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What sucks the most about having to hunt down a paybox on a Sunday and surrender your credit card to it (or punching up a prepaid mobile app) is the hideous specter it’ll summon of Mayor Richard M. Daley and his infamous parking privatization deal of 2008 (extensively covered in the Reader by Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke). Rahm Emanuel, running to succeed Daley, promised to remedy this disaster, but then a weird thing happened: when activists challenged it in court, Mayor Emanuel’s city lawyers wound up arguing in the lease’s defense....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. But a puzzle can get to be like a fever, and it will run its course. Later, Weschler introduces a D-type pattern, then strings of digits representing the last 400 years and which pattern each year follows. The piece resembles a 400-level college mathematics textbook, and ends on a startling note....

When I suggest to Shane Merrill that the hardcore festival he founded might have some similarities with This Is Hardcore—the enormous three-day spectacular in Philadelphia booked by “Joe Hardcore” McKay—he gives me a wry laugh. The head honcho of Empire Productions, who started the Rumble in 2010, came up in the potent late-90s Chicago hardcore scene, and he’s founded several bands over the years, including the Killer (in 2001) and most recently Young & Dead (in 2013)....

UPDATE Wednesday, March 18: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Lauren Demerath rages, leers, screams, flirts, and, best of all, sings her way through an unforgettable turn in the title role of Jacqueline Stone’s unique new musical adaptation of the 1891 Henrik Ibsen play, Hedda Gabler: A Play With Live Music. A newly-married woman returns from a honeymoon abroad already bored with her milquetoast academic of a husband (Huy Nguyen) and plots to wreak havoc in the lives of acquaintances and old loves just to feel alive....

On a recent Wednesday afternoon in “Freedom Square,” pedestrians take refuge from the scorching heat in a hospitality tent stocked with campaign petitions, snacks, and a cooler of bottled water. A few kids dabble in watercolor painting, while adults empty trash and slice meat and vegetables for grilling. Curious community members approach to ask what has compelled these activists to brave the summer elements as long as they have. Colón and her brother, Damon Williams, drew inspiration for Freedom Square and their collective from the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri....

Next month south-side rapper Lil Durk will release his debut studio album, Remember My Name. It’s been several years in the making: Durk signed to Def Jam in 2012 when drill burst out of Chicago’s underground, went on to ink a deal with French Montana’s Coke Boys in 2013, and dropped a few mixtapes while slowly working towards the eventual release of Remember My Name. As his appearance on last year’s XXL Freshman cover suggests, he’s a rapper on the rise, one whose nonmusical notoriety has also climbed....

Like many Americans, I was awestruck by images of the historic Belarusian protests against President Alexander Lukashenko (“Europe’s last dictator”) that exploded after the country’s August elections. But reports of police brutality from Belarus—and the growing chorus of international academics and reporters warning that Americans could soon find themselves in a similar spot—added sinister, unsettling overtones to those inspiring photos of mass rallies standing against corruption. In late August, Minsk postpunk trio Molchat Doma joined 23 other artists from various countries on the compilation For Belarus, a Bandcamp-only benefit for the Belarus Solidarity Foundation, and on their new third album, Monument, they maintain their indefatigable spirit, threading together influences from Russian rock and Western groups such as Joy Division and Depeche Mode....

The Noir City: Chicago film festival—which starts tonight, Friday, August 19, and continues through Thursday, August 25, at the Music Box—will feature new 35-millimeter prints of several rare and little-seen noir titles, including the Frank Sinatra musical Meet Danny Wilson (1952), the Tony Curtis boxing drama Flesh and Fury (1952), and Humphrey Bogart’s final film, The Harder They Fall (1956). As a writer and film historian, Rode has authored two books: Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy, published in 2008, and Sit on the Camera and Fight Like a Tiger: The Life and Times of Michael Curtiz, which is set for publication in 2017....

Within a block of Homan Square Park, Google Maps becomes unnecessary: all you need to do to find Project sWish is follow the small herds of sweaty-shirted teenagers in gym shorts and stuffing their faces with Beggars pizza, forming a spotty trail to the gymnasium inside the field house. Barely a block southeast of the park, on the corner of Homan and Fillmore, sits the infamous CPD evidence and interrogation facility that made headlines around the world after the Guardian reported it was being used by the department to unlawfully detain, torture, and disappear more than 7,000 people....

