Friday, June 7 Crossroads Stage South promenade 11 AM Joanna Connor 12:15 PM Benny Turner & Real Blues 1:30 PM Thornetta Davis 2:45 PM Guy King with special guest Chris Cain 4:15 PM Bombino Front Porch Stage Wrigley Square 11 AM Blues in the Schools with Katherine Davis, Tim Gant, Tino Cortes, Alan Burroughs, and Stone Academy students 12:30 PM Bob Stroger 2 PM Kenny “Beedy Eyes” Smith & the House Bumpers...
Katherine Waterston and Joaquin Phoenix star in Inherent Vice. They said it couldn’t be done, but with Inherent Vice Paul Thomas Anderson has made a film adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that actually feels like reading Pynchon. Not only that, but he’s pulled off what might be the Lawrence of Arabia of stoner comedies. Vice contains about as many weed jokes as two or three Cheech and Chong movies combined, and moreover, it puts them in the service of a densely realized history lesson....
No one got much judicial love at the Valentine’s Day hearing on the lawsuit aimed at keeping the Obama Presidential Center out of Jackson Park. “Is there actually a membership?” the judge asked. “Real human beings? Taxpayers?” After the hearing, POP president Herbert Caplan restated the crux of the case against the city and the Park District: “We cite a specific statute which limits the right of the Park District to transfer public parkland to a private party for a private use....
Led by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Luis Vasquez, Oakland’s the Soft Moon create a visceral mix of darkwave, industrial, and postpunk music that recalls the heyday of 80s counterculture. Nearly a year after releasing their fourth LP, Criminal (Sacred Bones), the group are on the road with a reworking of that album, November’s Criminal Remixed, in their back pocket. If Criminal is the tortured sound of Vasquez coping with guilt from the abuse he suffered as a child and his subsequent abusive behavior, then Criminal Remixed is the sound of that guilt fueling a drug-induced dance-party nightmare....
In February 2021, dance-music site Selector republished a list of 100 important house records taken from a 1992 issue of a short-lived Chicago zine called Crossfade. “Chicago’s House: A Checklist” originally ran in November of that year as part of a story package about house history, sandwiched between a brief but trenchant essay by copublisher and editor Terry Martin on the birth and evolution of Chicago’s underground dance culture and a six-page interview Martin had conducted with the godfather of house, Frankie Knuckles....
I visited Royal Oak, Michigan, for Savage Love Live at the Royal Oak Music Theatre. I didn’t get to all of the questions submitted by the large and tipsy crowd—a crowd that skipped the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes to spend the evening with me (so honored, you guys!)—so I’m going to race through as many of the unanswered questions as I can in this week’s column. Here we go ....
If you’ve never heard of Githa Sowerby, don’t feel bad. When she died at 93 in 1970, Sowerby was mostly forgotten, even though her 1912 play Rutherford and Son was a smash hit in London and won the writer comparisons to Henrik Ibsen. (Arthur Bingham Walkley, the drama critic for The Times of London, wrote that it was “a play not easily forgotten, and full of promise for the future.”)...
Quiote, the Logan Square Mexican restaurant from former Salsa Truck owner Dan Salls, has had a mezcal bar in its basement since it opened early last year. Last fall, though, the bar got its own name along with a new beverage director when Jay Schroeder (formerly of Mezcaleria Las Flores) came on board. Now known as Todos Santos, the space looks the same as before—wood everywhere, including the floor, ceiling, walls, stools, tables, and bar—but has an entirely new cocktail menu....
In Sam Chanse’s 2017 one-act, romantic partners and ardent social critics Mel and Arjun attempt to escape the world—at least for one night—in Joshua Tree National Park. Arjun, a professor of ethnic studies, fears an ill-advised tweet about campus racism may end his career at USC. Mel, already n midcareer meltdown, has retreated from her abuse-filled stint as a lightning-rod “hot shit blogger” to write an experimental novel no one’s likely to read....
