They hosted their first virtual event last week with Jenny Brown, author of Without Apology, and Annie Finch, editor of Choice Words. The event was a fundraiser for the Chicago Abortion Fund and was cosponsored by Chicago DSA Socialist Feminists. “We’re trying to tie our virtual literary events to a group organizing on the ground in the city to both support their work financially and raise awareness of their work in the community,” Solheim says....
In conversation, Princess Nokia (born Destiny Nicole Frasqueri) is soft-spoken and thoughtfully tackles subjects like blackness and urban feminism. But get on her bad side, and she’s lethal. In February 2017, the underground rapper from Spanish Harlem punched an audience member for mouthing sexist obscenities and in October, she slapped another man for making racist remarks on the train. Frasqueri owns the dualities of her personality in interviews and in her lyrics, and she always expresses exactly how she feels....
Korean food served cafeteria style isn’t what you’d expect to see at Girl & the Goat, the perpetually popular small-plates restaurant from Stephanie Izard. And most people never will. But on a recent rainy Wednesday afternoon in the West Loop, a couple hours before the doors open to the public, 50-odd cooks, dishwashers, and front-of-house staff from the restaurant, its sister diner Little Goat, as well as some accountants for the Boka Restaurant Group (which has offices upstairs and to which Izard’s spots belong) line up to fill their bowls with smoked pork lettuce wraps with ssamjang sauce, a mixture of red chile paste and bean paste; bibimbap with soy-marinated soft-boiled eggs; and doenjang jjigae, a soup made with fermented soybean paste, shiitake mushrooms, and tofu....
In 1948, college student Allen Ginsberg was masturbating while reading William Blake in his apartment when he heard the English mystic, born 190 years earlier, whisper to his mind a few burning lines of poetry: “For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life,” read one line. Ginsberg sensed the spiritual-erotic encounter was an epiphany—”I’ve seen God!” he yelled from his fire escape in Harlem, and realized he would deliver Blake’s same message of free love to his own generation....
According to Music Box Theatre Technical Director Julian Antos, 70mm films historically had “a heightened sense of being ‘a big thing.’ They were probably movies that cost a bunch of money to make, had big casts and beautiful landscapes. All these pieces were making a more special, more theatrical experience than ‘non-prestige’ films.” The frequency of 70mm showings dissipated, and now—when even a 35mm exhibition is a novelty for cinema goers—they only happen when an influential director such as Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan uses their pull to film in the 70mm gauge or have their film blown up....
In 2016 the World Music Festival runs longer than it has at any time in its 18-year history—it’s spread out across 17 days. But in terms of total number of artists and shows, it’s relatively modest, in keeping with the festival’s past few iterations. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. By mid-September most music fans have endured an onslaught of overstuffed summer festivals, so the WMF’s approach—giving audiences a chance to sample a rich diversity of concerts at a more civilized pace—is a smart alternative....
The most incredible moment in this Theatre Y production of a nearly-forgotten German avant-garde play by Peter Handke happens outside the venue. The play is presented against a window that has its curtains open to reveal the 4500 block of North Western in Lincoln Square in all its humdrum neon non-glory. The production enters its umpteenth movement of what sounds like one voice, spread across nine performers, incoherently blaming itself for everything it has ever done....
When the Hyde Park Jazz Festival’s executive and artistic director, Kate Dumbleton, spoke to the Reader in August about the fest’s efforts to adapt to COVID-19, she sounded hopeful that some version of the event would take place during its traditional time slot on the last weekend of September. Given that Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events had already replaced an entire season of live outdoor programming with prerecorded video broadcasts—and that no one knew if, when, and how hard a second wave of COVID infections would hit the city—that hope seemed wildly optimistic....
Led by charismatic vocalist and harmonica player J.D. Wilkes, the Legendary Shack Shakers present an interesting take on the psychobilly theme. Formed in Kentucky and now based in Nashville, this group has been blending roots, country, rock ’n’ roll, and punk for more than two decades. While many of their contemporaries’ styles seem to start and end with the Cramps and the Reverend Horton Heat, the Shack Shakers have a definite prewar-country influence buried underneath their foot stomping, distortion, and punk intensity....
Forty years ago, Steve Askin found himself with a front-row seat for Harold Washington’s quixotic first campaign for the mayoralty of Chicago. At the tender age of 23, Askin was Washington’s deputy press secretary during the all-but-forgotten Democratic primary of the special mayoral election of 1977, which was held to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Mayor Richard J. Daley. When the campaign ended with Washington’s disappointing third-place finish, Askin packed into boxes everything from speeches and press releases he’d written to position papers and newspaper clippings....
