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In a small courtroom on the third floor of a nondescript building in downtown Chicago on February 5, Judge Samuel B. Cole called case 849. Add the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the situation becomes untenable. Even as much of the country has shut down and many civil and criminal proceedings are on hold, immigration courts hearing cases for immigrants held in detention are still operating. This makes Cole and many of his colleagues furious....

Way back in the day, when no one ever would’ve thought that Marshall Field’s or the Sears Tower would change their names, all 28 of the Robert Taylor Homes buildings marched up and down State Street from 39th to 54th. The housing project’s high-rises shot up into the air, 16 stories, looming over apartment buildings, schools, and police stations. When you entered that way, you had to go through “the breezeway....

O n Friday, March 31, 1922, at a remote farm outside the Bavarian town of Kaifeck, someone slaughtered six people-the Gruber family and their maid-striking each one repeatedly on the head and face with a pickax. Four days later neighbors found the bodies. They also discovered that the farm and livestock had been well tended all weekend; the killer had apparently moved in for a while before vanishing. Still, West has assembled potent incidents into an explosive mix, as is her wont....

The Polka King, which is now available to stream on Netflix, easily could have been a condescending film; based on a 2009 documentary called The Man Who Would Be Polka King, it tells the story of Jan Lewan, a Polish-born, Pennsylvania-based polka singer and entrepreneur who, in the 1990s, embroiled his fans in a Ponzi scheme and raised nearly $5 million. Lewan’s music is tacky and the outfits he performs in even tackier; that he used the stolen money to fuel his career seems more pathetic than devious....

This sultry ‘fall’ weather means one thing and one thing only: you’re clinically proven to be better looking after a meal at Katana.” From a design standpoint the place is interesting. Within its 13,000 square feet squats a massive square bar and lounge where you can make eyes at everyone in the dining room, which sits beneath a huge atrium of blond wooden beams that gives you the sense that you’re a dumpling sweating in a giant bamboo steamer....

Like many people trying to make it through quarantine, I tried out a lot of different hobbies over the past year. I made a few loaves of bread, started seriously taking care of a plant, and I tried to perfect that TikTok whipped instant coffee more times than I’d like to admit. But the only one that outlasted its novelty was writing letters. In July, after watching Doug Nichol’s documentary California Typewriter, I picked up an electric typewriter I found for free on NextDoor, bought some stamps, and asked for people’s addresses in an attempt to find connection in this time of isolation....

In the four years since her previous solo album, singer and fiddler Sara Watkins has reunited with her old bandmates in Nickel Creek and led a veritable hootenanny of roots-music all-stars called the Watkins Family Hour with her guitarist brother Sean. Her bluegrass roots have given way to folk-pop gloss, and her record Young in All the Wrong Ways (New West), released this summer, suggests that other things have been afoot as well....

The most consequential Election Day in Chicago history is upon us, and many have held out on voting until the last possible minute. We’re with you. There are so many choices for mayor, and a host of competing candidates in many wards for alderman, too. Or maybe you’ve waited this long to vote because there’s a special something about voting on Election Day proper, when the buzz of the collective fulfillment of civic duty is thick in the air....

Experimental musician Serpentwithfeet (born Josiah Wise) is many things, including a man of his word. “Life’s gotta get easier / Can’t carry a heavy heart into another year,” he vows on “A Comma” from last April’s EP Apparition. If you take the new Deacon (Secretly Canadian) at face value, he hasn’t: the album is the artist’s most ecstatic release to date. But like much of his output, the record has a promise at its surface that masks layers of depth underneath....

In the late 70s and early 80s, British five-piece Spandau Ballet helped drive the short-lived but influential New Romantic movement, which was strongly identified with London nightclub the Blitz. A kid who hadn’t absorbed punk’s antipathy to Ziggy Stardust-style glitz and androgyny could find them flourishing among the fashion-­focused crowd at the Blitz, where Spandau Ballet played chilly, melodic postpunk inspired by Kraftwerk and Frank Sinatra. In 1983 young folks who’d never set foot in the club flocked to the band thanks to the international success of the gossamer, R&B-­influenced ballad “True,” the title track of their third album....

