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Omelets alongside tortas and Polish sausages, pink lemonade next to agua fresca de pepino, Valentina hot sauce next to Heinz ketchup. At Park View Diner in Pilsen, owner Martha Solis and her son Nelson Perez have been serving a blend of cultures for more than three decades. Nearly eight months later, the diner’s business had started picking back up, thanks in part to the city of Chicago’s partial reopening that allowed restaurants to seat at 25 percent capacity with social distancing....

DIY space Situations has been around since 2010—long enough that it’s hard to remember Chicago without it. But at the end of October, this Logan Square hub for uncompromising underground art and music will shut down—the landlord is selling the building, and the current tenants have to vacate. Residents and organizers will say farewell with a 24-hour virtual Halloween blowout that starts at 12 AM on Saturday, October 31, and ends at 12 AM on November 1....

The 1973 Broadway hit A Little Night Music is the third in a string of innovative musicals that composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director Harold Prince created in the 70s. The first two shows, Company and Follies, had offered a skeptical, even depressing view of middle-aged married life. In Night Music, Sondheim, Prince, and playwright Hugh Wheeler took a lighter approach. Based on filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 Smiles of a Summer Night, this is a wryly comic yet wistfully sentimental tale of sexual intrigue, complete with that rarity in the Sondheim canon: a happy ending....

As the numbers of the vaccinated grow and the icicles melt and crash, the twin angst-inducing events of pandemic shutdown and plain old everyday cabin fever seem to recede like the snow cover on the ground. (Memo to pet owners: please pick up after your furry friends!) That production schedule is on hold for now, but meantime 16th Street is producing digital work by the members. Maher’s piece runs free on March 4 through 16th Street’s website....

California-born Chicagoan cellist Alison Chesley, aka Helen Money, studied at Northwestern, played in 90s indie-rock band Verbow, and often collaborates with the likes of Sanford Parker, Bruce Lamont, and Russian Circles. As a solo artist she’s cut her own road through the hills of heavy music, drone, and avant-garde. Her brand-new album, Atomic (Thrill Jockey), is a personal statement on readjusting to the world after the deaths of her parents; it’s about the tension of embracing grief as the new normal while also holding it at arm’s length (and cello bow’s length)....

In April, two major news stories broke that assumed new trends in COVID-19 victims. The first is the “new kind of patient” according to CNN: young, previously healthy, and now sick or even hospitalized with COVID. The number of these patients has been increasing nationwide, especially in Michigan. The second story pertains to young children who have lost parents to COVID. And as the Journal of the American Medical Association – Pediatrics recently explained, these children will need social and psychological support for years to come....

Some relatively upbeat news on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra strike front: After a break—and after a letter earlier this week from the musicians to the CSO Board of Trustees—negotiations between management and the orchestra were set to resume Friday. Among the points made by the musicians in their letter, including issues of “mission and funding drift,” was this: “Let us be clear, this is not just about us. With many of the musicians already vested, our concern is truly about the future of the Orchestra—its ability to retain and attract great talent—a concern shared by Maestro Muti, Daniel Barenboim, and many of the world’s other finest orchestras and leaders....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, this show has been postponed until further notice. Ticket holders can contact the point of purchase for refund or exchange information. New York-based rock band Habibi can make any show, even one in the last weeks of winter, feel like a humid summer day spent lounging around and eating good food with friends—the good shit. Their music draws from surf rock and chipper 60s girl groups, and though it’s sweet, it never feels saccharine....

One evening early last December, some 20 dinner guests sat at a candlelit table in a converted Logan Square factory loft eating carnitas with red mole infused with NYC Sour Diesel, a strain of cannabis known for its relaxing, euphoric effects. Next came chilaquiles with kale salsa, soubise crema, roasted mushrooms, and smoked habanero cheddar with a smoked guajillo oil infused with a cross strain of AC/DC and Haze. Due to its low THC levels, the last has little psychoactive effect, but thanks to a high concentration of cannabidiol, aka CBD, it’s good for relief from anxiety and chronic pain....

“Melodrama” has become something of a pejorative term for many of my colleagues, but I still see it as a neutral descriptor. The genre is associated with heightened emotions and blatant narrative contrivances; some viewers (and critics) scoff at these qualities, but I think they’re no more inherently silly than any of the tropes we associate with modern horror or action films. Moreover, I think they remain, when applied thoughtfully, useful tools for understanding the human condition....