During a year when screen time has felt more like a punishment than a reward and the word “viral” has taken on a completely different meaning, one social media platform has stood out from the rest and in many ways defined 2020: TikTok. Its continuing popularity is likely due in part to the creatives who flocked to the app when traditional venues were shuttered in the midst of the pandemic....
For its inaugural production, directed by Emily Daigle, Theatre L’Acadie presents Jeffrey M. Jones’s 1990 jumbled-chronology portrait of a crumbling relationship. On Halloween night, Jess (Brandii Champagne) and Joan (Kaitlin Eve Romero) just want to relax in front of the TV, but keep getting interrupted by trick-or-treaters, ghosts, and monsters. As a voice from the back of the theater calls out scene numbers—sometimes in, sometimes out of sequence—the couple and their seen and imagined tormentors wrestle to determine whether the pair will stay together or split....
Khiltscher/Wikimedia Commons That hat is totally metal. Fleetwood Mac plays Allstate Arena on Valentine’s Day, a shrewd coincidence considering that a lot of the band’s most famous music is about the myopic despair and damaged behavior that ensues after a relationship goes sour. Anyone who still doesn’t “get” Fleetwood Mac likely has them pegged as shallow, wispy soft-rock narcissists. Well, OK, they are shallow, wispy soft-rock narcissists—but they’re also a band that slyly challenged presumptions at every turn, playing metal-disco (“World Turning”), sophisticated folk (“Never Going Back Again”), mystical female blues ballads (“Gold Dust Woman”), punk (“The Ledge”), Beach Boys-style pop (“That’s All for Everyone”), and prog (“Tusk”)....
Even before the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, the desire to get away from this current hellscape was strong in many of us. Cooped up, fed up, scared, confused, and angry, I’ve been veering between doomscrolling and fantasizing about a Yeatsian bucolic escape. Whether “peace comes dropping slow” or pours down like a waterfall, I’ll take it. (BRB: looking up YouTube tutorials on how to make a cabin from clay and wattles....
Q: I’m a 19-year-old bisexual woman really into orgasm denial and edging. With the recent Tumblr ban on all NSFW content, I have no idea where to indulge my kinks and find my community. I’ve never needed to go anywhere else to find porn, explore my sexuality, and be surrounded by supportive people—and now I’m at a loss. A few Google searches have been really disheartening. Clearly I’ve been spoiled by all the easily found porn made by women, for women on Tumblr....
On August 2, while OutKast headlined the second night of Lollapalooza in Grant Park, Bongripper capped a two-day DIY bash called Gnarfest with a free set at the Illinois Centennial Monument in Logan Square. The local instrumental doom band stood at the head of the broad steps that lead to the monument, its column at their backs. Hundreds of fans filled the stairs and lawn around and beneath them (or sat atop the monument’s high marble base), nodding their heads in slow unison as Bongripper plowed through “Into Ruin,” the grim, lumbering 28-minute track that closes 2014’s Miserable....
The indomitable Ina Pinkney has hardly been idle since shuttering her beloved namesake breakfast joint, Ina’s, at the end of 2013. The Breakfast Queen’s been touting her cookbook, penning breakfast columns for the Trib, doing a double act called “Post Traumatic Restaurant Disorder” for private groups with that other so-called retiree “Hot Doug” Sohn, and holding court at breakfast tables all over the city. When I sat down with her a few weeks ago at Grandma J’s in Humboldt Park, she helped owner Layla Malia troubleshoot her French toast recipe....
Last week a cacophony produced by the use of various hammers, saws, and drills echoed through the forthcoming Revival Food Hall on South Clark, where construction workers were finishing up preparations for the enormous upscale food court. But final touches were being made much more quietly in the southeast corner of the space: Curbside Splendor, the longtime independent press specializing in what it calls the “extraordinary voices” of the midwest, was getting ready to open its first storefront operation....
In a recurring feature, the Reader conducts 15-minute interviews with candidates running for city, county, state, and federal offices that represent Illinois. This week: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss. Did you not pay attention much to politics before that? It was just a disagreement that emerged quickly after we had previously had an understanding. And it changed our dynamic in a way that made it so that we couldn’t go on....
Al Podgorski /Sun-Times Media Jesus Garcia answers a question at a debate in front of the Sun-Times editorial board on January 30. A front-page Sun-Times story yesterday linked Cook County commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia’s cosponsorship of a measure that benefited a law firm to his son’s free legal representation by that firm. Garcia told me yesterday he thinks the story raises a “completely false controversy” and is “totally misleading.” (For the record, the Reader and the Sun-Times are owned by the same company....
