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Not only is 2020 the Year of Chicago Music, it’s also the 35th year for the nonprofit Arts & Business Council of Chicago (A&BC), which provides business expertise and training to creatives and their organizations citywide. To celebrate, the A&BC has launched the #ChiMusic35 campaign at ChiMusic35.com, which includes a public poll to determine the consensus 35 greatest moments in Chicago music history as well as a raffle to benefit the A&BC’s work supporting creative communities struggling with the impact of COVID-19 in the city’s disinvested neighborhoods....

In two-way radio speak, “10/9” means “please repeat.” That’s exactly what Christina Peck and Nico Deportago-Cabrera, former and current Chicago bike messengers, respectively, did at the North American Cycle Courier Championships in New York City earlier this month. I caught up with these speedy folks last week to discuss their achievements, and the state of the courier industry. A cool head was definitely needed for the final championship race, held Sunday afternoon on 17 blocks of Bushwick, Brooklyn, which the city rendered car-free for the occasion....

Seeking: A good-hearted woman Occupation: Teamster What do you do when you’re not working? His friend says: “He will help anyone out in a jam. He’s half tough guy half really goofy dude.” Spend time with friends, read nonfiction books and novels, and see live music. Smoker? No. Pets? No, but I’m an animal lover. Dietary restrictions? None. Children? Religion? Not religious. What’s your idea of the perfect Chicago date?...

Curious Theatre Branch touts its annual Rhinofest as “Chicago’s longest-running fringe festival,” and that’s been true for the longest time. But in putting together edition number 27 this year, coartistic directors Beau O’Reilly and Jenny Magnus may have inadvertently broken the streak. Although it’s hard—and maybe foolish—to set rules for an event as inherently various as a fringe festival, every one I’ve ever heard of is moderately to completely wide open....

I wish I were prescient enough to have predicted that a boom in southern and soul food was coming our way, a welcome respite from the relentless Italian-food invasion. We have good southern food here and there, both high and low end, but the depth and breadth of regional southern cooking has yet to be thoroughly explored, which is hard to fathom given Chicago’s strong connections to the south. Most of the shrimp I tried at Luella’s was remarkably good, fat and sweet, swimming in a buttery New Orleans-style barbecue preparation (not actually barbecued) and resting in a pool of ultracreamy grits....

Q: My son is straight, cute, accomplished, 25, and has friends. He’s never been kissed. I suspect he’s terrified. I can’t talk to him about it. Should his dad talk to him? Should he go to a sex worker? Would this undermine his confidence? Q: I am familiar with demisexuality—the idea that some people cannot develop a sexual relationship without an emotional or a romantic bond first—but what about the opposite phenomenon?...

Well, we had a busy summer, didn’t we? No sooner had everybody caught their breath after the Profiles Theatre harassment scandal, with its satisfyingly dramatic climax (storefront windows plastered over with copies of the Reader cover story, Profiles abruptly shuttered), than we were confronted with another controversy: Porchlight Music Theatre announced that the lead role of Usnavi in its new staging of In the Heights would be played by Jack DeCesare....

One day, when Uptown resident and freelance photographer Paul Octavious was shooting in his apartment, he saw young Black children walk by his window and stare at him while he worked. As a self-taught photographer who wasn’t exposed to the art form as a child, seeing these children watch him lit a light bulb: How could he help open the door of photography to Black folks wanting an outlet to be creative and document their communities?...

Englewood rapper Dre Izaya has recently emerged as part of a loose collective of pop, R&B, soul, and hip-hop artists associated with Loop Theory, a local indie artist-development and management company founded by producer Disrupt and rapper Navarro. (The agency also releases music by the artists on its roster.) Last year, Loop Theory put together a big rollout for the October debut of rapper Brittney Carter, As I Am, and with the arrival of Izaya’s new I Fall Apart When They Leave, the label is finishing a one-two punch....

Gneshnabem ne? Do you speak Bodewadmimwen? Last month the Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s language department released a pair of tools to help preserve its highly-endangered language: an online searchable dictionary and a series of free online, self-paced Bodewadmimwen language courses for both adults and children. The dictionary features more than 8,500 words, their definitions and pronunciations, as well as audio recordings so you can hear exactly how each word is pronounced by a native speaker and video clips that highlight their cultural significance....

