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In Little Shop of Horrors, most of New York’s skid row residents are just trying to survive. They dream of moving to the ‘burbs, owning a home, and finding love—elements of life that are less prioritized among members of a generation who are living with debilitating debt and wearing themselves out on side-hustles. The current Mercury Theater production, under the direction of L. Walter Stearns, hits the classic notes of rock, horror, and comedy—but in the age of movements like #MeToo, some of the plot elements feel a little off....

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his allies on the City Council have effectively quashed a Chicago Housing Authority accountability ordinance meant to preserve the total number of public housing units in the city, grant the council some oversight of the agency, and affect future and ongoing public housing developments, including the redevelopment of the Lathrop Homes. After it was introduced, the bill languished until July 2015, when it was reintroduced by First Ward alderman Proco Joe Moreno....

Despite constant threats of cancellation throughout its run and airing on a network that no longer has a substantial comedy lineup, Parks and Recreation is able to do something that is unheard of for beloved comedies these days: end on its own terms. Some of the best moments have happened outside of the show’s little Hamlet, traveling in a recent episode to Beverly Hills for a “treat yo self” of epic proportions that involved fingernail lasik and elbow bedazzling....

U2 kicked off a five-night stint at the United Center last night in support of last year’s Songs of Innocence. You know, the album U2 and Apple decided to gift to everyone who uses iTunes, regardless of whether or not they wanted to hear Bono’s treacly tribute to Joey Ramone? Yes, that album. By many accounts last evening’s “Innocence & Experience Tour” performance was vintage U2—though we couldn’t make it, one of our ace photographers showed up to capture all the action....

This review contains spoilers. Shaft (1971), starring Richard Roundtree and directed by the great photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks, more or less created the modern African-American screen hero—a man of action, cool, smart, and virile. “We were trying to emulate . . . what white movie stars we admired were doing,” remembered actor Ron O’Neal, who played Priest in Super Fly. “Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds. . . . We were trying to show a mature, intelligent black man, operating with all the panache and verve of James Bond....

Few forms of music and dance embody raw emotion as exquisitely as flamenco. This formidable and quintessentially Spanish art form fuses elements from Jewish, Arab, and Roma cultures and distills the essence of grief, tragedy, fear, and joy into every note, gesture, and stomp. Hosted principally by the Instituto Cervantes, the first half of the 18th annual Chicago Flamenco Festival (part two is promised this fall) consists of ten performances, an art exhibit, workshops, and a wine tasting over the course of a month....

India’s unregulated, billion-dollar child surrogacy business is booming. The country has some 1,200 assisted reproductive technology clinics, which lure perhaps 100,000 women to rent their wombs to foreigners. As the standard marketing pitch goes, the fees these impoverished women earn can change their lives. But often they’re cheated out of money they’re promised, then denied medical care for postpartum complications. Hoping for a way out of poverty, they often end up more hopelessly mired in it....

I exchanged a few e-mails with soul historian and record collector Bob Abrahamian, but we never met. He committed suicide on June 4, 2014, when depression, anxiety, and insomnia conspired against him and left him unable to fight back. A few days later his friend Jake Austen wrote a touching, revealing remembrance for the Reader, paying special attention to Abrahamian’s genius and generosity. He’d turned himself into the authority on soul records by Chicago vocal groups, and for many years he shared his knowledge and enthusiasm with a weekly radio show called Sitting in the Park....

There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts happening this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Mon 6/11-Thu 6/14: Paul Schrader’s First Reformed finds pride at the root of despair—”Schrader’s preoccupation here, one he manages to electrify by grounding it in the panic over environmental collapse,” writes the Reader’s J.R. Jones. Directed by Paul Schrader. R, 113 min. Various times, various prices Tue 6/12: A compelling lead performance by Cake-Baly Marcelo, a black economist who in 1976 emigrated to Hungary from war-torn Guinea-Bissau (which as a Portuguese colony was known as the Slave Coast), anchors the Budapest-set drama The Citizen, screening as part of the African Diaspora Film Festival....

The social inequality and stigma afflicting the LGBTQ+ and TGNC (transgender and gender non-conforming) populations in Chicago creates a health-care quandary; they’re more susceptible to issues such as HIV, cancer, and suicide, yet less likely to receive care. The LGBTQ and TGNC population in Chicago is about 146,000 people, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health. Of that population, 80,000 people identify as male, 66,000 identify as female, and 10,000 identify as transgender or gender non-conforming....

