you are flying at the same time.

And then for drag, [choreography is] not always all about being dynamic, but you’re trying to draw attention to yourself. You’re trying to feel the spotlight. A lot of people tell me that they thought I choreographed a lot of my lip syncs [on RDR], and some of them were, but some were just working out a few moves in my hotel room the night before. 

Chicago Drag Excellence was produced by Denali with TransIt Productions and filmed at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport.

You made a video in 2020 [Chicago Drag Excellence, featuring many Chicago drag performers] and released it online after the season premiered in January of last year. 

We have been in quarantine for so long, and the year prior was so difficult for Chicago drag. Nobody was working. Nobody was happy. Nobody was really doing much with their drag besides creating digital drag videos.

The video was an opportunity for us to all gather safely, laugh again, and to just feel like we were being fabulous all together. There were around 40 performers in the video, and everyone had a two-hour block, and it was a lot. I’m really proud of Chicago doing that. 

What would you tell a drag performer new to Chicago that they must do? 

One thing that you should do if you come to Chicago or if you’re trying to get into the scene anywhere is find your people. You need people, you need your sense of community not only to share skills, share wigs, share costumes, all that stuff, but it’s the whole point of drag, in my opinion. Find your tribe and find the people that you click with and grow with them. 

Read More

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Chicago native and Austin resident Samantha Jordan, 33, has been rapping as FURY since 2015, with a sound that emphasizes live-band instrumentation and politically conscious lyrics. Her community activism focuses on housing justice, and until recently she worked in rental assistance for Oak Park Regional Housing. In January 2022, her proposal for renovations to Columbus Park in Austin won a $1.5 million city grant as part of the Chicago Works Community Challenge. 

FURY and south-side rapper-producer BOLY Blaise run the open mike Lyrics & Libations every Wednesday at Hairpin Arts Center. On Friday, June 24, she performs upstairs at Subterranean to celebrate the release that day of the EP FURY REVOLUTION, her first new music since the 2018 EP Black Magic.

As told to Philip Montoro

In 2020, when everything stopped, I couldn’t do music. Thankfully, unemployment went through. I didn’t work for like a year and a half, from the end of March until last August. So I had nothing but time. So I was like, “What is going on out here?” When everything shut down, often all I had was my neighborhood to go to, and I was very upset because there was nothing to do. 

Everything was just closed, and there wasn’t a lot of walkable areas that I felt safe being in, and they were just closing grocery stores left and right. And you just saw disparity after disparity, and they didn’t care. I’ve just seen everything I grew up with closed, shut down, abandoned. 

So this grant came out in May of last year. And I loved the fact that it was a grant that a resident could fill out—you didn’t have to be with any organization. Because I found it difficult to connect with organizations. They kind of just wanted you to pay your dues, and I straight-up had people who were like, well, you just find somewhere to align with for ten years, and then you can do something. 

I did get the idea from—she was a Chamber of Commerce president for Austin at the time, Tina Augustus. She suggested Columbus Park, because I’m just like, should I do it on a vacant lot? It could’ve been a vacant lot, a city-owned park, or a library that you can use this grant—up to $1.5 million—to renovate, to do upgrades. 

And I found out in late October that I was a semifinalist. Then I gave a presentation against two other finalists. 

Columbus Park is huge. It’s historic, it’s on the National Registry for parks, which is very rare for a city park. And so I just went for it. And I found out in January that we won, and I have been over the moon ever since. We’re using it to upgrade the park. So new tennis court, basketball court. And an amphitheater. 

Samantha Jordan, aka FURY, was awarded a $1.5 million Chicago Works Community Challenge grant in January 2022.

Because one of the things I said is we need events here; we don’t have any event spaces. There’s really no bars in Austin—there’s nothing but churches and abandoned buildings. We needed something to where we can have businesses come and see there’s money out here to be made. A lot of times we’re forced to go to Oak Park or neighboring communities like Belmont Cragin or Cicero just to find fun, food, entertainment. There’s not a lot of options in Austin. 

There’s a huge field [in Columbus Park], it’s called the bowling green, which is what they used back in the day—the park is over 100 years old. And they used to use it to bowl on the grass. So there’s like a little hump in the middle of it, but it’s almost the size of a football field. And it’s right by the lagoon, where the water is. So it’s a beautiful location. And I want to have music events, I want to have festivals, I want to have Taste of Austin, I want to make it a place where we can come have pop-ups. 

