If you’re in the mood for some serious decolonizing after the Jeanine Cummins American Dirt backlash, Isaac Gomez has you covered. In The Leopard Play, or Sad Songs for Lost Boys, now in a blistering and poignant world premiere at Steep under Laura Alcalá Baker’s direction, Gomez returns to his own roots in El Paso—a border city that not only reflects the many cracks and divisions running through our national identity right now, but that is also internalized by the character identified as “Son....

“So . . . I think I may have seen that flying thing or whatever,” Jeff said sheepishly before taking an extra-long drag from his cigarette. So I admittedly wasn’t very alarmed when I read about the “record number of reports of flying humanoids” that Aimee Levitt blogged about for the Reader this summer. I browsed the website sourced in the piece, Lon Strickland’s Phantoms and Monsters, an unofficial archive of stories about the Chicago Mothman (or Chicago Phantom, or Lake Michigan Bat Creature, or whatever), and read of the alleged eyewitness accounts....

As the Museum of Contemporary Photography celebrates its 40th anniversary this week, the institution faces an existential question: Should a place devoted to photography worry that the fundamental definition of the medium has recently and radically changed? The explosion of amateur pocket photographers could seemingly wipe out the need for a brick-and-mortar monument to an aging art form. Inside the museum, images are stored in dark, refrigerated vaults, while everywhere else pictures are exchanged at the speed of light....

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. Tomboy by Céline Sciamma Avatar: The Last Airbender Tuca & Bertie on Netflix (It’s not too late to renew it for season two, you cowards!) National Treasure (my college friends’ Netflix Party pick)...

Logan Square needs another cocktail bar like it needs yet another coffee shop. The neighborhood is already home to Billy Sunday, the Whistler, Lost Lake, Scofflaw, Mezcaleria Las Flores, and Best Intentions (not to mention all the restaurants with deep cocktail lists). Still, the folks behind Spilt Milk—a partnership between Footman Hospitality and the newly formed Equal Parts Hospitality, which consists of veteran bartenders Matty Eggleston, Tony Selna, and Jason Turley—took a gamble that the neighborhood hadn’t yet reached its saturation point....

Gossip Wolf has been fond of Chicago bubblegum-pop sweethearts the Lemons for almost as long as they’ve been a band, so it’s a pleasure to see their audience grow. Late last week a handful of celebrities “picked up” copies of the band’s brand-new debut LP, Hello, We’re the Lemons, at Logan Square shop Bric-a-Brac: among the folks posing with copies of the album on Instagram were Malin Akerman (Watchmen, Childrens Hospital), Kate Micucci (Garfunkel and Oates), Orlando Bloom (you know, Legolas), and mumble­core auteur Joe Swanberg (brother of the Lemons’ James Swanberg, who’s also the main man of Today’s Hits)....

A three-foot-deep rainbow-colored ball pit at the entrance to a show was a first for me—I had no idea that by the end of the night I’d end up juggling them, circled by spectators. I was at Renaissance One, a Pride-themed showcase put on by Party Noire at the Promontory on Thursday, June 27, and that kind of spontaneity animated the night. The glowing dance floor changed colors underfoot, glitter-filled beach balls bounced around the room, and iridescent streamers fluttered from the ceiling....

As we reflect on the year so far and think forward to November, political art has never been more important. The Latinx community, which has a long history of “artivism,” has brought power to racial struggles for decades and helped unite Chicago and capture the fervent energy this summer. In a culturally rich and diverse but segregated city, Latinx artivism shows there is power in community, especially in the midst of a pandemic that disproportionately hits Black and Brown Chicagoans the worst....

On November 25, less than 24 hours after the Chicago Police Department belatedly released a dashcam recording of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting and killing Laquan McDonald, local rapper Ty Money dropped “United Center,” whose video consists exclusively of edited footage from that recording. The song’s instrumental track accompanies its solemn piano melody with sizzling guitars and muffled, ominous bass that booms like an underground explosives test, and in his lyrics Money mulls over the systemic injustices that afflict Chicago’s black community and make the city’s racial divide feel like the Grand Canyon....

The offbeat accessory is Flair’s specialty. The recently opened Logan Square store’s inventory is dominated by pins featuring figures from Prince to Audre Lorde and patches with generally woke sentiments such as “Fuck the patriarchy” and “We will outlive them.”

