I prefer to call myself a runner rather than actually engage in the act of running. I’m a latecomer to the sport, and not always an agreeable participant. For most of the past four years, I’ve run five kilometers outdoors every other day, though that’s not accounting for those frigid months when there’s a good chance I could slip on a hard patch of ice. I put my body through this unpleasant routine partly for the alleged health benefits, and more specifically to counteract my ridiculous sweet tooth....

Growing up in Logan Square, 24-year-old photographer Deanna J. Smith has seen all the changes swirling around the neighborhood. But for her recent photo class at Columbia College that focuses on photography as a social practice, she wanted to see what the neighborhood looked like from other people’s eyes, like newer residents, older folks, and diverse creatives. And in a time when the world wants us to be apart, bringing together the local community through a common and accessible thread felt extra important....

Chicago punk multi-instrumentalist Seth Engel can deliver a sweet, melancholy riff so gracefully that you’d think he lives inside the guitar chords from Jawbreaker’s Dear You. Engel, who records solo material under the name Options, is a busy young man about town. He drums with mathy progressive trio Pyramid Scheme as well as heavy indie-rockers Great Deceivers, and he’s a member of several groups that are on pause, including Lifted Bells and Anthony Fremont’s Garden Solutions....

Years ago at the bar, a man named Paulie told me all about the neighborhood that I live in now. It’s west of Canaryville, north of Englewood, east of Back of the Yards, and south of the Stockyards proper. I sometimes call it New City, after the original official community area name for this area, but that can get confusing for people, and lately I’ve been relenting and using “Back of the Yards” even though it doesn’t feel right because I always thought Back of the Yards started at Ashland....

Earlier this week, I questioned the convictions of syndicated editorial cartoonist Steve Kelley. He’d just ripped Hillary Clinton over the question of whether she’d been fed answers at last week’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum” on NBC. But there’s a big difference between finding an accusation “believable” and actually believing it. The “I wouldn’t put it past her” standard is good enough for most people, but it takes more than that to make an accusation stick....

By now Donald Trump has made so many racist and offensive comments that it’s hard to remember a time when it was surprising. But when the documentary F*** Your Hair begins, in June 2015, Trump has just launched his presidential campaign—and 5 Rabbit Cervecería, a Latin-inspired local brewery, is brewing a golden ale as the house beer for Rebar in Trump Tower Chicago. When Trump makes a speech in which he calls Mexican immigrants “rapists” and says they’re bringing drugs and crime to the U....

Daru Smith is in a hospital bed at the University of Chicago and his organs are failing. Specifically, three of his organs are failing—his heart, his liver, and his kidneys. “Daru—excuse the language,” Daru tells me, snapping out of recounting his out-of-body experience. “Daru, this is the shit they say happens when you die! . . . I’m at peace, I’m walking towards the light, I’m gonna fucking die!” The heart, liver, kidney triple crown is something of a specialty for UChicago medicine....

Music scenes are a lot like high school lunch tables: people congregate with others who share not only genres but touring networks, mutual friends, and even inside jokes. When their musical styles are especially similar as well, subtle differences in, say, the application of an arpeggiating guitar are what distinguish like-minded musical acts from each other. “Soundcloud rap” is an vague term glommed onto many budding MCs with a slightly aggro style and an account on the streaming audio platform....

By a despicable margin, America has the highest rate of female incarceration in the world. Only in the past few years have the nation’s criminal justice institutions begun to acknowledge how decades of draconian sentencing practices have positioned the United States as a despotic outlier among nations of the developed world when it comes to “correcting” its criminal offenders—and the unfriendly environment it introduces them to upon release. Boo Killebrew’s airtight, blood-curdling new masterpiece uses the broken criminal justice system as a backdrop, then zooms in on what is indisputably one of the most exacting and holistic character studies onstage this year....

For a mostly forgotten 1912 play, written by Githa Sowerby (but presented under a male-sounding pen name at the time), this family drama is surprisingly similar to HBO’s Succession—minus the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. This business is glassworks, not a media empire, but its patriarch, Rutherford (Francis Guinan), is similarly cold, domineering, and cruel to his three children. The siblings—who often blend into the scenery because “the governor” has beat any shred of confidence or identity out of them—are also challenged to form relationships immune to their unhealthy connection with their father....