Over the last year it seemed that suddenly the U.S. had decided to take allegations of sexual harassment and abuse seriously. From Hollywood to New York to D.C., men in positions of power have rightfully lost their jobs and become pariahs. Harvey Weinstein allegedly sexually assaulted a number wealthy film stars with privileged access to media. Most of Kelly’s alleged victims are women of color who are not at all well-known....
If you have a dog or cat, you must meet Sophie Phillips, owner of Hyde Park’s Sprocket & Stone, a boutique specializing in natural pet foods, healthy treats, and unique accessories and toys. She loves her customers — both the people and the animals — and is an indispensable resource for new pet owners, able to match them up with just the right vet, trainer, or special food for any dietary needs....
Heading Subhead Hindustani legend Amit Kavthekar plays tabla, a pair of tuned drums that sing surging vowels like a human voice, harmonize with each other, and mesh in stunning crescendos that blend into one long tone. The tabla player’s fingers generate dense and evolving waterfalls of groove out of impossibly subtle movements. Kavthekar will accompany American sitarist Josh Feinberg, as will young Maharashtrian virtuoso Kunal Gunjal, who plays the santoor, a 100-string hammered dulcimer with a warm, bubbling, melodic sound....
I have trouble following complicated plots. I find that it’s especially difficult with narratives about wars, imaginary lands, and wars in imaginary lands. For a little while I can keep track of the various battalions of characters and their movements, but then they start to intermingle and I forget who’s allied with whom, where they’ve stashed the sacred whatsit, and why so much depends on one brave orphan. And if there’s a twist of any kind, forget about it....
In 1983, Harold Washington became Chicago’s first black mayor. Washington’s emergence as a political leader was no fluke, but rather, a direct result of the city’s racial tensions and the black community’s struggle for political power and representation. Washington’s roots were deep in the south side, where he grew up and later lived after serving in the U.S. Army and in the Illinois and U.S. House of Representatives. He won the ‘83 Democratic mayoral primary with more than 80 percent of the city’s black vote....
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. Tiger King, the new documentary series now streaming on Netflix (for a local perspective, check out this 2006 Reader article about Indiana exotic animal steward Joe Taft) What advice we’re going to give you, full well knowing we are not your mother
Last month’s 2019 Star Wars Celebration at McCormick Place was an interesting introduction to major nerd conventions. I’d gone to small comics events here and there, but despite my status as a lifelong nerd and Star Wars fan, I’d repeatedly missed out on major events, even the ones close to home such as C2E2 and Wizard World. And while all such gatherings live or die by fan devotion, the Star Wars event was, in the words of its website, “Lucasfilm’s love letter to fans....
Tara Aisha Willis and Olivia Lilley both moved into prominent positions at Chicago institutions within the past two years, but the budgets and physical scale of those institutions could not be more different. Willis is a Hyde Park native whose career in dance and academia took her to New York for a time, before she returned in early 2017 as the associate curator of performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art....
No matter how cynical and anti-consumer culture you may be, Valentine’s Day is often a bitch when you’re not coupled up—especially so if you’re going through a breakup. A couple of years ago investigative reporter (and sometimes Reader collaborator) Yana Kunichoff found herself at the end of a nine-year relationship. The breakup was an apocalypse in the way only ones that mean the end of a whole life and way of being can be....
Being single kind of rules. You get to jump to the front of the line when there’s only one empty seat on a roller coaster. Eating brunch by yourself means not having to share your bacon with a person who was “not hungry enough” for their own order. And being successful and not having to credit a “partner” is just about the best in the world. Then this time of year rolls around and all those coupled-up types with their shiny white smiles and chocolate-covered displays of affection come along to crap all over our independence—and simultaneously make being in a relationship seem not so bad....
OK, so things didn’t work out that well in October, when the city and Redmoon Theater got together to produce the Great Chicago Fire Festival. The flawed embodiment of a queasy concept, the spectacle fizzled spectacularly. Still, you’ve got to give Rahm and company credit for backing inventive performing art, win or lose. And they’re not done yet. The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events is presenting OnEdge, an “experimental theater, dance, and performance series” offering seven free shows at five venues....
