ARTIST: Josh Davis SHOW: Ty Segall & the Muggers at Thalia Hall on Mon 3/7 and Tue 3/8 MORE INFO: deadmeatdesign.com

I think Donald Trump will now learn a lesson in what really wins and loses elections. It isn’t enough to scare the bejeebers out of the electorate and then offer yourself up as their savior. Votes are won and lost by specifics. Trump had a bad day Thursday, despite officially becoming the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. It was less because of what he said in his acceptance speech (though the thuggish way he said it did him no favors) than because of his New York Times interview on NATO and other military treaties....

Viagra Boys’ career as acid-punk raconteurs has been fueled by mutually assured destruction—they’ve pumped their bodies full of illicit substances and squared off with toxic masculinity to a frenzied backbeat. But what happens when you tire of your old enemies as you rage toward a better world? If the Stockholm five-piece’s new album Welfare Jazz is any indication, you go toe-to-toe with your own worst self. The gloriously sloppy follow-up to 2018’s grimy, groovy Street Worms is full of sax skronks, gummy bass lines, and vocalist Sebastian Murphy rambling like a madman about wiener dogs and dope....

Last November, a yellow lab named Harley escaped from the yard of his home in Garfield Ridge, near Midway. As they searched for him, Harley’s owners checked both Chicago Animal Care and Control and the Cicero facility Waggin’ Tails Animal Shelter, with no luck finding him. Still, the owner (who declined to be interviewed for this story) was “pretty frustrated.” Nolan says Harley was held by Waggin’ Tails for 14 days before being transferred to AWL, during which time a letter was supposed to have been sent to the address associated with the microchip....

While shaking my fist at Wicker Park’s lazily nostalgic Mahalo last week, I began wondering how the hell we got here. What’s behind the sudden surge in Hawaiian food? Particularly poke, the raw fish salad, piled on any variety of grains and greens, with toppings and garnishes to vary textures and sauces to brighten (or perhaps dampen) the qualities of the protein (typically tuna). It took about 30 minutes to get a volcano bowl at Aloha, where the line is broken in two, the second half pushed back a few dozen feet so as not to impede access to the poor, lonely Lillie’s Q outpost next door....

Sault are an anonymous UK trio who create music grounded in the tenets of Black rights and Black freedom, and there’s never been a better time than now to hear their message. Last year they put out their debut album, 5, and an almost immediate follow-up, 7, and this summer they released their third record, Untitled (Black Is)—like its predecessors, it came out on UK label Forever Living Originals without the fanfare of a typical promotional campaign....

Shamir spent the first months of quarantine directing the video for “On My Own,” the first single from their new self-titled album, entirely within their Philadelphia home. Using wardrobe and hairstyle changes, the mononymous singer and multi-instrumentalist depicts themselves in various personas: a childlike figure surrounded by stuffed animals, a confident rocker swinging her hips behind a buttercup-yellow guitar. It’s a fitting visual for lyrics about finding solace in solitude as well as a reminder that, as an independent artist, he’s self-directing his career more than ever....

We might not be able to go to movie theaters for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stream and support some new releases. Now more than ever feels like a perfect time to dive into some fresh genre films—they are uniquely able to transport you to another world and provide a much-needed distraction, but they can also allow you to think about the current state of our world with a fresh perspective....

Apples to Improv You’ve got to hand it to this Under the Gun troupe for opening its family-friendly improv show on a holiday weekend—perhaps unsurprisingly, our audience was only slightly larger than the entire cast of five. The somewhat casual production is loosely inspired by the card game Apples to Apples Junior; familiarity with it might help but isn’t required as dealt cards offer subjects, topics, and themes to inspire the team-based competition....

There’s not much Logan Square is short on when it comes to restaurants and bars: the neighborhood is packed with them, offering almost anything you could want. But while there are plenty of places to get a good burger, there hasn’t been a restaurant specializing in them since Parts and Labor closed last December. (And don’t tell me about Kuma’s; that’s in Avondale) Sports bars are also few and far between, which has never broken my heart, to be honest, but it’s a gap that needed filling....

