Traditionally the music of the Colombian peasantry with a distinctive Afro-Caribbean beat, cumbia has begun to incorporate other music genres, from reggaeton to house as it modernizes. As cumbia evolves, so does its fan base: no longer only a favorite of Latinos and Latin-music enthusiasts, cumbia is drawing in young Chicagoans looking for something to dance to. One of the genre’s virtues is its ability to retain and expand its appeal, incorporating the sounds of the people and places it comes into contact with.

A style less renowned than salsa or bachata—at least in Chicago—cumbia is rarely played in these parts. To make up for this shortage of that signature shuffle, the People’s DJs Collective holds monthly cumbia nights where the lively and danceable music is given its due. When they first started playing, they showcased Maracuyeah, an all-female DJ group from Washington, DC. Maracuyeah’s name is a play on the Spanish word for passion fruit, maracuyá, and denotes how they, like the People’s DJs Collective, are interested in injecting Latin music with the sounds of hip-hop and dubstep.

Earlier in the night, familiar salsa and meringue beats reverberated: a more folksy style of cumbia issued from the turntables, with fewer of the touches that give cumbia its contemporary, poppy flavor. Later in the night NuCumbia came on, a subgenre that infuses elements of hip-hop and house. The DJs played some tried and true remixes, like Juanes’s “La Camisa Negra,” and some pleasant surprises, like a mashup of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

The People’s DJ Collective got their start playing fundraisers for non-profits. Their promise to serve the community through the fusion music they play remains evident today in their decision to hold cumbia night at Zhou B. While the swank art gallery is not exactly of the masses as cumbia professes to be, Itzi-Nallah says that Zhou B’s location in Bridgeport helps to attract a local crowd—one of the Collective’s primary objectives. “Many times the Latin community has to go north or to expensive places to hear nice music, or just a generic Latin night. A lot of our people don’t want to go to Wicker Park.”

The dancers on the floor included Latinos living on the South Side and young adults with a taste for cumbia’s syncretic sound. There were a few members of the crowd engaging in the kind of sexy shimmying that Shakira removed her bottom rib to do, but most of the attendees seemed relaxed and insouciant, practitioners of a more homegrown groove. Another DJ summed it up nicely later that night: “It’s a traditional kind of music, but anyone can dance to it.”

Jamie Keiles

Three types of people turned out last Sunday for the Chicago Boat, Sports & RV Show: boat people, family people, and conventioneers.

The boat people flocked to McCormick Place for the boats. They bought boats (last year’s floor models), sold boats (“Rock-bottom boat show prices!”), and complained about things that were not boats (“Starbucks coffee is frou-frou!”). Atop the convention center’s lake-blue carpets landed boats formed a maze. In the alleys between the vessels, boat people talked shop, comparing specs on the various yachts, pontoon boats, and cabin cruisers on display.

The family people were not there for the boats. Children ran rampant and unsupervised across the convention floor, fingerprinting waxed fiberglass, kicking RV tires, and fishing for trout in the Huck Finn Trout Pond—basically a glorified baby pool with fish in it. For these kids’ parents, the boat show was merely this weekend’s alternative to a babysitter or a trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s.  From the sidelines of the show, the parents sipped sodas and looked relieved that the convention center’s attractions provided a momentary respite from the trials of parenting.

The conventioneers working the booths looked exhausted. For some, Chicago was nothing more than the fourth of many stops on the national boat show tour. Vendors arrived on Thursday equipped with bags of free giveaways, but by Sunday were running low on both energy and stock. They distributed the remaining promotional materials with an air of lethargy. Frequently, these giveaways had only tenuous links to boating. A kiosk advertising boat slips in Michigan offered free ChapStick. The Shedd Aquarium representative distributed chamois. Visitors enthusiastically hoarded these giveaways in promotional tote bags provided by Progressive, the show’s premier sponsor.

