Lorena Cupcake is an arts and culture writer, social media expert, and—according to the Reader‘s Best of Chicago poll—one of the city’s top budtenders. Originally from California, Cupcake first got a look at the recreational cannabis industry through visits to their home state, and became familiar with medical marijuana dispensaries through their experiences as a patient. After doing some freelance work on the topic, they became interested in getting more involved....
When I rode the Red Line from Uptown to downtown during the morning rush last week, my rail car was as packed as a sardine can by the time we left the Belmont stop. Damon Lockett, a copywriter who commutes daily from Edgewater to River North, told me that overcrowded trains are typical during peak hours nowadays. The flyover, and the rest of the modernization plan, recently got the federal go-ahead after passing an environmental review by the Federal Transit Administration....
Basing a punk band on an obscure character invented by a Canadian comedy troupe whose criminally underrated half-hour sketch show went off the air in the mid-90s seems like a bit of a stretch, to say the least. But Chicago guitarist Andy Slania went ahead with it anyway. Today Slania operates Stonewalled Records, which released the Eradicator’s self-titled ten-inch in 2015 (the project’s debut) as well as its self-titled full-length in October....
Q: I’m a cis bi guy in my 40s who doesn’t have a lot of experience with other men. I’m happily married to a wonderful woman who knows I’m bi, and while we’re presently monogamous, we’ve talked about opening things up. If that happens, I’d like to casually hook up with a guy once in a while, but I’m a little anxious about gay hookup culture. 4. Is the “top shortage” I’ve read about a few times a real thing?...
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, a lot of us who gathered in Grant Park thought a new day had dawned. It turned out the old day had plenty of life left in it. Millions of people who thought Obama’s election was a terrible thing to happen to America continue to think this eight years later, and they’ve constructed elaborate, fictitious justifications for this belief: Obama was born in Indonesia, and he’s a Muslim socialist, he has a two-part plan to disarm America and conquer it from within....
For 30 years now Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin has been escaping into the early cinema, shooting and editing his eerie, eccentric comedies in the style of silent films and primitive talkies from around the world. Archangel (1990), his sophomore feature, draws on the heroic imagery of the Soviet cinema; The Saddest Music in the World (2003), his biggest critical success, recaptures the rickety magic of the earliest screen musicals; and his recent triumph The Forbidden Room (2015) is a fever dream of reheated Saturday-matinee genres—the submarine drama, the jungle adventure....
This past weekend Pilsen welcomed its third record store in a year: Shady Rest Vintage & Vinyl, at 1659 S. Throop. Owners Nuntida Sirisombatwattana and Peter Kepha, a longtime couple, officially opened the shop Saturday. They’re also longtime vinyl collectors, and knew the ins and outs of crate digging before they met. Prior to finding a permanent storefront, they’d sell their wares at record fairs—which increasingly exhausted them. “I would pretty much carry the entire store with us,” Kepha says....
This weekend, Pilsen’s Thalia Hall hosts Levitation Chicago, the second edition of the midwestern satellite of the Texas-based festival formerly known as Austin Psych Fest. From Thursday, March 10, through Saturday, March 12, no fewer than 18 of the freakiest and most far-out acts around will grace Thalia’s stage. Reader writers have covered some of the festival’s performers already (including Israeli shoegazers Vaadat Charigim, scuzz-rock pioneers Royal Trux, and German experimental collective Faust), but they’ve only scratched the surface of these massive lineups....
Neither Tom Selleck nor Steve Guttenberg nor Ted Danson have anything on this crew of 19th-century Sierra gold miners, who are unexpectedly thrust into fatherhood after a vagabond dies in their cabin shortly after giving birth. Isolated from society and unable to track down the boy’s next of kin, romantic partners Old Jake (Michael D. Graham) and Hoke (Fiore Barbini) decide to raise the boy (Henry Lombardo) as their own along with the help of their international, all-male team of laborers....
The family of Archer (Jaq Seifert) still calls him Angela and considers him a daughter rather than a son when he moves back home to help care for his ailing Pops (Brian Parry). Mom (Jacqueline Grandt) is mostly focused on keeping the family’s life as it has always been, ignoring the seismic changes happening right under her nose, while Grandma (Kathleen Ruhl) just wants “Angela” to get married so “she” won’t end up alone....
There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts happening this weekend, including Memorial Day. Here’s some of what we recommend: Fri 5/25-Sun 5/27: The Laramie Project charts an important moment in the struggle for LGBTQ rights in America. Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, 312-487-1657, aleatorictheatre.com, $20 Sun 5/27: Flip cars the bird at Bike the Drive, an opportunity to cycle along LSD unencumbered. The stretch between Bryn Mawr and the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park will be cordoned off....
When Aniello Fontano finished his MFA studies in dramatic writing from the University of New Mexico, COVID-19 was just getting started. The Chicago actor, director, and playwright had been away from the local theater community for three years but with the pandemic’s swift hit, now was not the time to go back. “[We are] boots on the ground workers, we cannot donate money, it’s not a thing we can do, and further, our main source of income is gone,” he says....
No matter where you’re from, you have a perception of the American south. You may associate New Orleans with jazz and alcohol, Florida with sunshine and retirement homes, or the entire region with the all-encompassing moral reckoning surrounding the horrific history of slavery and the confederacy that still reverberates today. In addition to what is taught about the south in history books or one’s own lived experiences, much of our associations with it, inadvertently or not, also stems from the media we consume....
Orlin Wagner/AP The White Sox were defeated by the Royals yesterday. Is this the year, baseball fans? All ten of them like the Cardinals in the NL Central. One writer in each city (here, it’s Fred Mitchell) picks the Cubs to make the playoffs as a wild card team.
Look, I get it. Aside from the usual Seasonal Affective Disorder challenges, there are plenty of other reasons for Chicagoans to be bummed about the coming of winter in the time of the coronavirus. We should also spare a thought for struggling Chicago hospitality employees and business owners. In a more civilized country like New Zealand, they’d be paid a fair stipend to close their establishments during the crisis. As for activities, I ran the following ideas by Dr....
Michael Gebert Flat breads at Xi’an Cuisine I visited a newish Chinatown spot called Xi’an Cuisine a couple of weeks ago, but neglected to mention it until I saw that Steve Dolinsky, a longtime and serious fan of Chinese food, had posted about it on his website. It’s entirely my failing, because I found it to be an exciting and pretty accessible new place that offers an unfamiliar side of Chinese cuisine: the kind that comes inside a bun....
Guitar gods don’t come much more sagelike, subversive, and utterly distinctive than James Blood Ulmer. Born Willie James Ulmer in North Carolina, this towering figure of free blues guitar, now 79 years old, started off in 1960s soul-jazz combos in Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, before settling in New York in 1971. In the Big Apple he hooked up with progressive jazzers such as Art Blakey, Rashied Ali, and Larry Young, but his best-known association is with one of the godfathers of avant-garde jazz, Ornette Coleman....
Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Amy Krouse Rosenthal, author of Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal. “And the other meaning is texting. The book has its own phone number, and throughout it are a dozen and a half prompts, where you, the reader, can text a certain word, and you receive something that goes with the passage you just read, like a piece of music or a video clip....
On the last day of Riot Fest, the B-52s played what was billed as their final Chicago show. Founding members Cindy Wilson, Fred Schneider, and Kate Pierson rocked out with their touring band, opening with “Planet Claire” and running through a set of the best-known tunes from their 41-year discography. Schneider bounced around in a hoodie and T-shirt, while Wilson and Pierson wore shimmering spangled dresses and their signature beehive hairdos....
