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People have been doing the work in Chicago for years. For decades. For entire lifetimes. The city itself was built on activism—it cannot be stated enough that this is nothing new. And in 2020 nothing slowed down. If anything, the year allowed even more people to realize just how angry they were and turn to community stalwarts to finally do something about it. Endless resource sharing on social media gave folks the tools to safely attend protests, call or e-mail representatives, have tough conversations with family members, provide supplies for people in need, and unlearn harmful practices....

This week local underground electronic label Clear released Counter-Factuals, a brooding techno 12-inch from producer Jason Letkiewicz, better known as Steve Summers. Summers made his name pumping out subterranean techno in Brooklyn, but he now lives in Chicago—where he’s collaborating with folks who understand his dark streak. He joined Melvin “Traxx” Oliphant III and Beau Wanzer in Mutant Beat Dance, turning the duo into a trio in time for their sprawling, self-titled 2018 debut....

On July 15, 1957, officers from the Cook County Sheriff’s office, a squad of journalists, and three U.S. Marine sergeants arrived at the banks of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal near Route 83, northeast of Lemont. The Marines were veterans of the Korean War, including one of nine survivors of a 32-man combat team. After four weeks of undercover work involving deputies dressing as hobos, the Cook County Sheriff’s office arrested seven men in September 1949 for cultivating a 25-acre lot not far from the plot the Marines would torch in 1957....

Q: I’m a 45-year-old straight male. Politically and socially, I consider myself an ardent feminist. There is nothing I enjoy more than giving a woman an orgasm or two. I’m very GGG and will cheerfully do whatever it takes. Fingers, tongue, cock, vibrator—I’m in. If it takes a long time, so much the better. I’m OK with all of that. Now and again, though, I really like a quickie, a good old-fashioned “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!...

When Blackstar came out in January 2016, I got my hopes up. Maybe, just maybe, this new album meant that David Bowie would go on tour. I made a promise to myself that I would spend anything—sell anything, take out a loan, do anything—for the chance to see Bowie live. Of course those hopes were dashed when just two days later the Starman died, and I’ve spent a lot of time since wondering what it would have been like to be in the presence of such an amazing performer and artist, how it must have felt to see him in his prime....

Among the matches burning in the dumpster fire of U.S. immigration is the system of chutes and ladders facing foreign artists. To make a long, very complicated story short: Overseas artists who want to stay in the U.S. without obtaining a U.S. spouse— or those who’ve already married another foreign national—must apply every three years for an artists visa. This is also known as the O1B: Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement....

Chicago history is black history—the city was founded by a black man, after all, and we have a regional library named for the father of what has become Black History Month—so it’s no surprise that we go big in February, with events nearly every day. All year: The opening event is sold out, but more programming is planned throughout 2019 about race and journalism, segregation and public education, literature, and more....

There’s been jazz in Chicago for nearly as long as there’s been jazz. While jazz is commonly said to have ridden the rails to Chicago around 1916, when the Great Migration of African Americans from the south to the north kicked into gear, Dixieland bandleader Wilbur Sweatman had played gigs on the city’s south side as early as 1908, and Jelly Roll Morton first landed here in 1914. So while it’s undeniably a shame that the citywide festivities called Chicago in Tune, originally scheduled for spring 2020, have been diminished and delayed, the resilience and longevity of Chicago jazz ensure that the music will swing right out of the pandemic....

Our country has always privileged the powerful—a group that, historically and presently, has consisted almost exclusively of straight white men. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve only intensified their avaricious push to feed the rest of us into the grinder in order to prop up a broken, inhumane economic system. It can feel cartoonishly surreal to watch the government of the wealthiest country in the world use bullying and extortion to force schools to reopen when that’s likely to cause catastrophic spikes in COVID deaths, while hospitality workers who can’t afford to stay home risk their own health and that of everyone close to them in order to serve the affluent, say, a pastry that looks like a coronavirus particle....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, October 3, 2017. Robin Kelly to Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Most guns used in Chicago shootings come from out of state U.S. representative Robin Kelly told White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that most guns used in homicides and shootings in Chicago come from outside Illinois, especially Indiana and Wisconsin. “More than ½ of #CHI crime guns come from outside IL, mostly from @VP’s IN & @SpeakerRyan’s WI....

