The Blues Festival hasn’t spawned as many satellite events around town this year as it has in years past, but for the most part that will just mean you won’t have to skip five for every one you attend—there should still be lots of memorable moments. On Wednesday, June 8, Firecat Projects hosts a Blues Fest kickoff reception for the photo exhibit “Women of the Blues: Coast to Coast Collection,” which opened May 27 and runs till June 18....
On a Thursday night in late September, men clad in bow ties and black vests work the floor of Uptown’s Chicago Magic Lounge like street hustlers, snaking through a grid of tables to swoop in on audiences of two or three at a time. At one table, a magician turns two coins into three within a woman’s clenched fist. Ten paces away a man’s chosen card transports from the deck into a smirking magician’s pocket....
Mashaun Hendricks is only 30 years old, but he says that he’s “retired.” For the average 30-year-old, that professional status would be ridiculous, but Hendricks boasts an unusually extensive resumé: he’s been an economics teacher in Chicago, a restorative justice specialist at Chicago Public Schools, and a mentor for juvenile offenders. However, “none of that was really intentional” Hendricks says. “The only intentional thing I’ve done is Trap House Chicago.”...
—William Chyr On a chilly Friday night last October, William Chyr is standing in the center of the Pilsen art gallery Mana Contemporary, a beer in one hand, a PlayStation controller in the other. A mix of well-heeled art patrons and casually dressed twentysomethings has crowded into the compact space for an offbeat exhibit, “Manifold Garden,” a sneak peek at the still-unfinished puzzle-based video game of the same name that Chyr’s been toiling at for years to design and build for PC and Sony’s PlayStation 4....
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. Such sentiments did not necessarily stem from compassion so much as fear. It may be no coincidence that the country’s first urban playgrounds—piles of sand deposited at strategic locations by the city of Boston—were placed in 1886, a few months after Chicago’s Haymarket affair excited public hysteria about foreign anarchists....
Birth and postpartum doula Cassie Calderone returned to work from her own maternity leave in late March, just a week after the city’s shelter-in-place order went into effect. Her first birth was an induction, scheduled in advance, and the baby was born healthy and to happy parents at West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, just outside the city limits, on March 27. But because of precautions due to COVID-19, this birth looked different than any other in Calderone’s four years of practice....
The Boys in the Band at Windy City Playhouse isn’t the only 1960s counterculture show in town. Theatre Above the Law’s current staging of Elaine May’s 1969 one-act Adaptation (an off-Broadway hit in its original run, but seldom seen these days) offers up a giddy and retro exploration of one man’s voyage through the game of life. The story is structured as an actual game show, where the Contestant (David Hartley) moves from birth to death through various challenges (familial, academic, professional, romantic, existential) with the help of a Game Master and an ensemble of three actors playing all the supporting roles....
UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. The Drury Lane orchestra, under the direction of Chris Sargent, does Gershwin proud. As does director/choreographer Lynne Kurdziel-Formato and her ensemble of triple threats. The dance sequences in the show are to die for, each one bigger, stronger, and more amazing than the previous one. Even more impressive, though, is her cast, who face the formidable task of competing with the likes of Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron....
I was standing at the front of the security line for the premiere of The French Dispatch when I saw, on a jumbo celebrity monitor overlooking the red carpet, the outline of that unmistakable grin below a golden mask and white broad-brimmed panama hat. It was then that I decided I wasn’t allowed to leave Cannes without meeting Bill Murray. The fortress element registered with Alexandra Milic, who is from Cannes originally, and was attending the festival for the first time....
Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is . . . Anne Ford, who after 190 columns is bidding the project farewell. I was going to write a profile of this guy whose name I can’t remember who was and possibly still is a private tutor. He was a very colorful guy. For some reason, I got really stuck. He was a great talker....