Cabela’s, an outdoor sporting outfitter, laid out one of the show’s more impressive spreads. At their booth, attendees fondled portable chairs, salivated over outdoor cookware, and camped momentarily in the display tents underneath the corrugated metal sky of the convention center. Touching the products was permitted. Though if it were not, it is doubtful that guests would’ve kept their hands to themselves.

One attendee, an Illinois resident who had just purchased a lake house in Indiana, attended the boat show in hopes of learning more about pontoon boats, a purchase he hopes to make in the future. Like many others, however, he seemed skeptical of the show’s capacity to turn a profit.  “I had a great time,” he explained.  “But I’m not really sure what kind of person actually buys a boat at these things.”

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Kit Wise, Arcadia, 2011, video still, assisted by Darin Bendall

For an Englishman living in Australia, artist Kit Wise has a lot to say about ecology and sprawl in America. In his new piece “Arcadia,” which is on display at the Hyde Park Art Center through April 8, he uses dynamic high-definition digital collages of aerial photos to explore the relationship between ecology and urban forms.

Translucent photos of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 Mississippi River floods are overlaid to form a surreal landscape. Dozens of photos are projected across the screens simultaneously. They drift and merge. The superimposition is disorienting and unsettling, as discrete sets of images overlap along the length of the projection screens. Displaced houses float along wind-slapped highways. Down a few screens, cows and cars peer through images of damaged forests. Vast bodies of water suddenly become ravaged subdivisions. The transitory and transitional nature of the projections produces an otherwordly effect that highlights the limits of human control.

The exhibition’s title, “Arcadia,” is an intentional misnomer. The term, which conjures visions of idyllic pastoral life, makes an ironic statement when used as a descriptor for a piece that foremost showcases images of destruction. Wise’s collage harkens back to a work by French classical painter Nicolas Poussin. Poussin’s piece “Et in Arcadia” depicts four shepherds amid tranquil wildlife peering into a tomb. The title, which means “even in Arcadia,” is meant as a reminder that even in paradise, death and destruction are imminent. Wise’s “Arcadia” reflects and reiterates this theme. As skyscrapers and subdivisions merge with inundated streets and ravaged forests, Wise reminds us that at any time nature can break through the veil of civilized order. For Wise, like Poussin, destruction is a constituent part of utopia.

Continuing his tradition of producing site-specific pieces, Wise’s digital collage was created especially for HPAC’s Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery.  Located on HPAC’s second floor, the Goldwasser stretches, like a bridge, above the larger gallery below. On one side, viewers have an aerial view of the artwork and museumgoers on the first floor; floor-to-window ceilings flank the other side. “Arcadia” is an evening-only exhibition. At 3pm, as the sun begins to set, these massive windows of the Goldwasser Gallery are covered, and the shades become projection screens for Wise’s piece.

Viewing “Arcadia” in this setting is a curious experience. For one, it is difficult to avoid drawing parallels between the aerial nature of Kit Wise’s piece and the aerial view the catwalk provides of the gallery below.While looking down over the gallery conjures feelings of omniscience and control, looking at “Arcadia” spurs a sense of smallness, confusion, and distance. The piece’s translucent, overlapping bird’s-eye-views offer no real perspective of the places it depicts, and instead of the viewer feels a palpable loss of control, as if being consumed by nature. This effect is undoubtedly enhanced by the viewer’s proximity to the piece. Since the Goldwasser is at most three paces wide, visitors are forced to stand close to the vast screens. From this perspective, it is impossible to view the entire piece at once. Instead, the viewer must turn her head and crane her neck to keep up with the shifting landscapes. Occasionally, visitors to the gallery even come into contact with their own shadow outlined against the light of the projector, a subtle reminder that their own action or inaction, too, is implicated by the destruction of Arcadia.

Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through April 8. Reception February 12, 3pm-5pm. Monday-Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org

Rebecca Stoner

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“Did you bring anything to read?” author Brendan Detzner asked as guests walk into Bad Grammar Theater, which also happens to be his home. Detzner and fellow author Mike Penkas were standing behind a table where their books and T-shirts are displayed for sale. Behind them was an unmade futon with a partially eaten pepperoni pizza nearby, and Macbook Air perched on a desk.

