Antarctica has hit a record high temperature. Sixty thousand known cases of the new coronavirus are causing global panic. Australia is still on fire. And the U.S. is gearing up for elections. The Times Are Racing, the title of the Joffrey Ballet’s winter mixed repertory program, captures a sense of the urgency we surely all feel. Yet few guiding principles—not even escapism—bring order to the presentation. The oldest pieces, Mono Lisa (2003) and The Sofa (1995) by Itzik Galili of Israel, account for two of the three Joffrey premieres—the third being the 2017 ballet by New York City Ballet resident choreographer Justin Peck that closes and titles this show....

Launching a business during late 2020 would seem unrealistic to most, but Lalamove did just that—they launched in Chicago in October to help small businesses compete with large national retailers. Lalamove is an app-based delivery service that connects small businesses with local delivery drivers within seconds. The company merges the rideshare model concept with courier services that can deliver anything from flowers to furniture and everything in between, and provides businesses with a way to get deliveries to their consumers for four to eight times less than traditional shipping companies or other delivery apps....

For all his warts, Governor Bruce Rauner deserves credit for putting the brakes on the Illiana Tollway, a pet project of his predecessor Pat Quinn. That $1.3 billion highway boondoggle, proposed for a corridor roughly ten miles south of the metro region, would have been funded by a public-private partnership (P3) that would have put Illinois taxpayers on the hook for some $500 million in borrowing. The Stevenson project would cover the 25-mile stretch between the Veterans Memorial Tollway (I-355) and the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90/94)....

For its new album, There’s a Riot Going On (Matador), Yo La Tengo borrowed the title of Sly & the Family Stone’s turbulent 1971 classic, but despite what the name might suggest, the music’s surface couldn’t be more placid. In fact, it’s one of the trio’s most gorgeously restrained albums. Self-recorded on a home computer, and mixed by former Chicagoan John McEntire, the album has an attractively modest sound; aqueous organ drones, e-bowed electric guitar tones, gentle electronic and live percussion, and strummed acoustic guitars all cradle the tender, whispered vocal harmonies of Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan....

Nearly every day, performers fill the Red Line’s station at Lake with smooth electric guitar riffs, or soulful a cappella, or improvised raps, or—as was the case on the afternoon of May 15—a voice nearly identical to Sam Smith’s. “This is really unfortunate,” he said, looking the employee in the eye. He then pulled up the text of the CTA’s ordinance governing performances on his phone, and tried to calmly argue to the officers that as a permitted performer, he was indeed allowed to sing at this location....

Most people, when they see a painting for the first time, spend a few seconds appreciating the artwork and move on. When Arden Reed, a professor of English at Pomona College, saw Édouard Manet’s Young Lady in 1866 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan for the first time, in the year 2000, he ended up thinking about it for eight years. Slow Art explores how engaging with art slowly can shift the viewer’s experience in myriad ways....

If you’re looking for a recommendation for the best pizza in Wrigleyville, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook is not for you. Editor Martha Bayne says the book’s title is “a total bait and switch”—inside, readers will find nostalgic personal essays and interviews with community organizers rather than lists of restaurants and attractions. With a second wave of outreach focused on the south and west sides, Bayne was able to capture some less often heard narratives....

At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time. The new Jackie Lynn album, Jaqueline (out now on Drag City) Songs from @musicalepiphanies Instagram series What we might title our future memoir about life under quarantine

“Looking for someone?” When he drew Moulin Jimmy’s, as the original artwork is fondly known to its few surviving subjects, Arturo (later Arthur) Teodoro Castillo was a 24-year-old contradiction—not a University of Chicago student, but part of the institution’s intellectual orbit; a keen observer of Hyde Park’s social intricacies, but not much of a talker himself; a caricaturist who regaled his friends with inked likenesses, but who considered himself primarily a writer....

Lou Reed was 38 years old when he released the 1980 LP Growing Up in Public. Though Eli Winter is just 23, he can already claim to have done just that. Live at the Louder House, the earliest release on his Bandcamp page, sounds like it was made by a kid who knew his way around a guitar but was still figuring out which approaches worked for him. Which makes sense, since he recorded it in May 2017, near the end of his freshman year at the University of Chicago....