Will we ever rent shoes again? It’s a required act for two of my favorite activities, one that feels downright irresponsible in a post-pandemic, hyper- hygienic world. Just thinking about being in a bowling alley or a roller rink incites a scent memory of greasy foods, stale beer, sweaty socks—I can practically smell the germs. Still, I miss the lanes at Fireside Bowl, the snack bar at the Fleetwood Roller Rink, the camaraderie and sense of athleticism that both activities afford to even the most sedentary indoor kids....
In essence, what endears romantic comedies to their most ardent supporters also is what bothers a lot of critics. Rom-coms, on the whole, are formulaic fantasies about everyday people who behave unrealistically in exceptional (and exceptionally well-lit) situations. The films usually adhere to a simplistic three-act structure that hinges on the viewer’s emotional catharsis. The lovebirds meet and get to know each other in a montage scored to an upbeat pop song; clash, separate, and miss each other in a montage scored to a melancholy pop song; and ultimately reunite, with a coda scored to a cathartic pop song....
Trippy Chicago trio Dark Fog have definitely hit a deep vein of psych productivity. When I e-mailed guitarist and bandleader Ray Donato to ask about their new album, meaning Living the Past . . . Killing the Future, he sent me a link to a completely different new album, Make You Believe. And neither of these releases is October’s Our Secret Society. Way to make every other band on the planet look like slackers, guys....
Chicago rapper Cdot Honcho doesn’t mess around. His rapping often sounds like a kind of carefully controlled yelling, clear and intense even when he doesn’t ever seem to pause for breath, and his most commanding performances feel downright cutthroat. Cdot has been perfecting this approach to the mike since he began his local ascent a few years ago, so that on the new self-released H5 he’s not just tough as nails but also surgically precise....
In the mid-70s, David Ranney quit his position at the University of Iowa, where he was a tenured professor of urban planning, and moved to Chicago for a job at the Workers’ Rights Center, a free legal clinic for industrial workers run out of a southeast Chicago storefront. When money got tight, Ranney decided to look for work at one of the many factories in the neighborhood. Armed with a made-up work history and a couple of friends willing to act as fake references, he landed a position at a shop that built centrifuges....
Q: There’s this boy—he’s 29; I’m 46 and female. We met when we were 23 and 41. I was not and am not into little boys. The Kid chased me, and I turned him down for months—until I got drunk one night and caved. It was supposed to be a one-night stand, but it isn’t anymore. We’ve never been “together,” because the Kid wants kids and happily ever after and all that horseshit, and I don’t (and I’m too old even if I did)....
In next week’s paper I preview the upcoming MCA concerts by Eighth Blackbird, which will premiere an all-new program of commissions by bold composers’ collective Sleeping Giant. These concerts, part of the group’s yearlong residency at the museum, come just a few months after their latest album, Filament (Cedille), which earned them yet another Grammy nomination for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance; Eighth Blackbird have won the award three times so far....
The title town of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri seems like the very model of traditional small-town America, radiating charm and tranquility. Neighbors keep in touch, and the crime rate is so low that the police station shuts down at night. But after the savage rape and murder of a local teenager goes unsolved for seven months, the victim’s fed-up mother, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), rents three billboards outside town and uses them to shame the popular police chief, Willoughby (Woody Harrelson)....
I n 1865, Asa Harmon McCoy made the miscalculation of his life, figuring he could return to his home on the Tug Fork River, where Kentucky and West Virginia meet, after serving on the Union side in the Civil War. A Confederate guerrilla unit led by Jim Vance soon showed up and killed him. Jim being a relative of Devil Anse Hatfield, patriarch of the Hatfield clan, and Asa being a member of the mountain dynasty led by Randolph “Ol’ Ran’l” McCoy, the incident has come to be considered an early tussle in the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud....
The Dept. Q Trilogy, based on three best-selling crime novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, draws comparisons with Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo franchise: set in Scandinavia and featuring a sullen male protagonist, it’s violent, hard-boiled, and psychologically disturbing. But its antihero, a clench-jawed police detective (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), also embodies a belief that individual goodness might be enough to prevail over darkness. “I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in jack shit,” the detective tells the villain at the climax of the third installment....