Bad Grammar hosts the only reading series that is part of Second Fridays in Pilsen. But the DIY appeal of Bad Grammar sets it apart from the chic vintage stores and funky, polished galleries that participate in the monthly art crawl. Detzner welcomes strangers into the top floor of his home, encouraging them to add their own stories to the evening’s program. Stories are read every half hour. They usually last 15-20 minutes, and then the audience disperses to chat. People tend to stay for a few stories, and then wander out for snacks or to visit other Second Fridays events. Many return later to hear more.

Bad Grammar does not require its authors to bring in fully polished finished products, so it’s easy for newcomers to walk right in. The work presented is far from amateurish, but the best way to describe the reading group is rough around the edges: they haven’t quite yet mastered the Chicago literary scene, but that doesn’t mean they don’t show promise.

As Penkas introduced the first story, he peered at the audience and asked, “How many of you are new here tonight?” Several of the guests seated in mismatched chairs around him raise their hands. “Shoot,” he said, and joked, “If I’d known, I would have just read some of my old stuff.” Although popular belief indicates that readings tailor the intellectual elite, the atmosphere in Detzner’s home was comfortable and inviting, a stage where storytelling is the focus and elaborate pomp is unnecessary.

Detzner got the idea for the monthly series after meeting talented Chicago authors through reading events at the former Edgewater bookstore Kate the Great’s. When a few of his favorite readings shut down earlier this year, Detzner decided, “It’s my turn to hold the football.”

Since many established readings are held in the Lincoln Park area, Detzner liked the idea of having an authors’ hub south of Roosevelt. He found this angular duplex in Pilsen, in the heart of the Chicago Arts District, and thought, “Hey, maybe some people will want to stop in and hear a story.” The location has a few distinct advantages, he says. “Most events have to persuade people to leave their homes and come across town. All we have to do is entice some of the hundreds of people who’ve already decided to come out to Second Fridays to walk fifteen feet.”

Detzner hopes the event will improve the visibility of local authors. He feels that he and many of the readers at Bad Grammar have been “screwed over by small presses,” who are quick to reject work from fledgling writers and provide little support to help promote and distribute their work. Having written two novels, Detzner says he wouldn’t mind selling some copies through the readings.

But Bad Grammar is about more than selling books. Detzner sees the value in reading before an audience, and believes it can actually improve the quality of the writing. He claims that reading his own work “makes me raise my standards when I’m writing,” and appreciates feedback from “people who don’t have any particular expectations or theory, and just know if they like what they heard or not.” He wants to extend the opportunity for this kind of productive criticism to other writers, in part because he thinks it can “provide a good incentive to not be self-indulgent or boring.”

The subject matter of the stories to follow ranged from zombies to the guilt faced by a drug dealer who believes he killed Kurt Cobain. Many of the pieces were humorous, shading into the realm of the absurd. The first story, for instance, featured a misanthropic nursing home attendant who described a knife fight between two residents as an impromptu production of West Side Story.

That night, the sparse turnout required Detzner to shoulder the responsibility of most of the reading. Penkas contributed one story, and an audience member named Brandon Sichling read his poem called, “Let’s Hear it For Menstruation.” Detzner seemed surprised by the low attendance. “I don’t know what’s up with tonight,” he said, “I’ve had like five readers before.”

Like many of the stories presented at the reading, Bad Grammar is still in development. Detzner hopes to attract more authors and a larger crowd, and to establish a warmer, more inviting atmosphere. Despite the Facebook event’s assertion that this is an event for both established and emerging authors, it seems that Detzner and his friends are still trying to establish their own niche in Chicago’s literary world. It’s a hard scene to break into, but it is, fortunately, willing to embrace authors who lack the benefit of a big name. Detzner admits that many of them are “still trying to make it work.” Bad Grammar’s a good start.

Bad Grammar Theater. 1743 S. Halsted St. Every second Friday of the month, 6-10pm.

