I have lived here my entire life and have read the Reader since I was a tweeny goth looking for all-ages shows. Soon enough I started caring about more of Chicago’s art, politics, underground scenes, important passersby, and desperate missed connections; the Reader has always been an invaluable resource. However, being a human being of limited time and budget, I could never get myself to all the events I wanted, even the free stuff. Antisocial was the first column that gave me the drunken lowdown, and it wasn’t coming from a reporter–Liz was a friend, participant, and maybe nemesis to many folks involved in events that you might only get a glimpse of in a formal interview or review.
The hate mail I’ve read has bashed and named-called Liz for being so many things that she is and isn’t: a simple party girl, a souless rich kid, most recently and worst–a whore. What they wouldn’t see was that she always called her own bullshit, made some very personal and insightful statements (her article on abortion), unearthed some special gems (that possibly self-defeating shack-as-sustainable-art hidden on the abandoned train tracks), and at the very least, the girl’s dry wit rivals Sarah Silverman for feline frost of the razor-sharp variety. All the haters writing in don’t go to these shows and get drunk and dirty; they attend openings and marvel at their own outsiderness. They read the Reader to know about what goes on, but god forbid they get down to a shitty neighborhood to witness the birth of a movement before you can read about it in the New Yorker.
Liz and [photographer] Andrea Bauer made an effective team, and the people that are happy about its absence will probably just stay home tonight, tomorrow, and this weekend. That, I guess, is not a big loss.
Erik Roldan
Rogers Park