As the Chicago Police Department plans to flood the city with nearly 1,000 more cops, University of Chicago sociologist Forrest Stuart’s first book couldn’t be more timely. Down, Out, and Under Arrest is a study of life in Los Angeles’s Skid Row community relevant to every city where segregated, poor African-American communities and aggressive policing policies intersect. The advent of “broken windows” policing and welfare reform in the 1990s, however, revived 19th-century law enforcement and social service practices, as the LAPD and the “megashelters” teamed up to carry out what Stuart calls “therapeutic policing,” a strategy that relies on heavy surveillance and constant intervention on the part of the cops, with basic services like food and shelter contingent on formal participation in various rehabilitation programs like job training and addiction counseling....

Human Flow, in which Chinese artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei documents ongoing refugee crises around the world, is designed to be experienced on a big screen. Ai uses staggering landscape shots and dynamic low-angle compositions to frame his subjects against great expanses of sky, and when he shoots people in close-up, he excludes almost anything that might distract from their faces or bodies, rendering them monumental. The effect of this large-scale imagery is twofold: It conveys the immense number of human beings that have been displaced in the 2010s—as many, if not more, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, than the number of people displaced by World War II....

Guy Nicol Marjorie Woodruff’s Ghost Trees My favorite stops on any visit to the state offices at the Thompson Center are the Chicago Gallery of the Illinois State Museum and the Illinois Artisans shop. In preparation for this shutdown, the current exhibit at the gallery has been abruptly canceled and the gallery door locked, effective yesterday. (It’ll reopen from noon to 1:30 PM on Wednesday, June 24, for a previously scheduled discussion with artists Nora Lloyd and Christine Redcloud, as well artist and historian Frances L....

If you are tired of swiping fatigue, profiles full of duck face selfies, snapchat filters, and people having a two-day conversation with you – but never actually meeting up with you for a date – then The Inner Circle has the solution. And the formula is — common sense and human intuition mixed with respect for quality over quantity. Does anyone really have the time to do it any other way?...

Last week, Music Ally published an interview with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek where he suggested that artists upset with paltry streaming royalties should produce more music. “Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape,” Ek said. “Where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” I can’t speak to why people decide to pursue careers in music, but I’m pretty sure it’s not so they can have a boss who devises a business model so broken that the only way they can hope to survive is by doubling or tripling the amount of work they release....

At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time. Chicken sausage orzo pilaf Crispy parm frico burgers Sweet and spicy pork chops v

Each glass-topped wooden box hanging along the corridors of the Silverado home seals the memory of a resident. Eighty-eight-year-old Frank’s* box holds a model of the first plane he flew during the Korean war and a sticker from his alma mater, the Boston University School of Law. This three-story private facility, which costs a resident $9,000 a month, is decorated as in old times: posters of the New Yorker from the 30s and 40s, Elvis Presley, and the film High Society hang in the corridors....

It’s Thanksgiving and, quite naturally, my thoughts have turned to Harold Washington. Not too many of his type are running for mayor, much less getting elected. The last thing anyone in Chicago’s power elite wants is Black people running around talking like Bernie Sanders. Hell, the powers that be have enough trouble putting up with the white Bernie Sanders. But I don’t want to get too melancholy. There’s another, Trump-related reason I’ve been thinking of Washington these days....

Jane M. Saks knows a lot of people. As a child, she knew Studs Terkel, who was a friend of her father’s. Now, as an adult, she’s the director of Project&, an arts organization that collaborates with artists to create new work with social impact. Two years ago, she was at a meeting to discuss income inequality, and she started thinking about Terkel’s great oral history Working, compiled almost exactly 40 years before....

This morning Pitchfork announced the lineup for its 14th annual music festival, and the three daily headliners are Swedish pop star Robyn, LA pop-rock act Haim, and legendary Cincinnati soul combo the Isley Brothers. They Isleys’ set is being billed as a 60th-anniversary celebration, though 2019 is specifically the 60th anniversary of their 1959 debut album, Shout!—the band had already been gigging for about five years at that point. Their booking is the sort of pleasant surprise that helps Pitchfork stand out in a crowded festival ecosystem....