A third grader, Paul Jr. was the youngest in a game that marked the start of the indoor season for Chicago Youth Lacrosse, an organization that offers lacrosse programs for children of all ages around the city. Friday night saw the kids in the gleaming Chicago Indoor Sports arena at Pershing and Ashland. Half an hour before the games were set to start, parents with children decked out in large helmets and thick padding started streaming in. Adults swapped stories of Christmas vacations in faraway places, as kids fidgeted with helmets and equipment in anticipation of the opening whistle.

One ten-year-old boy hopped nervously as he waited for his father to arrive with his helmet. “Only two blocks away,” his mother assured him. “He’ll be here soon.” Twenty minutes later, dad ran in, large sports bag in tow. With his team already two goals down, the boy sprinted onto the pitch with excitement and trepidation etched into his face.

“I had no idea this game even existed till three years ago,” Paul said, “but my son enjoys it so much.” He explained that CYL has seen incredible growth over the past couple of years, an indicator that the sport is no longer a sole preserve of the East Coast. He explained the draw for his son: “Playing up with older kids teaches him to be aggressive, to not get pushed over. It’s a great sport and a good thing for him.

Only one girl was out on the field, ably “manning” the goal for the team in sky blue jerseys. On the other side of the field, her brother stood in the opposing goal. Family tensions came to a height at the end, when her brother made a mad dash forward in an attempt to score on his sister. His shot whizzed by her, narrowly missing the net. Already several goals down, he sprinted all the way back to his post as the final buzzer sounded.

Made by toasting a piece of French bread topped with an assortment of mushrooms, green onions, ham, and more, this traditional snack of Polish night owls goes sinfully well with a side of ketchup. Growing up, I have many fond memories of summer nights out with my cousins in Poland. Here in the States, I’ve long craved the zapiekanka that could take me back to those nights in Krakow.

The standard was set (unfairly) high when I walked into Cafe Two07, a late night bar and club with the reputation for serving up some of the best zapiekanki in Chicago. Yet the zapiekanki were just as I’d remembered: crisp, soft, and cheesy. The Polish appetizer menu – including potato pancakes, pierogi, and cabbage rolls – brought back memories of Poland and I soon learned that the nightlife was equally authentic. Located on the 58th block of South Archer in the Polish-Mexican neighborhood of Garfield Ridge, Cafe Two07 is far away from the chic club scene downtown—but only in terms of mileage.

“I’m a nocturnal creature myself,” explains owner and in-house DJ Ralph Pleszko. On most nights Pleszko (stage name Digital Driver), a tall blond vested in Aeropostale, can be found firmly planted in the DJ booth. There, he sifts through his vinyl, spinning German-imported classics such as “99 Luftballons” and “Celebration” as well as the latest in popular house music. Pleszko attributes his passion for music to the opportunities opened up by his move from Poland to Chicago in 1988. Fittingly, he named the place after his inbound flight number, #2007.

Pleszko is invested in giving the South Side youth a place that they can call their own, a place that’s “low key that isn’t in your face.” The tables and sofas are arranged casually in the lounge around the dance floor, and there is a private room in the back.  You can pick your playlist and throw a private party provided you cover the bar tab afterwards. The rest – the friendly staff, the dancing, the little slice of Poland’s nightlife – is all free.

When the music gets going the dance floor gets crowded.  “Some nights are so epic here,” Pleszko says. But you have to know when to go. The most crowded nights at Cafe Two07 are Wednesdays and the second and fourth Fridays of every month, when Plezko brings in DJs from around the country. One of these groups, Soul Kitchen, flies in every other Friday from Vegas to mix for a packed house of fans. During their set, I ran into one frequent Friday-goer, Marcin,: “their music makes me loosen up and free myself from the everyday world.”

Which is exactly what Pleszko wants. “My goal is to give people a universe they can define as their own,” he says. “The freedom to feel human.”