A trip to the Hoosier State via I-90 begins rather inauspiciously. The Chicago Skyway separates the city from northwest Indiana, and as motorists glide over the toll road, they’re greeted by monotonous blocks of homogenous houses, spindly smokestacks, and the Horseshoe Hammond Casino’s gaudy orange and pink sign, which juts out of the grey landscape like a puffed-up, preening peacock. In neighboring Gary, the highway runs past decrepit icons like the once mighty, now moldering Grand Central Station, a place that draws only ruin pornographers these days....

Q: I’m a 29-year-old straight woman in Pennsylvania. My question is to do with choking and consent. I’ve had two experiences in the past six months or so where someone has tried to choke me without my consent. The first time this happened, I coughed immediately but he tried multiple times during sex. I was caught so off guard that I didn’t say anything until the next morning. I told him I wasn’t OK with that and that it was too much....

Tara Stamps and Jaylin McClinton are both politically active black Chicago Democrats from communities that are predominantly low-income and racially segregated. But they’re in different camps as the Illinois presidential primary approaches. The 18 congressional districts in Illinois are apportioned from four to nine delegates apiece by the Democratic Party. The greater the population in a district and the larger its Democratic vote in recent elections, the more delegates it’s allotted....

Given how excited the folks in Mucca Pazza always seem to be about their own deranged marching band, Gossip Wolf is hardly shocked that they’d have a soft spot for kids who need help to play in a school band! Founding member and cheerleader Sharon Lanza reached out about the Horace Mann Marching Mustangs, who she calls “an amazingly spirited and disciplined south-side elementary school band” (they collaborated with Mucca Pazza in September)....

On a cold January evening, Aurora lugged a box containing a chrome pole and wooden base into the Empty Bottle. Her eyelids were painted with silver glitter and she wore a white hoodie with a bedazzled script that read “Money makes me cum.” The original complaint also alleges that dancers paid “house fees” to work and were required to share their tips with “managers and with non-service employees or agents of the club,” like the DJ, in-house makeup artist, and “house mom,” who provided food and sometimes toiletries in the locker room....

On Saturday, August 27, local good-vibes label Eye Vybe Records releases Nalumbanet, a new cassette from the duo Simulation, aka Whitney Johnson of Matchess (“Best transcendental deep-space synth trip” in the Reader‘s 2015 Best of Chicago issue) and Laura “Lulu” Callier of Gel Set (who recently relocated to LA). According to their Bandcamp page, Simulation resulted from a “paranormal visitation” Johnson and Callier had in Forsyth, Montana, during a tour together—maybe that’s why Nalumbanet sounds like some of the spookiest Friday the 13th dub ever recorded?...

Open since last December, Grant Park’s skate park hosted its first nationally broadcast event earlier this month when the Dew Tour came to town. Skateboarders and BMX bikers from across the U.S.—among them Alec Majerus of Rochester, Minnesota; Curren Caples of Ventura, California; and even Chicagoans like Chaz Ortiz—competed for medals in BMX Street, BMX Streetstyle, Skate Street, and Skate Streetstyle. Here’s a collection of photos from the electrifying event....

O n a February night at the Studio Movie Grill in Chatham, Chance the Rapper commands the stage. A large and rapt crowd has turned up at the Black History Month film festival operated by his nonprofit, Social Works. “I think it is important to shine a light on important stories,” Chance says. “There are a lot of opportunities that are afforded to certain people and thought of as just the way things are supposed to go....

It feels as if we’ve been in quarantine for years, yet Tenet somehow feels longer. There’s a possibility I’m still watching it, that I’ve descended into a dreamlike state where I seemingly continue on with life while, really, I’m in the theater, eyes glazed over and face mask damp with exhalation as good-looking men in suits (one of the only things Christopher Nolan incorporates into his films that I wholeheartedly endorse) walk around stunning locales describing in maddening detail what will soon happen onscreen—in glorious 70-millimeter, of course....

Samaria Rice initially wanted the gazebo where her 12-year-old son Tamir was shot to death by Cleveland police in 2014 destroyed. But she changed her mind when she considered the structure’s significance. Tamir was reported to be playing with a pellet gun when he was killed by 26-year-old Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann under the gazebo at the Cudell Recreation Center on November 22, 2014. Ozanne Construction Company and Independence Excavating in Cleveland volunteered to deconstruct the gazebo....