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Asking anyone for a thoughtful review of Kanye West’s Ye, which came out this morning, is like asking Kanye for the key that will fix all the damage the U.S. is doing to itself and the rest of the world. If you’ve somehow made it till this year still imagining Kanye as some sort of savior, he should’ve disabused you of that since April: despite the American right’s overt hostility to people of color, he’s put on a MAGA hat, cozied up to bigot in chief Trump, and come out as a fan of right-wing commentator Candace Owens....

“Swinging is like any other social activity, just dialed up to 11,” says Andrew*, 41. He and his wife first began swinging shortly after they began exploring nonmonogamy in 2018. Before the pandemic, the couple would frequent a western-suburb location every two months. Dr. Mary Madrake, a clinical psychology postdoctoral resident at Balanced Awakening in Chicago, says, “Much of society still views different types of kink, including swinging, BDSM, and other aspects of kink as abnormal or deviant, which can take a toll on the mental health of those who identify as part of these communities....

Lee Bey has long been a champion for architecture on Chicago’s south side. In 2017, the photographer, writer, consultant, and senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute organized an exhibition of his photographs capturing south-side architecture for that year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial. The exhibition, shown at the DuSable Museum, became the inspiration for Bey’s new book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press), out in October....

As many chefs and restaurant owners (and critics) will tell you: You can’t please everyone. There will always be people out there who won’t appreciate your vision, no matter how you execute it. There will always be people who think you can’t deliver. That’s life. As the Tribune‘s Louisa Chu pointed out in her recent look at the past, present, and future of the Jewish deli, it’s a famously difficult business model to sustain at our current place in time....

Summer performing arts camps and training programs usually provide a place for kids to be engaged in physical activity and collaborative play when school is out and the parents are at work. This year, though, things look different, and not just because COVID-19 means that most arts organizations are still keeping their educational activities at a distance. ACTORS GYMNASIUM CCT offers virtual camps for ages 7 to 12, beginning June 22, that focus on the basics of acting, songwriting, singing, choreography, and collaborative storytelling, culminating in a final online performance for friends and family....

In many ways the pandemic has devastated the Chicagoland transportation system. Starting with the human toll, at least 14 local transit workers died from the disease, and 1,874 employees tested positive. The coronavirus has also contributed to a tragic spike in Chicago traffic deaths, from 96 fatalities on city streets in 2019 to 139 last year, a 45 percent increase. This epidemic was partly due to the increase in speeding during the pandemic, when fewer people have been driving and the roads are less congested....

The polls have closed, the votes have been counted, and it’s obvious that the biggest loser in Tuesday’s primary was the man who wasn’t even on the ballot. At this point, it’s too early to say exactly what that means for our broke and beleaguered city as we head into an uncertain future led by a mayor who’s widely loathed by the people he’s presumably leading. In the early stages of the election, the standard response I got from black voters as to why they supported Hillary went like this: “I know the Clintons....

According to the Oscar voting rules, nominees for Best Animated Short Film are judged on the basis of “originality, entertainment, and production quality without regard to . . . subject matter.” In practice, though, short animation has been the kids’ table since the 1930s, when the first eight awards all went to Walt Disney. Occasionally the nominating committee will make room for some dark, hand-drawn vision like Don Hertzfeldt’s hilariously gory Rejected (nominated in 2001) or Daniel Sousa’s haunting Feral (nominated in 2014)....

“I wrote this thing that I was convinced was brilliant,” says the comedian J. Michael Osborne, a producer-host of the shame-based storytelling show We Still Like You. “It was like, [about] Jesus, but it’s in the modern day, Fox News commentators don’t like him very much, isn’t that interesting? I was sitting in the middle of this party and was like, I have to get this down. Then one of the guys that lived there asked me what I was writing on, and I flipped it over, and it was a newspaper clipping of this old guy, I didn’t know anything about him, and he was like, ‘Oh that’s the last [existing] photograph of my dead dad, and that’s the only copy that I have....

If nothing else, this trio of one-acts that explore the uphill battles of 19th-century suffragettes will make you grateful. I mean, thank Whatever we no longer live in a world where repeated cries of “shoot them down!” or some such slogan are deployed by the patriarchy whenever women demand something ridiculous like autonomy over their own bodies or equal treatment under the law. Oh wait. OK, scratch that. In pairing Evelyn Glover’s A Chat With Mrs....

