On nights when the temperature falls into single digits and icy sidewalks (clear that stuff, people!) make the public way treacherous, it’s easy to find reasons to stay home. A cozy pub makes a great place for a tale or two, and live lit performer-host Gina DeLuca turns the Duke of Perth (and other venues) into stages for vets and newbies to share their stories. Comedian Todd Barry calls Thalia Hall home for a night in February and talks about life on the road....

Beloved bar and venue Quenchers Saloon closes for good this weekend-its final day is Saturday, June 16. Local bookers Phantom Note and MP Presents give the old place a proper send-off on Friday, June 15, with a five-act show billed as “Pharewell to Quenchers.” The lineup includes local Saves the Day cover band Band From the Back Porch (whose members also play in Space Blood, Laverne, Camo Hat, Santah, and Bev Rage & the Drinks, among others), ace Chicago postpunk duo Tinkerbelles, Rust Ring, Bow & Spear, and Hi Ho....

In the fall of 1971, Faith Wilding was a young MFA student participating in the California Institute of the Arts’ first iteration of its Feminist Art Program. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who codirected the unit, hoped to galvanize their students by encouraging them to tackle a major project while working through their own issues as women. Within months the students created Womanhouse, a now-legendary installation that took up an entire mansion in Hollywood....

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. Leather Archives & Museum’s Leather Legacies, which I will be part of on June 11. The biosphere documentary Spaceship Earth on Hulu Biodome for Reader research Win the Wilderness on Netflix in which six couples compete to win a handmade three-story cabin in remote Alaska (actually really heartwarming and special!...

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, November 15, 2017. Lori Lightfoot endorses Chris Kennedy for governor The heated Illinois gubernatorial race is showing no signs of slowing down before the holiday season as Democratic candidate Chris Kennedy released his first TV ad. Lori Lightfoot, the head of the city’s Police Accountability Task Force, also endorsed Kennedy Tuesday. “It’s just not enough to say to people this is what we are against,” she said....

ARTIST: Bill Roe SHOW: White Mystery, Steal Shit Do Drugs, Greg Ashley, and Easy Habits at Cole’s on Sat 11/18 MORE INFO: troubleinmindrecs.com

In their 15 years together, Rotterdam postpunk band Rats on Rafts have built a comfortable existence and a decent hometown following, but their new album, Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs a Net of Rabbit Paths, is a declaration that they’re no longer satisfied with mere comfort. On their 2008 EP, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and their debut full-length, 2011’s The Moon Is Big, they toed the line between crafting the perfect three-minute punk screed and embracing their more outre influences, especially the example set by fellow Netherlanders the Ex....

When Chicago businesses saw citywide shutdowns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, Eric Kugelman says that he “went into shock.” Searah Deysach, owner of Early to Bed in Andersonville, remarks that the usual personalized customer service of the store has suffered as a result of social distancing. “We’re still providing education, obviously, but it’s a little different in that we don’t have that group of people who are using us as a place to learn solely, as opposed to just, you know, coming in and buying stuff,” she says....

Horror movies are endlessly popular—why are so few any good? This year has brought only one keeper (Amat Escalante’s Mexican feature The Untamed), and last year was the same (Robert Eggers’s low-budget indie The Witch). Fortunately, Halloween always prompts a few theatrical revivals of essential horror movies. On Friday at Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago Film Studies Center presents Tod Browning’s silent shocker The Unknown (1927), with live accompaniment by local musicians Kent Lambert and Sam Wagster, and on Halloween night at Northeastern Illinois University Auditorium, Chicago Film Society screens The Seventh Victim (1943), the most unnerving of the legendary B movies produced by Val Lewton at RKO Pictures....

Tiffany Hudson is in the DEI business—and right now, business is booming. For the past three and a half years her company Nova Collective has been helping companies improve their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, work that’s quickly gained momentum in recent weeks as a result of national attention being drawn even more to how systemic racism affects every industry. Hudson and her business partners work with all industries—they call themselves “industry agnostic”—and the companies range in size from two people to 40,000 employees....

