Antonin Scalia was still alive and Barack Obama was president when John Strand’s fine play about the famously combative conservative Supreme Court justice—known for his vociferous opposition to affirmative action, Roe v. Wade, and all other elements of the progressive agenda and his devotion to preserving the supposed original intent of the framers of the Constitution—was first produced at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in 2015. In the play, Strand takes pains to show us the man behind “the monster” (as Scalia calls himself)....

I’ve come across a handful of recordings by German pianist Uwe Oberg in recent years, and I’ve liked all of them—particularly a duo with British reedist Evan Parker and an album by the trio Lacy Pool, which plays the compositions of singular soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. In 2015, though, Oberg released two solo records that ensure I’ll seek out his albums from now on, instead of simply trusting that they’ll cross my radar eventually....

“Traditionally the bread is soaked in the vinaigrette,” Snowden says, “but I like the crunch that it brings.” The overall dish, he says, “tastes like the best hot dog you’ve ever had.”

Q: I like water sports, and I heard about a guy in a rural area who holds piss parties in his backyard. I found a mailing list for those interested in piss play, and it wasn’t long before he posted about one of these parties. People on the list talk a big game, but no one else has stepped up to host something, including me. (I would, but four neighbors look onto my backyard....

At the risk of sounding like Richard Nixon, I want to make something perfectly clear . . . Oh, I know that sounds cynical. And reading it, you might conclude that I must have spent the last 40 years of my life following Chicago politics to be so jaded. Take your pick, Chicago. His bill—sponsored in the house by state representative Delia Ramirez—would divide Chicago into 20 districts. Each district would elect one school board member....

Is this a great time for a new play about how Americans go all NIMBY if someone wants to build a mosque in their neighborhood? But Khoury didn’t anticipate that by the time his play opened the likely Republican presidential nominee would be announcing that “Islam hates us.” —Playwright Jamil Khoury­ “Each playwright got the same photo as a starting point,” says Khoury, who’s Syrian on his father’s side and Slovak-Polish on his mother’s....

Courtesy Steven McClellan McClellan and his ill-fated petition Steven McClellan was a political neophyte when he began canvassing the 43rd Ward this fall talking to residents about community issues and collecting signatures for his campaign petition. “I was afraid of doing anything illegal,” he says now. “I thought I could go to jail. I made sure I did it the correct way so there would be no issues.” He was careful to ask all the signers if they were registered voters and if they’d already signed another petition because duplicate signatures don’t count....

Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser lets his curiosity and versatility flow from project to project, whether he’s recontextualizing baroque music by Monteverdi and Machaut in an improvisational context or exploring the chamberlike dynamic of reedist Jimmy Giuffre’s early 60s trio with Steve Swallow and Paul Bley. Two dazzling new recordings offer further proof of his agile improvisational acumen. The most recent, Oostum (No Business), is an intimate series of duets with American drummer Gerry Hemingway where his playing moves between richly melodic, garrulous passages that exploit his horn’s extroverted personality to snorting, crab-walking flatulence to intensely muted conversational mutterings where he seems to be channeling human whispers....

This is a bait and switch: I’m a cyclist, and I support bike infrastructure. I use and mostly appreciate protected bike lanes. But the way Chicago lays out its protected lanes sets traps for cyclists. I’m talking specifically about lanes that cross side streets, where only traffic on the side street has to stop. (Milwaukee Avenue is a good example.) Cyclists traveling at cruising speed thus ride directly across the path of drivers turning onto the side street—and when traffic is light, drivers often make these turns with little to no warning....

As the Growing Concerns Poetry Collective, poet McKenzie Chinn, rapper Mykele Deville, and producer Jeffrey Michael Austin blend “emphatic spoken word, conversational storytelling, and vivid rapping, all set to dreamy ambient beats” (as Lee V. Gaines put it in the Reader in September). The collective celebrated their debut album, We Here: Thank You for Noticing, with two shows at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre in August, and this Friday and Saturday they return to that venue to mark the vinyl release of We Here and the publication of Five Fifths, a poetry collection by Chinn and Deville....