You can’t talk about San Jose slowcore trio Duster in 2019 without talking about their fan base—whose numbers surged after the band broke up in 2001. During the five years the group existed, they released two albums and a few seven-inches (mostly through Seattle indie Up Records) filled with grainy, sedate rock, recorded onto stolen cassettes using half-broken gear. But their efforts went largely overlooked, and the band split up without achieving much recognition beyond a favorable Pitchfork review of their second album, 2000’s Contemporary Movement (though the site had yet to develop the clout it has now)....

[image-1][This post was updated on January 29 to reflect further developments.] Today I have resigned from the @ProMarket_org editorial board after violation of my recusal from the event with Steve Bannon and @zingales at @ChicagoBooth. Please circulate my statement: https://t.co/MrlzJux1em — Samantha Eyler (@SamEyler) January 26, 2018 As Senior Editor at the Stigler Center and its publication ProMarket, and one of six members of the ProMarket editorial board, I have opposed since its inception the proposal by my colleague Luigi Zingales to provide a platform to Steve Bannon at the Stigler Center, as well as the use of ProMarket to promote the provision of that platform, on grounds that it normalizes white nationalism and implicates us in the concrete violence wrought on American lives every day by that ideology....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Library Excavations #2: The ABCs of the Chicago Reader Touring Musicians Publicity Photos Collection Marc Fischer, founder of Public Collectors, spent the summer and early fall digging through niche collections in the Harold Washington Library’s vast archives, and he recently emerged with four “Library Excavations” zines focused on (among other things) business periodicals and ads aimed at prison administrators....

Indiana is a long way to go for a beer—especially with the proliferation of craft breweries in Chicago. But sometimes, as the old saying goes, it’s about the journey rather than the destination (OK, if the destination involves beer and food, it’s about that too). Just a mile east of the lake is Bulldog Brewery in Whiting, a picturesque town that during one of my visits last summer was playing oldies through speakers mounted to buildings along the main drag....

Gossip Wolf was shocked to realize it’s been almost 12 years since the Empty Bottle’s beloved house cat Radley died, ending a long career patrolling the venue’s nooks and crannies and soaking up enough shows for nine lives. In March the Bottle reopened on a limited schedule (with dine-in seating for Pizza Friendly Pizza next door), and while concerts have yet to resume, cat people already have reason to celebrate. A few months ago, Bottle staff adopted a sweet-tempered tabby named Peg from Oak Park shelter Animal Care League, and now you can say hello!...

If you’ve been on the Internet at all in the last few years, you’re probably aware of Goop. Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle and wellness brand has been the subject of criticism since it came into the public eye, from jokes about their luxury vaginal jade eggs to more serious allegations of scientific misinformation. Paltrow’s critics liken her to a snake-oil salesman for the #girlboss generation, promoting pseudoscientific and capitalistic-minded answers to the very real gaps in women’s health care....

For the last few days, I’ve been obsessing over an old story of corruption in Chicago that I rediscovered while looking for something else. Martin did a good job of linking the raid to the 52nd anniversary of Stonewall, pointing out that “Before Stonewall (and for some time after), a police raid on a gay bar could be disastrous for those arrested. Not only would the raid likely make the papers the next day ....

It might seem backhanded or cute to say that a Grammy–winning string quartet’s 16th record has the feel of a second act. But that more or less describes the Pacifica Quartet’s new release, Contemporary Voices. The album is the ensemble’s second since they changed up their ranks; violinist Austin Hartman and violist Mark Holloway replace longtime members Sibbi Bernhardsson and Masumi Per Rostad, both of whom left the group in 2017....

The Jesus Lizard are back . . . again. Chicago’s great 90s noise-rock agitators made their first return to the stage in 2009, ten years after splitting up. Their original label, Touch and Go, accompanied that reunion with Inch—a Record Store Day exclusive that repackaged remastered versions of all nine Jesus Lizard seven-inches it had released. Later that year Touch and Go reissued its Jesus Lizard albums: Down, Liar, Goat, Head, and the EP Pure....

In his 2004 New York Times essay “The Rap Against Rockism,” Kelefa Sanneh argued, “A rockist is someone who reduces rock ‘n’ roll to a caricature, then uses that caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video.” In the wake of the threats to the Hideout with the Lincoln Yards TIF deal, Eason’s show, directed here by Northlight artistic director BJ Jones, should still carry contemporary weight....