A few years ago Robert Plant returned to England, where he reunited with some of his trusted bandmates and forged some new bonds. During his fruitful stay in the U.S. he immersed himself in country roots, and since going home his records have shown a kind of syncretic approach that melds the various threads his curiosity has pulled him toward over his career. Last year’s Carry Fire (Nonesuch) retains the restrained, soulful approach he’s embraced since first collaborating with Alison Krauss more than a decade ago....

For ages eternal, the sign in the window of the Montrose Avenue Culver’s read “Coming Soon.” Every time I got off at that Brown Line stop, the false promise taunted me. Time must move differently for frozen custard magnates than it does for mere mortals. Until now, there were only two Culver’s locations in the city limits. From my north side apartment, both required CTA transfers. Over the years, I’ve grown skilled at tagging along on suburban car rides and cajoling my way into a Culver’s drive thru....

Listening to some of the tracks on the new Act Surprised (Dangerbird/Fire), Sebadoh’s ninth studio album, you could almost imagine yourself back in 1992. But though the band’s signature lo-fi sound remains, their lyrics place them squarely in the present. Perhaps that’s the logical progression for Sebadoh, which formed as a duo in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1988. After releasing three albums and more than half a dozen EPs in just a few years, the messily prolific group signed with Sub Pop in 1992 and became critical darlings during the grunge era....

Throughout the years, Israeli techno producer Maayan Nidam—who’s been based in Berlin since 2004—has juggled a variety of pseudonyms, including Laverne Radix, Miss Fitz, and Spunky Brewster, along with collaborative musical projects, such as Mara Trax, the Waves & Us, and the Kicks. These various names and configurations have given her flexibility in terms of her approach to electronic music. The music she’s released under her given name skews minimal, and her forceful use of the empty space adds shape to its distinct personality....

Q: I’m a 31-year-old female. Last week I suddenly started to experience an overwhelming, compulsive, and near-constant state of physical arousal. I’ve masturbated so much looking for relief that my entire lower region is super sore and swollen and still, it’s like my whole body is pulsating with this electric arousal telling me to ignore the pain and do it again. I have no idea if it’s normal to suddenly have such a spike in libido and I know a lot of people will say they wish they had this problem but it’s interfering with my daily activities because I can’t focus on anything else....

At last May’s unveiling of preliminary designs for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, Barack Obama voiced support for boldly reconfiguring the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed green space to make it more people friendly. The proposal calls for converting most of Cornell Drive, a road through the park that ballooned to six lanes during the urban renewal era, to parkland between 59th and 67th Streets to connect the presidential center site to the rest of the lagoon-filled natural area....

At the end of 2019 the Reader profiled Weedman, who runs a local cannabis delivery business. Back then the biggest threat to his livelihood was the impending legalization of recreational pot in Illinois. Weedman wasn’t worried, though, and even expected his business to improve as weed use was normalized and people tired of paying top dollar and standing in line at dispensaries. Now, as a threat to life itself hangs in the still city air, Weedman’s still pretty zen....

Steve McQueen in Bullitt, which contains one of the most famous chases in movie history I didn’t acknowledge it in my review of Mad Max: Fury Road, but one reason I love the film is that it contains so many chase sequences. I’m especially partial to a good chase, as I spent a few years at a job where chasing people was a regular part of my day, and now that several years have passed since I’ve had to pursue anyone, I get a little nostalgic for the activity when I see it onscreen....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Revolutionary soul-jazz group the Awakening, which included several AACM affiliates (and appeared in a previous Secret History), enlisted Brown for its two groundbreaking albums, released via the Black Jazz label in 1972 and ’73. Sadly, in 1974 Brown suffered a major setback: a terrible car crash in which he lost several teeth....

I don’t remember exactly what year it was when I first heard French band Les Rita Mitsouko. I do remember that it was thanks to one of the wizards at WZRD—late one night in the early 90s, somebody played an entire side of the band’s 1986 album, The No Comprendo. Perhaps whoever it was just needed to duck out of the booth for a smoke break, but this mystery DJ made me a fan of the band’s mix of punk sensibilities and jazz-influenced synth-pop....

José Rico and Pilar Audair-Reed of Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Greater Chicago. These principles of solidarity operate with the necessary awareness that the freedoms of Black and Brown Chicagoans are bound together, even as racial injustice affects each community in unique ways; we cannot achieve equity while we are being killed by police or criminalized and separated from our families. This calls for a principle of solidarity to value and provide health care for our most vulnerable residents....