On Friday, November 11, the Chicago Humanities Fest will be moving to Bronzeville to celebrate the south-side neighborhood that, due to real estate restrictions known as redlining, became the center of black life in Chicago during the Great Migration. In 2005, she decided that since she was out every night anyway, she might as well write about it. So she launched 5 magazine, which bills itself as the only magazine in North America devoted exclusively to house music....

As I’ve watched Alderman Danny Solis escape one precarious predicament after another over the last 30 or so years, I’ve reached the obvious conclusion—the man’s got more lives than a cat. As I wait for the next chapter in his saga, I figure it’s a good time to sort through a few of the many lives of Danny Solis. Zoning chair: In 2009, Daley made Solis chairman of the zoning committee, a prized council position because it brings developers before you looking for zoning changes....

As a long-standing liberal reformer, I should be outraged by the ongoing federal corruption probe that’s encircled key members of my beloved Democratic Party. Like I was, I don’t know, a Republican writer for a Republican newspaper. We’ve got one in town. So I have a model or two to emulate. And it’s not just corruption. Apparently, the Republican Party now sanctions sexual assault. In the last couple of years, at least 17 women have accused Trump of everything from rape to sexual harassment....

For the last several days I’ve been trying to think of something nice to say about Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s three-year tenure as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. The best I could come up with is that she put a genial face on the dumb ideas that popped out of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s brain. As you probably know, Byrd-Bennett took a paid leave of absence last week, just a couple of days after word broke that the FBI was investigating her role in the awarding of a $20....

The Public Services & Government category is a little-appreciated corner of Yelp. Here is the place for angry rants and glowing reviews of city parks, libraries, the DMV—and, come to find out, Cook County Jail. A Yelper who had visited a friend being held at the prison complains in her two-star review of a lack of signage: “It’s easy to get lost or open the wrong door and sound the alarm!...

It’s no secret that all cultural institutions are taking a hit amid our current crisis. But things got personal for the Chicago film community when last week Kartemquin Films cofounder Gordon Quinn was diagnosed with COVID-19. It was a reminder not only of all the essential work he personally produced—Hoop Dreams and Minding the Gap among them—but a chance to reflect on how meaningful every aspect of the Chicago film community is to capturing these moments in time, broadening our horizons, and bringing people together even when we’re apart....

Pamplona, Spain, is probably best known for the festival of San Fermín, when thrill seekers run with bulls through the streets—which usually ends much worse for the animals than the humans. The four women in Melenas may not pull as big a crowd as that globally famous event, but on their new second album, Dias Raros (Trouble in Mind), they offer 11 better reasons to remember their hometown’s name. The band’s sound adheres to a template established by garage-rock combos in the 1960s and productively renewed by acts such as Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, and the late, very great New Zealand group Look Blue, Go Purple....

I’ve been a big fan of Swedish trumpeter Goran Kajfes for quite a few years, and my admiration for his work keeps growing. Last summer I finally had a chance to see him live, giving a fluid, muscular, and lyrical performance in the groove-heavy Swedish quartet Nacka Forum. No single band captures his broad range, but he displays a portion of it on two recent records: the debut of a new quartet and the third album by his entertaining Subtropic Arkestra....

October ended with a flurry of engrossing Chicago rap releases, in some cases separated by just a few hours. Last Wednesday night, Saba dropped Bucket List Project, which makes Chicago’s neglected west side feel as big as the rest of the city, and by the middle of Thursday it had landed in the top spot of the iTunes Store’s Hip-Hop/Rap chart. At midnight last Thursday, Air Credits (aka rapper ShowYouSuck and mashup mavens the Hood Internet) released the dystopian sci-fi opus Broadcasted....

The Hideout is holding a reunion celebration this Saturday, but you won’t need to trim your hair or suck in your gut to impress people you haven’t seen in decades—the party promises to be a laid-back affair, fit for friends and families. This anniversary marks 20 years that the Hideout, tucked away just off Clybourn on Wabansia by a Department of Streets & Sanitation fueling station, has been owned by brothers Jim and Mike Hinchsliff and married couple Tim and Katie Tuten....