In a review of Con Todo el Mundo (Dead Oceans), the second album by Khruangbin, Pitchfork writer Erin MacLeod observed that the instrumental Texas trio makes “music for the Spotify era.” Streaming services give listeners an entire globe of sounds to pick through, and the members of the band haven’t been cagey about where their numerous influences comes from—the same review notes the presence of vintage Thai pop music the group injested from MP3 blog Monrakplengthai....

Last Wednesday Benjamin Netanyahu was reelected as Israel’s prime minister, set to serve an unprecedented fifth term. Leading up to his victory, Netanyahu promised to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank, diminishing hope even further for the future of a Palestinian state. Our country’s mainstream news media—which, like many of those in power, favor an Israeli perspective—play down Netanyahu’s transgressions, thus depriving many Americans the chance to see their impact on the Palestinian people....

Ka Pow” is the accidental way Ocimum tenuiflorum, aka holy basil, aka ใบกะเพรา, aka ka-prao, announces its presence among the produce at Talard Thai Asian Market. All that’s missing on the label is an exclamation point and the clenched fist of a superhero to communicate the seriousness of this intoxicating green herb’s arrival in Edgewater, where Supasin “Pete” Ratchadapronvanich and Simon Atapan have opened a dedicated Thai market—let’s call it a supermarket—the scale and ambition of which the city hasn’t enjoyed since the closing of the beloved Thai Grocery almost 12 years ago....

Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 isn’t what you’d call an easy read. And I ought to know–as of this writing, I’ve gotten only about halfway through it. Published in Spanish following the Chilean novelist’s death in 2003 and translated into English by Natasha Wimmer in 2008, the book is epic and eerie, at times the sort of nightmare vision you’d expect from Franz Kafka if he were Latin American and read the newspaper....

One of the most absurdly delicious things I’ve eaten this winter was a humongous lump of deep-fried chicken breast with a core of molten cheese from Hot Star Large Fried Chicken, a Taiwanese chain with several outposts in and around Toronto and Los Angeles. It’s the kind of thing that blinds you to how truly bad for you it is until your greasy paws are empty, there’s cheese dripping down your chin, and you want to fall over and die....

Transient founder Chris Betts with some of the barrels in which his beers acquire their special qualities As much as it must suck to make beer that nobody cares about, making beer that rivets the attention of bottle-trading nerds comes with its own aggravations. Count yourself lucky if you’ve never seen a full-grown man whining like a spoiled child in an attempt to guilt a brewer or shop manager into parting with a small-batch bottle that’s reserved for someone else....

More often than not, I’m obliged to organize my listening around release dates and live performances—I spend time with music that I’m writing about, either to preview a show or review a new album. The problem with this is that it leaves too few hours to check out stuff that I don’t have a pressing reason to get to. Recently I found myself with a chance to grab something that was released back in May and dig into it, and I’m very glad I did....

The gig poster of the week is about a real gig again! At least for now! This week’s poster incorporates an undated photograph from the Rebuild Foundation’s Edward J. Williams Collection, which was donated to the cultural arts organization by Williams, a banker and Chicagoan. The collection contains thousands of objects and artifacts that depict stereotypical images of Black people. Not everybody can make a fantasy gig poster, of course, but it’s simple and free to take action through the website of the National Independent Venue Association—click here to tell your representatives to save our homegrown music ecosystems....

Guitarist Li Jianhong is fairly unknown in the U.S., but he’s one of the most important experimental musicians in China. Like Sonic Youth and Japanese rock collective Ghost, he straddles and/or blasts his way across the line between psychedelic rock and exploratory noise; he also frequently incorporates a spiritual component inspired by Buddhism and traditional Chinese art. The tracks on his latest album, Father, and a Wild Trail Zigzagging Down, were recorded in 2018 at various venues on his first European tour, and together they make for a lovely summation of his range and focus....

British singer Dua Lipa released her second album, Future Nostalgia, on March 27—a week earlier than she originally planned, but right on schedule to give the world a much-needed dose of bubblegum poptimism. The title track opens with a promise: “You want a timeless track, I want to change the game.” From there, the album’s 11 songs blend disco beats and 80s synths in a throwback sound that channels late-night dance clubs and Jazzercise classes....