I think Donald Trump will now learn a lesson in what really wins and loses elections. It isn’t enough to scare the bejeebers out of the electorate and then offer yourself up as their savior. Votes are won and lost by specifics. Trump had a bad day Thursday, despite officially becoming the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. It was less because of what he said in his acceptance speech (though the thuggish way he said it did him no favors) than because of his New York Times interview on NATO and other military treaties....

Viagra Boys’ career as acid-punk raconteurs has been fueled by mutually assured destruction—they’ve pumped their bodies full of illicit substances and squared off with toxic masculinity to a frenzied backbeat. But what happens when you tire of your old enemies as you rage toward a better world? If the Stockholm five-piece’s new album Welfare Jazz is any indication, you go toe-to-toe with your own worst self. The gloriously sloppy follow-up to 2018’s grimy, groovy Street Worms is full of sax skronks, gummy bass lines, and vocalist Sebastian Murphy rambling like a madman about wiener dogs and dope....

Last November, a yellow lab named Harley escaped from the yard of his home in Garfield Ridge, near Midway. As they searched for him, Harley’s owners checked both Chicago Animal Care and Control and the Cicero facility Waggin’ Tails Animal Shelter, with no luck finding him. Still, the owner (who declined to be interviewed for this story) was “pretty frustrated.” Nolan says Harley was held by Waggin’ Tails for 14 days before being transferred to AWL, during which time a letter was supposed to have been sent to the address associated with the microchip....

While shaking my fist at Wicker Park’s lazily nostalgic Mahalo last week, I began wondering how the hell we got here. What’s behind the sudden surge in Hawaiian food? Particularly poke, the raw fish salad, piled on any variety of grains and greens, with toppings and garnishes to vary textures and sauces to brighten (or perhaps dampen) the qualities of the protein (typically tuna). It took about 30 minutes to get a volcano bowl at Aloha, where the line is broken in two, the second half pushed back a few dozen feet so as not to impede access to the poor, lonely Lillie’s Q outpost next door....

Far be it from me to give advice to Joe Biden, a candidate I never supported during the primaries and still sort of wish would get off the ticket. It’s funny to watch everyone from Biden to writers for the New York Times fall over themselves to say nice things about Bernie—even though they never had anything nice to say about him while he was still in the race. Berniecrats fall into three basic categories, at least when it comes to voting for Dems....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, these shows have been postponed until further notice. Ticket holders should contact the point of purchase for refund or exchange information. Lyrics aren’t the only way for musicians to communicate political messages, just the most obvious. When the Knife turned their live show for 2013’s Shaking the Habitual into a group study in Queer Space Jazzercise, they deliberately obscured which performers were the Dreijer siblings, making a point about equitable collaboration by dissolving the hierarchy of star and supernumerary....

Hyunhye Seo, also known as Angela Seo, has been a member of inscrutable experimental-rock band Xiu Xiu since 2009, providing synths, piano, and vocals to flesh out their consistently beguiling, unsettling sound. On her debut solo record, Strands (Room40), Seo conjures discomfort in new ways, trading in Xiu Xiu’s outré pop grotesqueries for two 18-minute pieces, one of ambience and the other of solo piano. “Strands I” starts off surreptitiously, with a low, nondescript hum that quietly grows....

Chicago four-piece Melkbelly are best known for playing what you might call noise pop. Though they employ guitarists with a knack for wiry, minor-key interplay, a drummer who pays homage to Brian Chippendale, and a singer who can flip the switch in an instant from sweet Kim Deal croons to blood-curdling screams, they also inject their songs with as much undeniable melody as harsh dissonance. On the brand-new Pith (Wax Nine), Melkbelly continue their growth in both directions....

Something about the cold, steel environs of Streeterville’s Loews Chicago Hotel makes the experience of entering its restaurant, Rural Society, a surprise to the senses. You particularly notice the aromas: campfire, leather, tobacco. And, of course, meat—this is the new Argentinian steak house from Jose Garces, the Chicago-raised chef who left to build an empire in Philadelphia and beyond. Counting a Philly taco truck, Rural Society is the 19th restaurant in his stable, and his second on the home front since Mercat a la Planxa, which opened in 2008....

At around 4 PM yesterday, Reader staff writer Leor Galil informed the rest of the office that Pitchfork Music Festival was going to announce the first third of the lineup at 10:30 this morning. I had expected a whole production, because it’s Pitchfork after all. If it’s not the music authority, it’s at least the authority figure’s younger brother, Dustin, who went to Oberlin and has mutual friends with Rex Orange County....