When Yuta Katsuyama landed at the Illinois Institute of Technology four semesters ago, in the very real food desert of Bronzeville, he couldn’t find anything to eat. For overworked professionals such as Katsuyama, who was a management consultant in the food tech industry, their absence would be unthinkable. “Onigiri is really handy,” he says. “You can eat with just one hand. You can eat while working.” Besides that, they’re tightly knit into the emotional fabric of the nation....

Before he moved to Amsterdam in 2016, percussionist Frank Rosaly was an integral part of Chicago’s improvised music scene, and his departure left many of his musical partnerships hanging. Rosaly’s bond with saxophonist Dave Rempis in particular runs deep, with collaborations dating back to the turn of the current century. Their 2009 release, Cyrillic (482 Music), reveals their high-energy rapport in a bruising yet agile set of interactive movements and terse melodic exchanges, their lilting postbop routinely exploding into furious expressionism....

In Thai culture, the first question people ask is not “How are you?” but instead “Gin khao reu yung?” Have you eaten yet? As a kid, I’d learn this phrase from my mom, who immigrated to the U.S. from Bangkok in 1989. It just made sense: If you hadn’t eaten yet, there must be something wrong. I hear this question often when I go with my family to the small outdoor Thai market in Bridgeview, where we peruse items ranging from sweet basil and stewed pork belly to herbal teas and handmade soaps....

We’re never supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I just bought a book for its jacket. I’m a lifelong bibliophile who should know better, but it might be the most beautiful jacket I’ve ever seen. Powell talked about the European tradition of “Grand Manner” portraiture—big, theatrical representations of important people, like generals, often in dramatic landscapes, frequently on horseback. American presidential portraits for the most part followed this tradition, Powell said, but Sherald and Wiley “raised the ante on it....

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. Feel Good on Netflix Hollywood on Netflix Nature via PBS Video “Long Lost Family” on a weekly video chat What we’re cooking:

Today the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events announced the 2019 schedule for the annual Millennium Park Summer Music Series at Pritzker Pavilion, which begins Thursday, June 13, and ends Thursday, August 15. All the concerts are on Mondays or Thursdays (though not every Monday and Thursday), they all start at 6:30 in the evening, and as always they’re all free. Last year, DCASE significantly reduced the number of Summer Music Series events, presenting only ten double bills—down from 15 in 2017 and 20 in 2016....

[Content warning: The film features sexual violence and the following review discusses sexual violence.] While Bravo and Harris could have chosen to sit heavily in the weight of this cautionary tale, this deftly written road-trip story is held up by a scaffolding of excitement and mirth, channeling the zest of being young, hot, and out of fucks to give. When title character Zola (Taylor Paige) meets Stefani (Riley Keough) and they vibe instantly, the magic of the moment is punctuated by chimes and whistles....

The Chicago Humanities Festival announced today its first-ever yearlong theme, Graphic! Programming during the 2018 spring and fall festivals will focus on the ways the visual age has changed how people experience and engage with the world. Engleman says the spring festival is expected to include about 25 events, and the fall will likely encompass 80 to 100, though details are still being finalized. The yearlong theme, he says, allows for a “deep dive” into a complex topic....

“TAKE IT ALL” reads the caption on Chris Rudd’s Instagram story, overlaying a video of looters emptying a Gucci retail store and a Walgreens in downtown Chicago. The incident followed an explosive face-off between police and demonstrators after cops shot a young man in the predominantly Black, south-side neighborhood of Englewood. There are rewards, of course, to win in a society that is rigged in every way to make one fail....

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this title town of ours, with 12 major championships since the Bears last won the Super Bowl 30 years ago, it’s that, in hindsight, victory always seem inevitable. Of course Scottie Pippen is going to lead a bunch of scrubs to start a comeback from a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter; of course Michael Jordan is going to push off, just a smidge, and hit a game-winning basket at the buzzer; of course A....

The federal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein for running a sex-trafficking operation involving vulnerable young girls ended last month when Epstein was found dead in his cell. The official story is that he committed suicide. But many people, led by the victims of Epstein and his coconspirators, suspect foul play. Second, Acosta has given conflicting statements about the highly unusual and illegal deal he cut with Epstein’s lawyers in 2008. In private conversations with Trump transition team members, who wanted to know if the Epstein deal was going to cause problems for Acosta—then a Labor secretary nominee—at confirmation hearings, Acosta explained that he’d cut the nonprosecution deal with Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone....

Neeson tells his daughter (Kim Mills) how much he cares in Taken 3. Near the start of Taken 3, Liam Neeson’s perpetually unlucky ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills tries to show his college-aged daughter how “unpredictable” her old man can be by showing up at her apartment a few days before her birthday to present her with her gift. It is a giant stuffed panda. Even the filmmakers acknowledge how stupid this is—in fact, they can’t seem to acknowledge it enough, milking this awkward display of affection for maybe a half-dozen unfunny one-liners....

At a bar in Chicago nearly 30 years ago, Billy Bragg slugged down Joe Hill‘s ashes with a bottle of union beer. Now 103 years dead, Hill remains one of the most iconic faces of the Industrial Workers of the World, informally called the Wobblies, a radical international union that is itself an enduring symbol of militant working-class power. After Bragg played a concert in Chicago, a couple of Wobblies brought him a packet of Hill’s ashes—one of the last remaining traces of this particular relic, which had been divvied up into 600 envelopes and distributed to IWW branches and their allies worldwide....

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 Story of Zamrock mini-doc from Vinyl Me, Please Little Richard videos from the 50s and 60s Functional medicine webinars What we’re cooking:

Last Wednesday, February 21, two days before he released his major-label debut, WWW., Chicago rapper Towkio was in Minnesota, where he put on a space helmet and a yellow high-altitude flight suit and strapped himself into a tiny capsule suspended beneath a helium balloon. The suit was equipped with an oxygen hose and emblazoned with the album’s logo—a stylized globe bisected by a sawtooth waveform (WWW. stands for World Wide ....

Tricky is justifiably feeling reflective these days. In his 2019 autobiography, Hell Is Round the Corner, he wrote about the severe adversity he faced from an early age; his mother committed suicide when he was four years old, and his troubled adolescence in Bristol, England, culminated in a short prison stint when he was 17. It might’ve been enough to shut down another person’s dreams, but Tricky, born Adrian Thaws, found his path when he turned to music as a means to cope....

As I write this, it’s Monday—a day before Apocalypse Showdown Part II. I had a phone conversation with Robin Amer, then my editor at the Reader. Feels like five billion years ago—eh, Robin? The conversation went a little like this . . . Let’s just say it wasn’t my finest moment in prognostication. That motivated Jake Malooley—another Reader editor who was in the office—to wisecrack: “I knew we lived in a bubble....

KStarke Records, the Ukrainian Village shop run by veteran DJ Kevin Starke, closed for good last month. But on Friday, December 22, the storefront at 1109 N. Western will reopen as a new record and clothing shop called Wild Prairie Vinyl & Vintage (co-owner Natasha Rac took the name from the lyrics to “Onion Rings,” a song on the 2001 Molemen compilation Chicago City Limits Vol. 1). Starke sold the business to Rac and Wild Prairie’s other owner, Alex Gonzales, a local DJ who’d worked at KStarke for five years....

ARTIST: Calvin Fredrickson SHOW: Stomatopod, Nonagon, Dummy, and Whelms at D.C. Torium on Sat 12/14 MORE INFO: Calvin Fredrickson