Last year the Curious Theatre Branch’s Rhinoceros fringe festival celebrated its 25th year by celebrating one of its founders, Jenny Magnus. This year the appreciation continues with a tribute to the other founder, Beau O’Reilly. The seven-week 2015 Rhinoceros Theater Festival, aka Rhinofest, will culminate in an extended visit to “Beautown” (Thu 2/26-Sun 3/1), where you’ll find six of his idiosyncratic, beboppy plays plus a concert of songs he wrote for his late, lamented, profoundly underrated rock band Maestro Subgum and the Whole (Fri 2/27, 9 PM)....

For three years, Chicago thrash band Texas Toast Chainsaw Massacre have been booking DIY shows that combine sets from up-and-coming local metal, hardcore, and punk bands with body-slamming, table-trashing brawls. On Saturday, October 28, at a Pilsen DIY venue whose name I can’t share here (“Ask a punk,” as they say), TTCM present the 11th installment in their Toastamania series, named in tribute to the WrestleMania ladder matches that helped inspire it....

A group of resident artists from the Mercy Housing Lakefront art therapy program are sharing work based on their life experiences in “Those People,” a special exhibition at the Weinberg/Newton Gallery. The residents use a variety of media, but all of their work explores the sense of “otherness” that they have been made to feel within their communities. It also plays on themes of identity and security. Eventually, he found his way to Mercy Housing where he was introduced to art therapy....

“Swinging is like any other social activity, just dialed up to 11,” says Andrew*, 41. He and his wife first began swinging shortly after they began exploring nonmonogamy in 2018. Before the pandemic, the couple would frequent a western-suburb location every two months. Dr. Mary Madrake, a clinical psychology postdoctoral resident at Balanced Awakening in Chicago, says, “Much of society still views different types of kink, including swinging, BDSM, and other aspects of kink as abnormal or deviant, which can take a toll on the mental health of those who identify as part of these communities....

Lee Bey has long been a champion for architecture on Chicago’s south side. In 2017, the photographer, writer, consultant, and senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute organized an exhibition of his photographs capturing south-side architecture for that year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial. The exhibition, shown at the DuSable Museum, became the inspiration for Bey’s new book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press), out in October....

As many chefs and restaurant owners (and critics) will tell you: You can’t please everyone. There will always be people out there who won’t appreciate your vision, no matter how you execute it. There will always be people who think you can’t deliver. That’s life. As the Tribune‘s Louisa Chu pointed out in her recent look at the past, present, and future of the Jewish deli, it’s a famously difficult business model to sustain at our current place in time....

Summer performing arts camps and training programs usually provide a place for kids to be engaged in physical activity and collaborative play when school is out and the parents are at work. This year, though, things look different, and not just because COVID-19 means that most arts organizations are still keeping their educational activities at a distance. ACTORS GYMNASIUM CCT offers virtual camps for ages 7 to 12, beginning June 22, that focus on the basics of acting, songwriting, singing, choreography, and collaborative storytelling, culminating in a final online performance for friends and family....

In many ways the pandemic has devastated the Chicagoland transportation system. Starting with the human toll, at least 14 local transit workers died from the disease, and 1,874 employees tested positive. The coronavirus has also contributed to a tragic spike in Chicago traffic deaths, from 96 fatalities on city streets in 2019 to 139 last year, a 45 percent increase. This epidemic was partly due to the increase in speeding during the pandemic, when fewer people have been driving and the roads are less congested....

The polls have closed, the votes have been counted, and it’s obvious that the biggest loser in Tuesday’s primary was the man who wasn’t even on the ballot. At this point, it’s too early to say exactly what that means for our broke and beleaguered city as we head into an uncertain future led by a mayor who’s widely loathed by the people he’s presumably leading. In the early stages of the election, the standard response I got from black voters as to why they supported Hillary went like this: “I know the Clintons....