ARTIST: Scott WilliamsSHOW: the Soul Summit DJs with Rich Medina, Sloppy White, Dave Mata, and Duke Grip at Double Door on Sat 3/21MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, August 18, 2016. Art Institute student killed by semitruck that veered into bike lane Twenty-year-old Lisa Kuivinen (who identified as non-gender-binary and went by plural pronouns) was riding their bike in the bike lane on Milwaukee Avenue Tuesday morning when they were fatally struck by a semitruck, according to authorities. Kuivinen was the third Chicago cyclist killed this year. [Streetsblog Chicago]

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. The plan for the OPC can be viewed on the Obama Foundation website. It includes the construction of a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” which will rise above all neighboring structures, including the Museum of Science and Industry. As Jamie Kalven, award-winning journalist and plaintiff in the POP lawsuit, expressed in a recent Tribune editorial, the privatization of public parkland sets a dangerous precedent....

Last June, Gossip Wolf celebrated when whacked-out local trash-blues necromancers Tijuana Hercules dropped a killer seven-song EP, Evening Dressings, on Skin Graft Records. As it turns out, that EP was just an appetizer—a sort of pandemic stopgap—and now the main course is here! According to Skin Graft boss Mark Fischer, in spring 2020 the band had already finished a new full-length album, recorded over many years and involving 20 musicians—among them the core band of guitarist and front man John Vernon Forbes, drummer Joe Patt, saxophonist Doug Abram, bassist Arman Mabry, organist Tony Mendoza, and “junk” player Mike Young....

CNN had just called the Illinois primary for Donald Trump, but I might have been the only one inside Trump Tower who noticed. When I first arrived at 7 PM, the solitary television over the bar was tuned to ESPN. But “Jeff”—a hardcore Trump supporter from Rockford—kept hounding the bartender, “Ellie,” to change the channel to CNN for election results. She eventually relented and switched the programming from a sporting contest to a political one—though she left the sound muted, forcing us to endure the tepid sounds of corporate lounge music instead of Wolf Blitzer’s tenor....

Detroit-based duo Wolf Eyes have been one of the country’s most important experimental-music acts for more than 20 years, but they’ve also developed a mainstream following due to their presence in the world of viral meme Instagram accounts—it’s nearly impossible to talk about the band without bringing it up. For the past few years, longtime Wolf Eyes member John Olson has been operating the Instagram account inzane_johnny, and he’s racked up more than 100,000 followers by posting dozens of ridiculous memes a day, including takes on the standard Spongebob and Drake templates as well as relatively heady content focused on trolling Steely Dan, Bard College, and experimental guitarist Bill Nace....

Chicago is in the midst of a surge in high-ticket tasting menus in restaurants operated by husband-and-wife teams. Chef Noah Sandoval and wife Cara Sandoval opened Oriole earlier this summer. Elske, from Blackbird vets David and Anna Posey, is on its way. And from chef John Shields and pastry chef Karen Urie Shields there’s Smyth. The Shieldses met while working at Charlie Trotter’s. She came from Tru. He moved on to Alinea....

When Bernie Sanders brought his political revolution pep fest to Illinois last week, he took it to those esteemed bastions of higher education, the University of Chicago (his own alma mater) and Chicago State University. Well, that, and the fact that Kanye West was once a student there. On January 13, as a bill to restore MAP grants, a form of low-income student funding, was filed in the state senate, the governor’s office released a memo to legislators arguing that public universities need to make major financial reforms before the state gives them any more money....

ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: DJ Spinna and the Soul Summit DJs at Double Door on Sat 2/20 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

Broken Nose Theatre presents the midwest premiere of Stephen Spotswood’s drama about a young woman who confronts her demons by climbing into the steel cage of an MMA ring. The metaphor of the hero literally punching out her problems couldn’t be more, er, on the nose, but in the hands of this capable cast and with just enough real-life detail, this production manages to transcend cliche and end up with an affecting, often-powerful story of perseverance....