Cafe Two07, 5842 S Archer Ave. (773) 767-5740. Free. cafetwo07.com

About 500 people packed into the Hyde Park Union Church for a period of introspection. As the room settled, Aisha Truss-Miller, Aspire’s youth program coordinator, raised her voice to the audience and declared, “Burn away the challenges presented to us this past year!”

The room soon filled with excited chatter as the large crowd related anxieties and worries of the past year to their neighbors before scribbling them down on pieces of blank paper. Slowly, the room adjourned to the modest fire burning outside in a small steel bucket.

Participants sealed the  tightly folded white squares with a kiss and then threw them into the flames, sometimes with a violent vigor and often with a loud cry of “Adios!” or “Bye bye!” With this, the accumulated pains of person after person disappeared into a cloud of ash and smoke carried away by the westward wind. With big worries sent away, their smiles widened.

Participants then proceeded to slip a second piece of paper, detailing their aspirations for 2012, into an envelope. These were hopes of a fresh start, and the smiles on the faces of the participants suggested a sincere belief in the promise that the new year held for each of them.

After disposing of their papers, a group of three shared cigarettes. The three were complete strangers—the first was from the suburbs, the others from just blocks away. Yet, for the time being, they were bound together in their hopes for the year ahead.

One of the most impressive aspects of “Emergency!” was the way Beaty merged different styles of performance. Characters segued between thoughtful soliloquy, honeyed song, and slam poetry with a speed that could have been distracting, but in this case served only to further illustrate characters’ emotional states. Desperation was delivered in a low, moaning baritone. Anger streamed furiously in the rhythmic beat of spoken word poetry. Some segments were so apparently relatable that it wasn’t uncommon throughout the performance to hear an occasional whoop of affirmation issue from the back rows. Though “Emergency!’s” plot and characters are fantastic, its takeaways are real. Miraculously, all 40 characters’ viewpoints come together in the end to craft a message that spurs viewers to reconsider how they think about their history. “We can overcome,” he said, “if we change the way we see, see our past, see our possibility.”

Reenactments tend to straddle the line between now and then. The guests are here for a night straight out of the ’50s, but cell phones, the city smoking ban, and modern beer signs allude more to the present than the past. The free cigarettes were made of candy and the drinks, though plentiful, were definitely offered at 2011 prices, but the Compass Players succeeded in narrating the group’s early history, bringing its playful spirit back to 55th and Woodlawn.

Paul Durica, the founder of Pocket Guide to Hell, the traveling tour group, played the part of the knowledgeable bartender—“Fred Wrencovics”—and supplemented the sketches with the history behind them. He explained that the Players’ original performance took place on July 5, 1955 at the nearby Compass Bar, which was demolished in 1960 and is now the site of the Hyde Park firehouse. The idea for the Players came from David Shepherd (here played by Chris Rathjen), an Ivy League-educated actor and director who arrived in Chicago in the early ’50s. He initially envisioned a socialist People’s Theater built around commedia dell’arte-style improvised sketches. Shepherd met director Paul Sills (played by Court Theater’s resident dramaturg Drew Dir) while working in the Chicago theater scene. Sills came from a theatrical family—his mother, drama teacher Viola Spolin, developed several improvisational games at Chicago settlement houses in the early ’30s. Together, Shepherd and Sills founded the Compass Players in the back room of the Compass Bar. The Compass Players begat the Second City, which in turn begat a half-century of talented comedic actors from Bill Murray to Stephen Colbert.

Durica went on to introduce the characters that made up the original Players: students, dropouts, alums, hangers-on, and aspiring actors. Their first performance featured a young, rebellious Elaine May (Laura Mackenzie). Sills claimed they “were all in love with her.” Some notables from the early days included “MASH” actor Roger Bowen, Andy Duncan—who appeared in the 1977 minor league hockey comedy “Slap Shot”—and the late Severn Darden, who may be best known today for his role as the nefarious Kolp in the fourth and fifth “Planet of the Apes” sequels (“Proving that we can’t all go on to direct ‘The Graduate,’” someone deadpanned onstage).