Two weeks ago, Kartemquin Films confirmed that it had footage of the arrest of Bernie Sanders at a school segregation protest in August 1963. The Chicago Tribune subsequently uncovered from its archives a striking photo of the 21-year-old University of Chicago undergrad being carried by two police officers. Community opposition was swift. Parents pulled their children from the still nameless school, picketing the building with signs that read “This Was and Still Is a Warehouse,” “The Railroad Tracks Will be Your Children’s Playground,” and “This is a Firetrap and Not a School....

Usually I spend a couple sentences in my look back at the year in food mourning the new places that, despite my earnest love for them, didn’t make it past that first critical year or so. It’s by that standard that I’m going to declare 2020 one of the greatest years in Chicago restaurant history. If Powerhouse suffered the curse of being the second restaurant I write about in a year, at least the first, Lao Peng You, is still cranking out its magnificent dumplings, if only for carryout....

In 2019, Theatre Y presented The Camino Project, an engaging five-hour miniature pilgrimage through Bucktown and Humboldt Park featuring experiential pieces intermingling dance, theater, and performance art. The adventure culminated in a group meal with audience members and actors breaking bread. It was a delightful experience and an ambitious endeavor having actors guiding guests through a variety of “happenings” inspired by the ensemble’s 2017 journey along Spain’s Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route dating back over a thousand years....

Since the pandemic uprooted . . . well, everything, almost every month Bandcamp has passed along its usual share of sales to artists and labels for one full day. By mid-2020, the first Friday of the month had more or less become “Bandcamp Friday,” and it was one of the few routines that gave me something to look forward to when nothing else felt dependable—not least because musicians started playing to the occasion with special releases....

The unfolded CD insert from Gravitar’s 1997 album Now the Road of Knives. I don’t have the rest of the packaging—the water damage is from a house fire. I worked in college radio in the early 90s—a fertile period for fucked-up guitar music—and a few weeks ago I tried to put my memories of those years to good use. I compiled a short list of lesser-known 90s noise-rock bands for a dear friend who loves the Jesus Lizard and Rapeman but isn’t quite old enough or obsessive enough to have heard about, say, Phleg Camp, who put out their one proper full-length, Ya’Red Fair Scratch, in 1992 (and who barely exist on the Internet today)....

Kim Foxx has been strangely quiet of late. The Democratic candidate for Cook County state’s attorney ran a high-profile campaign on a reformist platform earlier this year, which featured many media appearances, including a 5,000-word profile in the Reader in March. She was borne to victory amid near-daily street protests against incumbent Anita Alvarez, but has since remained conspicuously silent on a range of hot-button issues pertaining to prosecutors and police....

On a spring afternoon inside the cafeteria of South Loop Elementary School, parents filled the small lunch tables for a local school council meeting. Before official business began, Jason Easterly, a longtime member, stood up and abruptly resigned his post. According to Pauline Lipman, a professor of education policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has followed and written about LSCs since their inception, Chicago’s LSCs collectively represent “the largest elected body of people of color of any elected body in the country....

Life Is Sweet Tomorrow night at the Tivoli in Downers Grove, the After Hours Film Society hosts a screening of Mike Leigh’s latest film, Mr. Turner. In many ways, Leigh’s unique process is just as famous as his work: He and his actors go to prepare extensively in preproduction, working on characters and scenarios even before a script is written, often utilizing improv techniques to give the story a more spontaneous nature....

There’s no more offensive taste than the one the past year leaves in the mouth. I already gave my accounting of the best new restaurants of the year, and here, I offer the 151 very best things I ate and drank, should you wish to try to purge that bitter tang of 2016. (6) tempura-fried lemons and delicata squash, (7) chestnut spaghetti alla chitarra, (8) radishes, (9) Spicy Carrot Cooler cocktail, (10) the Joker cocktail, Bad Hunter...

Q: I am a bi man in my late 20s in a poly relationship. My primary partner’s name is Erin. One of the rules she mandated is that I cannot date anyone else named Aaron or Erin. She thinks it would be confusing and awkward. Since those are fairly common names, I have had to reject other Aarons/Erins several times over the last couple of years. My name is very uncommon, so she doesn’t have to worry about this on her side....