I’m thinking a nice stage with a covering, some shade in the field, just so we can have events all through the summer and have businesses come and see, “Hey, maybe I should open up here because every time my food truck is here, I sell out.” And that’s the goal, is just development. 

Development—but through music, through something that’s more organic and less trauma-based. People are always like, we got to come together. But if we’re just always talking about how we’re hurt, poor, broke, that’s not what we want. As a younger generation, we don’t want to focus on—we know we’re messed up. What helps us is going to a show, having some drinks, you know, dancing, blowing off that steam. And when you go to events like that, that’s where you meet people, and people can just start forming groups organically rather than like, hey, let’s all just come here and meet and just assume that we’re all going to be on the same page—that has not worked for Black people in general, just because we’re different. 

So I want to focus on having events where we can learn each other, talk to each other. You know, like each other. I lived in Austin five years and didn’t know the people I was around. Only time I heard from my neighbors was when they were fighting, and I’m not gonna be like, “Hi, I’m Samantha. I just heard you cussing out your man. Are you fighting?” 

And green spaces—another part is, hopefully we can add an exercise park where they just have machines that are stationary, and they’re there year-round. So people can come do circuit training and, you know, walk around, and just promote health and wellness and getting back outside.

They’re already starting on the basketball courts. And then the tennis courts should be late summer, early fall—because these are gonna be major renovations. So they may be in phases, but most of it should be done by the end of this year. We still have to design the performance area. So that may be finished early next year, early summer. We definitely want some art, some murals. But the goal for this project is something with a quick turnaround, not a long drawn-out five years.

“Columbus is so big—it goes from the expressway all the way up past Jackson, and from Central to Austin,” says Samantha Jordan, aka FURY. “It has a golf course, nine holes. So it’s like, why don’t we know this? Why aren’t there golfing classes, or tennis, if we have all these things?” Credit: Gonzalo Guzman for Chicago Reader

I got a little 11-year-old. She don’t want me to call her “baby” anymore. She’s still my baby, though! She had virtual class, so it was important for us to get out and walk and not be cooped up in the house 24-7. And that’s when I was like, man, why aren’t there more parks? Why, in the park that is here, is there nothing but open space? 

So I definitely had her in mind. Her school was like two blocks from Columbus Park. Even when I was applying, I was just telling her, “Hey, I’m gonna get this grant.” And she’s like, “OK, ma.” You know kids, they don’t believe nothing. They just think all adults are full of crap. But I was like, “Camille, you guys are gonna be able to do stuff at Columbus Park.” And she’s a believer now. That’s all I gotta say. 

And to get an 11-year-old to believe you—oh, now she loves me. Now we got in the newsletter at her school, so she’s just like, “My mom’s a celebrity! She just won $1.5 million!” Like, it’s real. 

I was performing at one of those Sofar Sounds shows, and someone was talking to me afterwards. And they were like, “Oh yeah, I have a friend. She teaches in Austin at Circle Rock.” And it turns out their friend was my daughter’s teacher. “My friend told me they saw your show. Oh, I couldn’t believe it! Please let me know the next one.” So my daughter really thinks I’m a superstar now. I can’t go back.

After the shutdown, when things started opening back up, I was totally back at the beginning. To help myself get back out there as an artist, as a creative, I hit up my guy BOLY Blaise. And we brought back this open mike that I used to do—this is where I got my start. It’s called Lyrics & Libations. I had a venue that was willing to let me throw something. Hairpin Arts Center, that’s over on Milwaukee and Diversey. And we’ve been throwing this open mike since September. 

We have beer and wine, but it’s open mike—so everything from comedy, poetry, monologues, rap, R&B, country, just everything. And people have come out consistently. I know one week we had Hannibal Buress just drop in randomly. Which was so cool, because he was just, “I saw this on Eventbrite, so I just came to check it out.” 

But that’s how Chicago is—if you build it, they will come. And that’s what I’m excited to do—throw festivals. I know music, and I know food. So I’ve already gone out for another grant. Hopefully I get it next year. The Neighborhood Access Program grant. And that’s kind of the same thing: come up with an idea, something you want to do in your neighborhood, and we’ll see about funding you. I would love to do a summer series to celebrate the new performance area, so I’m hoping it all lines up.

