In a rare show of respect toward a member of the Chicago Police Department’s top brass, Second City Cop—the prolific, anonymous blog run by members of the department, which often features vicious commentary about both police leadership and citizens involved in crimes—points out that 18th District Commander Paul Bauer “held a rare position in regard to this website . . . we can’t think of a single significant instance where he was the target of someone’s ire....

ARTIST: Josh Davis SHOWS: Guided by Voices at the Empty Bottle on Sat 12/30 and Sun 12/31 MORE INFO: deadmeatdesign.com

In the fall of 1971, Faith Wilding was a young MFA student participating in the California Institute of the Arts’ first iteration of its Feminist Art Program. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who codirected the unit, hoped to galvanize their students by encouraging them to tackle a major project while working through their own issues as women. Within months the students created Womanhouse, a now-legendary installation that took up an entire mansion in Hollywood....

Director Guy Maddin has been making Canadian cinema excitingly weird for several decades now. His latest feature, The Green Fog, screens a few more times this week at Gene Siskel Film Center, and his 1990 feature Archangel screens next Monday as part of the Doc Films series “Beyond Hollywood North: Contemporary Canadian Voices and Visions.” Following are five more films spanning Maddin’s career; also be sure to check out Jonathan Rosenbaum’s long review of Maddin’s great 2000 short The Heart of the World....

The Tribune reports that “more than 40 percent of Tribune Publishing shareholders withheld support” at last Thursday’s shareholders meeting for each of the company’s slate of eight directors. “That’s a big number, 40 percent,” the director of the University of Delaware’s center for corporate governance told the Tribune.” But Gannett—which has bid $15 a share in a bid to take over the company—promptly came up with a bigger number. It alerted me by e-mail that more than 50 percent of the independent shares—that is, those not held by the company’s powers that be—withheld support for five of the eight directors....

“There wasn’t a single moment when the chummy, jovial craft beer industry became a battlefield of ‘us versus them,’” Josh Noel writes in Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business (Chicago Review Press). “It happened slowly. And then, seemingly, all at once.” But John Hall and his son Greg, who became head brewer in 1991 after the first one quit, did take risks....

Never doubt the emotional layers possible from an expertly crafted, exquisitely manipulated puppet. In the right hands, cloth and carved wood can undergo an alchemy that renders them sentient. Or at least, lulls you into the belief that they are so. That’s what happens in Hansol Jung’s intriguing 90-minute drama, directed by Jess McLeod. At the heart of Wolf Play is Wolf himself (Dan Lin), an eight-year-old Korean adoptee whose insistence that he is lupine allows him to survive, first in a family that decides to sell him on Yahoo, and next with Robin (Jennifer Glasse), the lesbian who “buys” him without telling her child-averse partner, Ash (Isa Arciniegas)....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Visual artist and B-boy Miles Jackson was leaving work sporting an updated version of the normcore trend: minimal pieces—but worn with zero irony and somehow befitting the Moe Howard-ish bowl haircut. Inspired by 1970s breakdancers and workwear uniforms, Jackson’s style is practical yet intentional; he tailored his wool military pants for a skinnier fit and fastened the oversize waist with a cord for a deconstructed edge....

Bars and restaurants are slowly opening up, now that City of Chicago COVID-19 guidelines have loosened a bit and indoor dining is possible for establishments with a food license. The limit is still 50 percent capacity, and food must be available, but the shift to Phase IV has meant that a few of our favorite tippling houses are waving hello again. Fri 3/12, 8 PM: Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois-Chicago hosts Funk Lessons: a Tribute, a homage to artist Adrian Piper’s 1983 performance piece Funk Lessons presented by artist Felicia Holman with DJ Cqqchifruit....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, December 29, 2016. Rahm: All Chicago cops will be wearing body cameras by the end of 2017 CPD is fast-tracking its body-camera program, and all cops will be wearing them by the end of next year. The program launched in January 2015; now all officers will have them a year ahead of schedule. “Body cameras, while not a panacea, are a win-win for officers and the public,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement Wednesday....