Several bands call themselves High Priest, but we’re here to talk about the homegrown Chicago four-piece, who debuted in 2016 with the five-song EP Consecration. Last spring, they put out a new four-track EP, Sanctum (Magnetic Eye), which draws from the heavy trends of the past three decades—though it feels timeless in its no-nonsense approach to heavy-riffing stoner rock, which they top with bursts of harmony vocals laden with a generous dose of grunge’s yearning heart....

There’s a joke among municipal government nerds that goes something like this: A guy’s running for treasurer and he goes to lunch with a bunch of business people who ask him all sorts of questions about how he’ll invest pension funds and manage the city’s cash flow. He says, “Wait a minute, I’m running for treasurer, not deputy treasurer!” Still, Belsky says there’s a benefit to the city when the treasurer takes a more public role, even if it’s mostly symbolic....

Leor Galil: Saturday was all about joy. The sight of RP Boo smiling as he busted out a fierce mix of footwork tracks while attendees on the ground danced hard enough to kick up dirt in the air; the reunited Digable Planets slipping into their classic 90s cuts like they’d just perfected them yesterday; a quasi-symphonic version of Circuit Des Yeux slowly building a melody that seemed to reach for the heavens....

Sabaton are celebrating their 20th year of existence in style. The Swedish power-metal band kicked off 2019 with the launch of their own YouTube channel, which focuses on the history that fuels their songwriting, and in July they released their ninth album, the World War I-inspired The Great War. Sabaton are no stranger to exploring such landmark events through their music; previous records have focused on World War II (2010’s Coat of Arms), the rise and fall of the Swedish empire (2012’s Carolus Rex), and noteworthy final stands throughout military history (2016’s The Last Stand)....

Courtesy of Moniker Records Ono Back in January, local live sound engineer and Anatomy of Habit bassist Kenny Rasmussen hosted a free, all-ages, Saturday-afternoon punk show at Bridgeport’s Richard J. Daley Branch Chicago Public Library in an effort to take underground music out of bars and make it available to people who usually can’t make it out to late-night gigs. The show was a rousing success, packed with punk-rock dads and their little kids enjoying sets from Radar Eyes, Toupee, and Den....

Led by Jon Langford of the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, Chicago alt-country band the Pine Valley Cosmonauts have covered plenty of ground in their quarter century or so of existence: they’ve made tribute albums for icons such as Bob Wills and Johnny Cash, spearheaded a series of death-themed covers compilations called The Executioner’s Last Songs, and provided backing for solo musicians, including Chicago folkie Kelly Hogan and Chumbawamba cofounder Danbert Nobacon....

“Blow Up: Inflatable Contemporary Art” and Birth Death Breath: An Inflatable Opera by Diane Christiansen and Jeanne Dunning September 10-November 27 “Every Building in Baghdad: The Rifat Chadirji Archives at the Arab Image Foundation” September 15-December 31 The fifth annual edition of this contemporary-art showcase displays artwork from 140 international galleries underneath Navy Pier’s roof. But the highlight might be “Override,” for which artists (including Sanford Biggers, Vik Muniz, and Cheryl Pope) were commissioned to work on 28 billboards all across the city....

The Stony Island Arts Bank may soon be the trendiest place to meet for a drink on the south side. The Arts Bank has been closed to the public since January while the renovation was under way, but it will reopen Saturday with its part of a three-gallery exhibition, “Out of Easy Reach,” that features abstract artists who are women of color. (The other galleries are the DePaul Art Museum and UIC’s Gallery 400....

Few things age as quickly as topical satire, especially in an age of unrestrained Twitter bursts and 24-hour news cycles. Trump in Space, a toothless political satire created a couple years ago by the LA branch of Second City (book and lyrics by Landon Kirksey and Gillian Bellinger, music by Sam Johnides and Tony Gonzalez) and now revived here, is a case in point. Back in 2017, this show won an award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival....

Q: Why are threesomes much more accepted in the popular imagination than foursomes? I was just googling “finding foursomes” and the first result is an article about threesomes that takes for granted that people are looking for MFF. That is a form of heteronormativity, right? I am not judging threesomes, of course, but asking why foursomes are perceived as more taboo. Would be interested in knowing more about what you think about this or if you have any resources to recommend as I am approaching this now with my partner for the first time....