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SKaiser writesIndustrial District: The Hideout
"The Hideout is a regular guy bar for irregular folks who just don’t fit in, or just don’t want to fit in. We didn’t choose the name; it has been called the Hideout since it opened (legally) in 1934."
There are no outsiders inside The Hideout. The doors of the 100 year old public house built in two days by the hard-working remain open to all, no matter the instruments you clang together or rebellion held in your heart.
Here is the kind of place customers recommend bands, where children's plays are performed, musicians choose to hold their listening parties, and everyone dresses up as robots. The Hideout is music, art, performance, plays, poetry, rock and rebellion.
It's likely the secret to it's historical standing in Chicago is the longlived community platform residing within its walls.
Take a poke around The Hideout's calendar and interspersed between comedy shows, dance parties, and a flipping sweet flea market, are opportunities to support your community through events like the weekly Soup & Bread meal that contributes to local food pantries, or the monthly discussion hosted by women for women called The Girl Talk.
On February 27th The Girl Talk hosted an edition called Women at Work. The hosts, Jen Sabella and Erika Wozniak, asked three women questions related to fighting for their rights in the workplace and the reward of standing strongly together.
Esthela, a leader of the “Hands Off Pants On” campaign, spoke about her work as a housekeeper and the city ordinance win to ensure all hotel workers who work alone are equipped with panic buttons by July 1, 2018. Esthela was named Person of the Year by TIME Magazine as one of the “The Silence Breakers.” Erica Sanchez has been a Chicago Public Schools janitor and SEIU Local 1 member for the past 21 years. Over that time, Sanchez has been a steadfast leader within her union and its fight for economic, racial, immigrant and environmental justice, including the push for $15 and a union at Chicago’s airports. Pennie McCoach has worked at the Chicago Transit Authority for 17 years as a switchmen and she has actively been involved with her union, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) for 14 years. She holds the position of 2nd Vice President of the ATU.
Check out the next sesson of The Girl Talk on Tuesday, March 27th at 6:30 PM. Meet your neighbors for dinner at this week's Soup & Bread on Wednesday, March 14th, at 5:30 PM. Bring on the pozole, the borscht, the harrira; the shorbit amas and the soupe joumou!
Hosts of The Girl Talk (far left, Jen Sabella and second from right, Erika Wozniak) talk about Women in the Workplace with Esthela, Pennie McCoach, and Erica Sanchez.
candylocs writesAn Interview With Matt Brooks of Sofar Sounds
written by Candice Triche
Inspiration to pursue your passion can come from places we least expect. When I went to my first Sofar Sounds show, I was both impressed and in awe of how effortless it all seemed to go down. Putting together a secret show, wrangling a curious crowd and making sure the bands are set to go cannot be done without knowing a thing or two and hard work.
Matt Brooks is the City Director for Sofar Sounds Chicago market, and along with a stellar group of others, they put together awesome shows multiple times a month around the city of Chicago. I was hooked since that first show in October and have been to a few more since then. Discovering new bands, meeting new people, and dancing without a care (BYOB!), has made for many a great weeknight for me this summer!
From my first experience, Matt has been front and center, meeting and greeting, and making things happen. On Sept 20th, Sofar will be debuting a series of shows across the world, including 8 shows in Chicago, that will surely put them on top of intimate music venues everywhere and will be talked about for a long time to come. They are indeed changing the way we listen to live music, one show at a time.
Before the big show in September, I wanted to get his take on how he started and why he has such a passion for Sofar Sounds.
What was your first Sofar Sounds show/experience?
The first Sofar Sounds show I ever attended was in Chicago on International Women’s Day, March 8th, 2015. I was attending in preparations of starting up a new Sofar city in Indianapolis, and this experience immediately thrust me into the wonderful community that I have the pleasure of working with every day now. The show was a beautiful, unfamiliar, yet refreshing experience that only gets more special as time goes on. We hosted in the Sq3 Whiteroom, a beautiful studio space run by a friend of ours near Goose Island that is no longer in that location, though we certainly miss it. The artists were SKYLR, KSRA, and Quinn Tsan, some of which still perform with us today. I can remember this distinct moment that is not so uncommon at Sofar shows, when I felt like I had discovered the best kept secret in the city.