On Sunday night at Constellation, celebrated New York-based new-music group Mivos Quartet will premiere Chain Reactions/Five Events by composer and electronic musician Sam Pluta, who moved to Chicago a little over a year ago to become an assistant professor of music at the University of Chicago. The concert doubles as a release event for Broken Symmetries (Carrier), Pluta’s second album devoted to his own compositions. You might expect Pluta to promote the show by foregrounding the significance of Chain Reactions, which brings together his practices as a composer, improviser, and performer—or to point out that it appears on Broken Symmetries, alongside three more electroacoustic works (performers on the album include Mivos, Wet Ink Ensemble, violinist Josh Modney, and flutist Anne La Berge)....

A parking lot lined with dirty snowbanks lit by fluorescent street lamps and populated by a minivan with its doors and roof removed takes up the entirety of Strawdog Theatre’s stage. The set looks tailor-made for a Hellcab update; what Bennett Fisher presents instead is a tortuous lecture about fanaticism and class and race relations in America. Hassan is a Somali-American airport shuttle driver so bad at his job that he’s forced to live in his van because he can no longer afford an apartment....

On July 12, 1979, a crateful of disco records was blown up in the middle of Comiskey Park, fans victoriously stormed the field, and the world was forever changed. Disco, an inescapable pop-music phenomenon, was finally quashed. Teenagers took back the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll they cherished so dearly. And it was all thanks to the greatest promotional stunt in the history of FM radio. When he gets the chance, Hoekstra does try to make Disco Demolition a more rounded, less one-sided account....

As the keyboardist of Indiana roots-rock group Houndmouth, Katie Toupin was mostly in the background. But when she got a turn at singing, such as on the band’s 2012 single “Houston Train,” she was mesmerizing. Her voice is sharp, harsh, and perfect—think Iris Dement with more swagger. Listening to that track, you had to wonder why she wasn’t performing on her own. Sure enough, she left Houndmouth in 2016 and swapped her keys for a guitar as the leader of her own band....

Six years after she disappeared from her Detroit home, a girl called Sophie (Clara Byczkowksi) turns up at a homeless shelter in Canada. She’s 17. She doesn’t remember much about her past beyond her name. The little girl lost is now found, and her family rejoices. Barbara Lhota’s new play Girl Found begins with the happy ending, then explores its dark origins and aftermath. The troubles begin to reveal themselves from the moment Ellie (Katherine Swan) arrives at the shelter to retrieve Sophie: Ellie is Sophie’s aunt and legal guardian....

I discovered marijuana-infused bath products on a hazy trip to Portland in 2016. Taking advantage of my first visit to a state where recreational marijuana is legal, I greedily snapped up every THC-endowed product my arms could carry: Marijuana gummies! Pot tea! Cannabis cupcakes! Weed honey! At the (now closed) Pur Roots Dispensary in Northeast Portland, my eyes settled on the bath and beauty products enclosed in a glass case....

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Summer Series performed at the Harris Theater June 6 through 9 was a sleek and futuristic vision: two recent ensemble pieces by Harris’s first choreographer in residence, Brian Brooks, and HSDC’s first and former resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo bookending two 2010 duets by Canadian phenom Crystal Pite. Costuming throughout was democratic, androgynous, and virtually anonymous: everyone wore pants, not a frill to be seen, and not much color either....

In summer 2017, rapper Kitty, who’d gone viral via Soundcloud earlier in the decade, released Miami Garden Club, her long-awaited crowd-funded debut album, which captured her shift away from the quirky rhymes of her early tunes and toward dreamy bedroom pop. Kitty toured on that record alongside her husband Sam Ray, a like-minded musician who makes beat-heavy, hazy synth soundscapes under the name Ricky Eat Acid. It seemed inevitable that the two would eventually come together for a full-on collaboration, and in September they released a self-titled, five-song EP as the Pom-Poms....

As a child of separated parents, I can attest that when you’re younger it’s hard to see both sides of the argument. Hell, it’s hard seeing any side that isn’t yours—the confusion and the pain that come with this transition are stronger than anything you’ve felt so far. It’s easy, then, to blame one parent for the fallout over the other. But as you mature, it becomes easier to view divorce with more sympathy for both parties....

The hothouse of Chicago’s 1990s no-wave scene gave rise to lots of jarringly idiosyncratic bands, but the Scissor Girls may have been the most memorable of the bunch. Formed in 1991 by bassist and vocalist Azita Youssefi, drummer Heather Melowic, and guitarist Sue Anne Zollinger (who left in 1993, replaced in ’94 by Kelly Kuvo), they released two albums, a handful of singles, and a ten-inch EP before breaking up in 1996—and in that short time they exploded the “rock trio” format by making conventional instruments sound like nonmusical objects or even abstractions: How did Youssefi’s bass wobble and waver like a rubber band?...