Last week the city announced an upcoming event honoring the retirement of Tim Samuelson, its first and—since there’s no plan to hire a replacement—only, cultural historian. Never mind that the city council last month passed a resolution congratulating him “on the occasion of his retirement from city service”: he says there’s no way he’ll be giving up the job that’s been “a dream gig for a classic obsessive history nerd like me....

When it comes to improving Chicago transportation, city officials and advocates often focus on infrastructure, reasoning that street redesigns, public transit improvements, and better pedestrian and bike facilities will help make travel safer and more convenient for all residents. Ware, 21, grew up in Rochester, New York, and now lives in the Austin neighborhood, where he runs a restorative justice program at Austin College and Career Academy. #LetUsBreathe was formed as a fund-raising initiative to provide aid to Ferguson protesters....

This summer was the hottest on record, and the scorching temperatures coincided with an endless succession of violent tragedies across the U.S. In June a 29-year-old security guard gunned down more than a hundred people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, 49 of whom died, before police stormed the building and killed the perpetrator in a shootout. Less than a month later, at a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, a 25-year-old army veteran killed five cops and wounded 11 other people, holing up in a community college building for a few hours before he was taken out by a state-of-the-art robot armed with plastic explosives (his death marked the first time a police robot had killed a suspect in the U....

I ’ve been obliged to review an excess of high-profile hotel restaurants in 2017, and it’s been making me grouchy all year. Even the good ones follow a formula that implies they aren’t for Chicagoans. By their nature hotel restaurants encourage visitors to stay in their bubble and avoid exploring the thousands of other cheffy cheeseburgers the city has to offer—they’re about keeping in, not attracting. Sunflower hummus with flaxseed crackers sounds like a depressant at a vegan commune, but the creamy swirl of nut butter is suffused with tangy artichoke and almost cheesy thanks to nutritional yeast....

Otto Neumann (1895-1975) survived conscription into the German army during World War I, persecution by the Nazis, and the suicide of his only child, and while none of those cataclysmic events appear directly in his many drawings, paintings, and prints, trauma and suffering were his lifelong subjects. Neumann’s most productive period was during the 1920s and 30s, and that work forms the basis of two illuminating exhibitions at Rare Nest Gallery in Avondale and the State Street Gallery at Robert Morris University downtown....

To appreciate the significance of Mayor Rahm’s retreat on Lincoln Yards and the 78 projects, let me take you back in time to a previous TIF debate. When Hugh Devlin, a Rogers Park activist, testified against the TIF, former alderman Burt Natarus cut him off, bellowing—oh, what does it matter? Back then Burt was always bellowing about something. Bowing to Lightfoot’s wishes, Mayor Rahm asked the council to postpone the vote on the $2....

Like doesn’t necessarily breed like—just ask all the friends for whom I’ve tried (and failed) to play cupid. But similarity is bliss for underground labels Deathbomb Arc and Hausu Mountain, which collaborated to release the compilation Arc Mountain on May 7. Based respectively in Los Angeles and Chicago, these eclectic, irreverent labels might be separated by geography, but they’re soul mates aesthetically. Arc Mountain only proves it: three years in the making, it pairs an artist from the DBA roster with another from HausMo on each track, and in doing so manages to sound fizzily spontaneous....

Sure, Valentine’s Day often means drowning in candy hearts and teddy bears, but not all celebrations of love need to be so saccharine. This year the city has some more savory romantic offerings like a boozy brunch, lady arm wrestlers, and embarrassing entries from teenage diaries. Heart and Soul Valentine’s Day Brunch Kick off Valentine’s Day with a boozy brunch date at Logan Square’s Parts and Labor. The bar will be offering a full brunch menu and $5 “bleeding heart” pom-mosas, and there’s a live DJ set from the Windy City Soul Club....

Trophies You Deserve from I Am Home iamhome.us Though I feel I’ve accomplished a lot in my life, when I gaze upon my shelves I realize I don’t have much to show for it—though, yes, there’s my college diploma and that photograph of me with 1998 Olympic Gold medalist Tara Lipinski. Look, not everyone can be a “champion athlete” or an “award-winning filmmaker” or a “participant” amassing trophies and medals and other acknowledgments of success....

As the wind chill dipped below zero and the snow piled on last week, small teams of youth hit the streets of the 37th Ward. They fanned out across unplowed residential blocks of Austin, West Garfield Park, and West Humboldt Park to tell locals not to reelect incumbent alderman Emma Mitts. The teens, some of whom have been involved with the #NoCopAcademy campaign to prevent a $95 million police and fire training facility from being built in the ward, have organized under the hashtag #AnybodyButMitts....