The night continued with sketches, mostly developed by Paul Sills from improv games first introduced to him by his mother. As Fred pointed out, the performance on Monday could not consist of  word-for-word reenactments—no transcripts of the first performance even exist. One standout sketch was the “Living Newspaper,” drawn from the actual headlines on July 5, 1955. At one point in the performance, former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov confronted each other over the phone—or, more accurately, Dulles tried to confront Molotov, who remained sanguine: “Is beautiful day here, Dulles. We are holding Russian government outside today!” In a later scene, Sills interrupted an improv exercise to give his actors pointed criticisms. This succeeded both as history and as comedy, and highlighted Dir’s own acting skills.

Not every sketch got laughs; then again, not all of the Players’ sketches were meant to be amusing. As Sills put it, the famous “Game of Hurt” was “not very funny—at least not at first.” And though it began as comedy, another scene ended on an unexpectedly dramatic note. At this stage in the history of improvisational theater, the form was not as closely bound to comedy as it is today.

The final third of the show was improvised on the basis of audience suggestions (overheard: “Adlai Stevenson!”). At times the material was straightforwardly funny, playing off of common comedic tropes. At other times, the scenes were difficult to understand, either because of their references to unfamiliar elements of ’50s culture or simply because the jokes simply fell flat. Of course, this also may have been true to the original performances. Sills claimed that, after an especially poor show, the Players would run down 55th Street to Promontory Point and jump into the lake.

An icy dip wasn’t necessary for the Players of 2011, as the show succeeded on its own terms. The audience was appreciative, though perhaps not as hard-drinking as their ’50s counterparts. The performers energetically engaged in the history they reenacted. The candy cigarettes, though impossible to smoke, were still fun to chew on, crush underfoot, or dangle between one’s fingers. That seemed just about right.

This exchange was among the milder critiques to emerge from the free, communal viewing of “Three Films about the Middle East,” sponsored by the Southside Hub of Production last Saturday. The attendees had trudged through the bleak, dank November evening to pile into a combination ornate sitting room and modern art gallery.

The full house for the screening was, for the most part, a middle-aged, straight-laced crew. Waiting for the films to begin, one couple chatted seriously about the Republican presidential race while another gentleman, immaculately dressed, perpetually stroked his goatee while perusing the Wall Street Journal.

Calling everyone together, the organization’s film director reminded the audience that the event was more topical than they had planned. The news of the day was the renewed brutality in Tahrir Square, where an army that had helped end one dictator’s crimes had begun to do some beating of its own.

It was, therefore, more than slightly surreal to travel with documentary-maker Pamela Nice back to 2003 when the news roiling Egypt was the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The short documentaries are the fruit of Nice’ s several sojourns to the Middle East.

They record the reactions of Egyptians to an American invasion and the aspirations of several Moroccan teenagers. Then, in a cringe-inducing coda, Nice turns the camera back on the United States.

The films have their faults. Nice gives some nice shots of inchoate Cairo avenues, but often confines her interviews to Egyptian academics and journalists with flawless and erudite English. Her second film is an improvement and altogether rougher on the heartstrings. In a stunning contrast, she recounts the desperation of an unemployed youth detained for illegally immigrating to Spain and an uplifting account of optimistic students craving PhDs from the West.

The footage she produces—young people talking about Islam as a religion of peace—is shown in opposition to the words of a suit we see later in a Minnesotan coffee shop, who calls the entire region “backward and inhumane.”

Americans, in these films, are the ones that consistently come off as backward.

As java-seeking customers promptly surrender when asked to identify basic Middle Eastern countries on a map, you flinch. When an Egyptian man recounts the number of times he’s been asked by Americans if he lives in a pyramid, you want to weep.

At the evening’s close, a petition was passed around protesting the $1.3 billion in munitions we’re still providing to the military government in Egypt. Afterwards, Beshara treated viewers to an original ode he made to the crisis, built around the refrain, “The Situation is Fucked Up!” Confronted with this profane techno ditty, the goateed gentleman stared pointedly into the floorboards. It was clear, however, that no one disagreed.