Staged in various rooms throughout Oak Park’s Cheney Mansion, David Rice’s clever and moving promenade-style show (directed by Skyler Schrempp), interweaves long passages from Edgar Allan Poe’s better-known writings (“The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”) with original biographical material to create a portrait of a desperate, half-mad writer inspired by and deeply obsessed with his child bride and her tragic early death. (Virginia Clemm was only 13 when she married Poe, and only 24 when she died of TB....

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, now being produced by Lyric Opera through January 27, is one of the most popular operas in the classical repertoire. Lyric has staged it five times in its 60-plus-year history, roughly once a decade; both the San Francisco Opera and the Met are also putting on runs this season; and “Nessun Dorma,” Calaf’s sung promise to win over the princess, is arguably the most famous tenor aria in opera (and the stuff of many a Pavarotti compilation)....

Taking a bite, Lomanto commented, “That’s some of the best dick I’ve ever had. What about you?” he asked, turning to Alfonsi. “Oh yeah,” Alfonsi agreed. As for whether he’d put the burger on the Kuma’s menu, Lomanto shrugged. “Why not? Fuck it.”

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Alderman Michele Smith Of all the candidates in this city this election season—both mayoral and aldermanic—you’d be hard-pressed to find a pair who obviously hate each other more than Michele Smith and Caroline Vickrey, who are vying to become alderman of the 43rd Ward. Smith is the incumbent, Vickrey is the challenger, and their enmity has had plenty of time to grow in the past three months because they’ve had to take part in nine separate debates, five in advance of the general election, four more before the runoff....

Ross Compton’s world premiere one-act dramedy ends as a wholly different play than the one it starts as, and that’s for the better. What begins as a perfunctory mash-up of staple theater school writing exercises—The Park Bench Play, The Existential Limbo Play, The Male Playwright’s The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past Personal Spec-Fic—evolves into a pretty sophisticated multisubject character study, even if it doesn’t totally stick the landing. A postgrad (David Hartley) on a mostly empty suburban Metra train runs into a friend—a Mountain Dew Code Red-chugging townie schlub (Ian Gonzalez-Muentener) whose enthusiasm to reconnect gets a cool reception....

The annual Chicago International Movies & Music Festival has moved from April to November for its ninth iteration—though this week’s big event shares a calendar year with an abbreviated April program called “CIMMFest Spring Fling Thing.” CIMMFest proper opens Thursday, November 9, and closes Sunday, November 12, and in those four days will screen almost three dozen feature films (plus a generous selection of music videos and shorts), including a wide-ranging retrospective devoted to director Penelope Spheeris....

Stormy Daniels’s upcoming shows at the Admiral Theatre will feature shout-outs to our very own Mayor Rahm. Trump tried to shut up Stormy—or, at least his lawyer, Michael Cohen, tried to shut her up—by paying her $130,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement. “I expect the line to go around the block,” says Cecola. “That Palin one was huge,” says Cecola. “We had 50, maybe 60, media people, including some from as far away as Paris....

The Old Town School of Folk Music turns 60 years old on December 1. That’s 60 years of music classes and sing-alongs—and most important, thousands and thousands of characters who’ve passed through its various doors, at its original location on North Avenue and its current spaces on Lincoln and on Armitage. The school has also amassed an impressive collection of books and recordings in its basement Resource Center. The podcast launched last week, and new episodes will appear every Thursday on iTunes and Soundcloud....

Looking for something to do this week? Agenda‘s got you covered. Taste and vote on nearly two dozen dishes by some of Chicago’s top chefs at Friday’s Key Ingredient Cook-Off. Participating restaurants include Acanto, White Oak Tavern & Inn, and Hoosier Mama Pie Company, while Liquor Lab’s Mark Darress acts as cocktail craftsman.

A magnificent mausoleum, commissioned by Shah Jahan as a monument for his most loved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, designed by the architect Ustad Isa, formed by the hands of 20,000 men, the Taj Mahal was built behind an encircling wall for sixteen years, intended to be unveiled at day’s first light, revealing a pure and complete glory that could be experienced just once before, like us and everything, it began to decay....