“The reality is women actually run the world,” Ida Nelson told me over the phone last week, which got me laughing and clapping at the same time. Women know this statement as fact, but we still have to prove ourselves and our worth within mostly white, male-dominated industries. Nelson is using the hustle from the pandemic to change that and showcase her strength in entrepreneurship within the cannabis industry, which has grown tremendously in Illinois since the state legalized recreational marijuana in 2020....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Walkoe, Ball, Allison, and drummer Ron Januchowski (aka Ron Lee) could all sing, and they got inspired to do something about it when they saw proto-supergroup the Exceptions play at Club Laurel in Chicago, near Foster and Broadway....

If today’s woman were lost in space, would she care more about having enough food to survive or having enough laptop battery to finish Parks and Recreation on Netflix? How should you deal with a sexual attraction to Bigfoot? And why do guys dressed as Waldo from Where’s Waldo? think it’s OK to be a total creep to women at Halloween parties? The sketch show I Think, Therefore I’m Sorry searches for the answers to these pressing questions....

I can’t say I mind the recent shift of young country singer-songwriters embracing the 70s as creative inspiration—the tar-black darkness of Jamie Johnson or the cosmic vibes of Sturgill Simpson are both good examples. There’s something about the music these folks are making that doesn’t feel retro; the way their acoustic guitars, pedal steels, and rhythms support their observation-rich storytelling feels timeless. Earlier this summer Tyler Childers entered the fray with his impressive Simpson-produced debut album, Purgatory (Hickmen Holler/Thirty Tigers)....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, September 8, 2016. Cook County public defender slams “war on guns” Cook County public defender Amy P. Campanelli disapproves of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Department superintendent Eddie Johnson’s push for tougher gun laws and longer prison sentences for illegal gun possession. “Increasing minimum sentences will not stop violence; it will merely incarcerate one generation while another generation steps up and continues the violence,” she wrote in a Tribune op-ed....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Mueller, as it happened, had taken up shooting because she’d been raped. The standard advice at the time—don’t walk alone at night, stay in well-lit areas, run from your attacker or, if he has a gun, try to reason with him—had turned out to be completely useless....

It’s a brave new world during these days of quarantine, and for the technology-challenged among us, it can be daunting to keep up. If you’re willing to learn a few basics, there’s a world of free and low-cost workshops on the cyberweb that can help you exercise your brain and give you new skills. Zoom is just one of the many video conferencing platforms that are free to use (whither WebEx?...

Every winter it comes: the tunes, the tinsel, the toys—and the tale of Clara, a young girl traveling to a kingdom of sweets with a magical Nutcracker prince. Chicago’s oldest production of The Nutcracker, choreographed by Chicago ballet icon Ruth Page in 1965, has been a homegrown holiday tradition for decades. Initially choreographed for the 90-foot proscenium of the Arie Crown Theater at McCormick Place, Page’s Nutcracker, produced by the Chicago Tribune Charities, played to over 3 million people over 32 years, annually bringing together 70 dancers, 50 musicians, and guest luminaries from companies including the Royal Danish Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, National Ballet of Canada, English National Ballet, and Munich Bayerische Staatsoper to light up the stage in lead roles....

Last Monday Second City co-owner Len Stuart died in hospice care surrounded by his family and friends, among them Second City CEO and executive producer Andrew Alexander. Stuart was 73. Beyond their working relationship, Alexander and Stuart became close friends over the course of their four decades together. “I spent the whole ten days with him when he was in hospice,” Alexander says, “and the things that stuck out was his courage and the way that he made his family feel....

“I love Black women and girls. I love them and I think that we need to center a lot of their stories and amplify and uplift them as much as possible,” says Sydney Chatman. Thanks to an award from the Joyce Foundation, Chatman—a longtime theatermaker, director, teacher, and mentor in Chicago—will be working with Congo Square Theatre on a new community-based project focused on healing from “intracommunal and state-sanctioned” violence. Says Rolle, “In the past year with Congo Square, we’ve gone through a lot of transitions as well....