Lady Amelia writesA Conversation With LimeRed Studio
LimeRed is a local user experience (UX) firm that develops design and UX projects that emphasize social justice and innovation. Since the firm was founded in 2004, they’ve also garnered certifications as both a woman-owned business (WBE) and a Certified B Corporation (B-Corp), meeting high standards of social and environmental performance as well as public transparency and accountability. This is an especially impressive feat as Chicago is only home to 21 B-Corps and fewer than half of those businesses are woman-owned.
In the spirit of local community-building and cross-organizational efforts, CHIRP Radio Features Director Amelia Hruby spent a morning at LimeRed recently with founder and company President Emily Lonigro Boylan and Strategy Director Demetrio Cardona-Maguigad.
Amelia: How did LimeRed get started?
Emily: I started my company because I had a computer, one client, and big ideas. I didn’t know anything. After college, I had been living in Chicago and working at agencies and on social justice projects, but I moved to New York because I had nothing to lose. So I was running my own little business with clients, larger agencies, and smaller non-profits. I kind of had a 50/50 split between New York and Chicago. It was going well, and that’s when I incorporated LimeRed.
At that point I was freelancing for a company that did luxury design goods. Most of their clients were luxury e-commerce, cosmetics, travel and real estate, and that’s really where I learned everything online. But the stuff I was selling, I just couldn’t do it. So I quit and said “I can’t do this anymore.” I decided that I had to stay true to what I think and do small business and non-profit and social justice and blend it all together, because you can’t be two people, it just doesn’t work.
SKaiser writesThen & Now: Uptown
The days of silent movies and mob entourages are far behind but the facade of glamour and decades of performance remain a centerpiece of Uptown. The Aragon Ballroom, Riviera Theater, and Green Mill Jazz Club bring weekly crowds to the doors that today appear remarkably similar to days long gone. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the ongoing stabilization of renovating the iconic Uptown Theatre.
The Uptown Theater is shown above on opening day August 18, 1925. It was said to be "as acre of seats in a magic city."
Amelia writesOur Music My Body Promotes Safe Spaces & Consensual Interactions at Local Venues and Festivals
Have you seen a consent button-making table at a concert recently? Did you read Riot Fest's or Kickstand Production's anti-harassment statement? If you answered yes on either account, you might have run into Our Music My Body.
Our Music My Body is a campaign by local non-profit organizations Between Friends and Rape Victim Advocates that promotes fun and consensual music experiences for all music lovers and concert- and festival-goers in Chicagoland and beyond.
CHIRP volunteer and DJ Amelia Hruby recently met up with Our Music My Body organizaer Matt Walsh to chat about the campaign.
AH: For people who aren't familiar, what is Our Music My Body?
MW: Our Music My Body is a collaborative campaign between Rape Victim Advocates (RVA) and Between Friends. Rape Victim Advocates is a rape crisis center that advocates for survivors of sexual assault in hospitals and court systems and also does education work. Between Friends is a domestic violence agency in Rogers Park that does court advocacy counseling as well as prevention education in middle and high schools.
AH: How did it get started?
MW: So in 2011, when Odd Future played at Pitchfork, Between Friends and RVA came together to protest the group's hateful lyrics. They caused a big storm, and they were given a booth at the festival. And this was the moment when people realized that these things need to be talked about in the non-profit world.
Then a few years passed, and I came onto the Between Friends team and did a small campaign about Riot Fest in 2014 (#GetConsentAtRiotFest). I reached out to RVA and said that I wanted to do this a lot bigger in 2016. I got put in touch with Kat Stuehrk and we started working collaboratively on a campaign that included a Huffington Post article, booths at Pitchfork and Riot Fest, and a panel on safety, sexism, and harassment in the music industry that included Corin Tucker (of Sleater Kinney), Britt Julious, Jes Skolnik, and Monica Trinidad.