Violet Crime, Da$htone, Barry & the Fountains, FURY
FURY’s set is a release celebration for her new EP, FURY REVOLUTION, which comes out the day of the show. Fri 6/24, 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $15, 17+

My new project, FURY REVOLUTION, is gonna be an EP. It absolutely is about just me coming back into contact with music, with my community. I really had to have a reckoning—2020, it broke me. There’s no pretty way to put it. Because I lost everything. 

In 2020 I had my song “I Won’t,” which is one of my favorite singles, it was put in a Netflix original series called Gentefied. And they put it in two episodes. So I’m like, 2020 is gonna be my year. Like, I got shows booked, my band, all that. And then everything stopped. So this was me asking, Who are you when the music stops? And why do you have this super-conscious music, but you don’t know anybody in your neighborhood? There’s just no connection. 

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Chicago native and Austin resident Samantha Jordan, 33, has been rapping as FURY since 2015, with a sound that emphasizes live-band instrumentation and politically conscious lyrics. Her community activism focuses on housing justice, and until recently she worked in rental assistance for Oak Park Regional Housing. In January 2022, her proposal for renovations to Columbus Park in Austin won a $1.5 million city grant as part of the Chicago Works Community Challenge. 

FURY and south-side rapper-producer BOLY Blaise run the open mike Lyrics & Libations every Wednesday at Hairpin Arts Center. On Friday, June 24, she performs upstairs at Subterranean to celebrate the release that day of the EP FURY REVOLUTION, her first new music since the 2018 EP Black Magic.

As told to Philip Montoro

In 2020, when everything stopped, I couldn’t do music. Thankfully, unemployment went through. I didn’t work for like a year and a half, from the end of March until last August. So I had nothing but time. So I was like, “What is going on out here?” When everything shut down, often all I had was my neighborhood to go to, and I was very upset because there was nothing to do. 

Everything was just closed, and there wasn’t a lot of walkable areas that I felt safe being in, and they were just closing grocery stores left and right. And you just saw disparity after disparity, and they didn’t care. I’ve just seen everything I grew up with closed, shut down, abandoned. 

So this grant came out in May of last year. And I loved the fact that it was a grant that a resident could fill out—you didn’t have to be with any organization. Because I found it difficult to connect with organizations. They kind of just wanted you to pay your dues, and I straight-up had people who were like, well, you just find somewhere to align with for ten years, and then you can do something. 

I did get the idea from—she was a Chamber of Commerce president for Austin at the time, Tina Augustus. She suggested Columbus Park, because I’m just like, should I do it on a vacant lot? It could’ve been a vacant lot, a city-owned park, or a library that you can use this grant—up to $1.5 million—to renovate, to do upgrades. 

And I found out in late October that I was a semifinalist. Then I gave a presentation against two other finalists. 

Columbus Park is huge. It’s historic, it’s on the National Registry for parks, which is very rare for a city park. And so I just went for it. And I found out in January that we won, and I have been over the moon ever since. We’re using it to upgrade the park. So new tennis court, basketball court. And an amphitheater. 

Samantha Jordan, aka FURY, was awarded a $1.5 million Chicago Works Community Challenge grant in January 2022.

Because one of the things I said is we need events here; we don’t have any event spaces. There’s really no bars in Austin—there’s nothing but churches and abandoned buildings. We needed something to where we can have businesses come and see there’s money out here to be made. A lot of times we’re forced to go to Oak Park or neighboring communities like Belmont Cragin or Cicero just to find fun, food, entertainment. There’s not a lot of options in Austin. 

There’s a huge field [in Columbus Park], it’s called the bowling green, which is what they used back in the day—the park is over 100 years old. And they used to use it to bowl on the grass. So there’s like a little hump in the middle of it, but it’s almost the size of a football field. And it’s right by the lagoon, where the water is. So it’s a beautiful location. And I want to have music events, I want to have festivals, I want to have Taste of Austin, I want to make it a place where we can come have pop-ups. 

I’m thinking a nice stage with a covering, some shade in the field, just so we can have events all through the summer and have businesses come and see, “Hey, maybe I should open up here because every time my food truck is here, I sell out.” And that’s the goal, is just development. 

Development—but through music, through something that’s more organic and less trauma-based. People are always like, we got to come together. But if we’re just always talking about how we’re hurt, poor, broke, that’s not what we want. As a younger generation, we don’t want to focus on—we know we’re messed up. What helps us is going to a show, having some drinks, you know, dancing, blowing off that steam. And when you go to events like that, that’s where you meet people, and people can just start forming groups organically rather than like, hey, let’s all just come here and meet and just assume that we’re all going to be on the same page—that has not worked for Black people in general, just because we’re different. 