In late January, I got my hands on an advance of Forever Drifting, the first full-length LP by local postpunk duo Foul Tip. These guys have been around since 2008, and a record as dense and well-rounded as this—it’s a massive but minimal slab of heavy, introspective melodies—makes it feel like all the work they’ve done over those years has paid off. Foul Tip celebrate the release of Forever Drifting (out via Captcha Records) with a free Monday show at the Empty Bottle on March 28, with openers Paper Mice, Lil Tits, and the Christmas Bride....

Chicago hip-hop is closing out its biggest decade on the international stage with some remarkable releases and dramatic moves on the charts. Yet the mainstream press has rarely reflected the reality on the ground here, instead focusing on obviously popular figures such as Chance the Rapper and Kanye West (both of whom dropped albums this year that I’ve mostly forgotten). And though the media finally caught up with Juice Wrld as soon as his second album, Death Race for Love, debuted atop the Billboard 200, I saw far more coverage of his unexpected death earlier this month (and of the still-emerging details surrounding his run-in with the feds in the last moments of his life) than of his music....

If there’s a workable drama within the rambling, under-rehearsed confines of playwright/director Eli Newell’s Cold Town/Hotline, it hasn’t yet emerged. This is one of those shows where the plot wouldn’t exist if any single character behaved in any way remotely resembling human reality. Newell would have us believe that a group of adults volunteering at a counseling hotline would be so frightened by a prepubescent 11-year-old’s ridiculously awful “karate” moves that they’d allow themselves to be held hostage by said child....

Ten pairs of lovers, ten pairs of strangers. This musical is a La Ronde adaptation, meaning it performs the same cyclical game as Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play about ten interlocking sets of romantic partners: the whore tosses a freebie to the soldier, who trifles with the nurse, who seduces the college boy, who leads the businessman’s young wife astray, on down the line until the whore returns and the circle is complete....

“HOMO.” That’s what the flyers would say, in four-inch-tall letters—dozens of them, stapled to lampposts, telephone poles, and bulletin boards in and around the Wicker Park neighborhood. Beneath that, they would add “CORE,” accompanied by a list of bands, a venue, and a date. It was the early 90s, and young queer punks Joanna Brown and Mark Freitas used those flyers to announce the kinds of shows they’d always dreamed of attending: rowdy all-ages rock nights where it was OK to be gay....

One indication that Lori Lightfoot is not your standard politician came at the end of the Chicago Teachers Union’s forum in December, when mayoral candidates were offered the chance to ask each other questions. Like most of the other candidates in the race, she’s never held elected office, but she does have an extensive background in government—in her case, in criminal justice and as a troubleshooter in some of the city’s most challenging agencies....

F or years, Keith Huff was your typical Chicago playwright, slogging along with script after script at storefront after storefront. Then, in 2007, he came up with A Steady Rain—the tale of two corrupt Chicago police detectives forced to confront their criminal incompetence—and all that changed. A Steady Rain went to Broadway in 2009, with a cast consisting of Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig; by 2010, Huff was writing for AMC’s Mad Men....

The world is littered with adaptations of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, but the Greek myth is just a seed for the creator-directors of Rooming House, Julia Rhoads of Lucky Plush Productions and Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, a cofounder of 500 Clown. Over its brisk 75 minutes their light-footed, sometimes cheeky production grows into something expansive and challenging, exploring deeper aspects of storytelling and human behavior through Lucky Plush’s signature blend of insight and play....

Outlaw country first pulled out of the truck stop almost half a century ago now, but you wouldn’t know the genre was middle-aged (and often paunchy) from listening to the Brothers Osborne. The Maryland duo has the spirit—and at least some of the facial hair—of the men who played outlaw country in the 70s, making a groovy, dusty blend of southern-fried rock, soul, and the Grand Ole Opry. “Weed, Whisky, and Willie,” off the 2018 album Port Saint Joe (EMI Nashville), locks into one of those easy Waylon grooves as T....

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news briefing. Spokesman: Durbin has credibility, GOP senator Perdue does not Ben Marter, a spokesman for Senator Dick Durbin, attacked Republican senator David Perdue for saying that he did not hear President Donald Trump refer to African countries as “shithole countries” in a closed-door meeting on immigration Thursday. “Credibility is something that’s built by being consistently honest over time. Senator Durbin has it. Senator Perdue does not....