So I want to focus on having events where we can learn each other, talk to each other. You know, like each other. I lived in Austin five years and didn’t know the people I was around. Only time I heard from my neighbors was when they were fighting, and I’m not gonna be like, “Hi, I’m Samantha. I just heard you cussing out your man. Are you fighting?” 

And green spaces—another part is, hopefully we can add an exercise park where they just have machines that are stationary, and they’re there year-round. So people can come do circuit training and, you know, walk around, and just promote health and wellness and getting back outside.

They’re already starting on the basketball courts. And then the tennis courts should be late summer, early fall—because these are gonna be major renovations. So they may be in phases, but most of it should be done by the end of this year. We still have to design the performance area. So that may be finished early next year, early summer. We definitely want some art, some murals. But the goal for this project is something with a quick turnaround, not a long drawn-out five years.

“Columbus is so big—it goes from the expressway all the way up past Jackson, and from Central to Austin,” says Samantha Jordan, aka FURY. “It has a golf course, nine holes. So it’s like, why don’t we know this? Why aren’t there golfing classes, or tennis, if we have all these things?” Credit: Gonzalo Guzman for Chicago Reader

I got a little 11-year-old. She don’t want me to call her “baby” anymore. She’s still my baby, though! She had virtual class, so it was important for us to get out and walk and not be cooped up in the house 24-7. And that’s when I was like, man, why aren’t there more parks? Why, in the park that is here, is there nothing but open space? 

So I definitely had her in mind. Her school was like two blocks from Columbus Park. Even when I was applying, I was just telling her, “Hey, I’m gonna get this grant.” And she’s like, “OK, ma.” You know kids, they don’t believe nothing. They just think all adults are full of crap. But I was like, “Camille, you guys are gonna be able to do stuff at Columbus Park.” And she’s a believer now. That’s all I gotta say. 

And to get an 11-year-old to believe you—oh, now she loves me. Now we got in the newsletter at her school, so she’s just like, “My mom’s a celebrity! She just won $1.5 million!” Like, it’s real. 

I was performing at one of those Sofar Sounds shows, and someone was talking to me afterwards. And they were like, “Oh yeah, I have a friend. She teaches in Austin at Circle Rock.” And it turns out their friend was my daughter’s teacher. “My friend told me they saw your show. Oh, I couldn’t believe it! Please let me know the next one.” So my daughter really thinks I’m a superstar now. I can’t go back.

After the shutdown, when things started opening back up, I was totally back at the beginning. To help myself get back out there as an artist, as a creative, I hit up my guy BOLY Blaise. And we brought back this open mike that I used to do—this is where I got my start. It’s called Lyrics & Libations. I had a venue that was willing to let me throw something. Hairpin Arts Center, that’s over on Milwaukee and Diversey. And we’ve been throwing this open mike since September. 

We have beer and wine, but it’s open mike—so everything from comedy, poetry, monologues, rap, R&B, country, just everything. And people have come out consistently. I know one week we had Hannibal Buress just drop in randomly. Which was so cool, because he was just, “I saw this on Eventbrite, so I just came to check it out.” 

But that’s how Chicago is—if you build it, they will come. And that’s what I’m excited to do—throw festivals. I know music, and I know food. So I’ve already gone out for another grant. Hopefully I get it next year. The Neighborhood Access Program grant. And that’s kind of the same thing: come up with an idea, something you want to do in your neighborhood, and we’ll see about funding you. I would love to do a summer series to celebrate the new performance area, so I’m hoping it all lines up.

Violet Crime, Da$htone, Barry & the Fountains, FURY
FURY’s set is a release celebration for her new EP, FURY REVOLUTION, which comes out the day of the show. Fri 6/24, 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $15, 17+

My new project, FURY REVOLUTION, is gonna be an EP. It absolutely is about just me coming back into contact with music, with my community. I really had to have a reckoning—2020, it broke me. There’s no pretty way to put it. Because I lost everything. 

In 2020 I had my song “I Won’t,” which is one of my favorite singles, it was put in a Netflix original series called Gentefied. And they put it in two episodes. So I’m like, 2020 is gonna be my year. Like, I got shows booked, my band, all that. And then everything stopped. So this was me asking, Who are you when the music stops? And why do you have this super-conscious music, but you don’t know anybody in your neighborhood? There’s just no connection. 

Read More