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‘Tis the season to temporarily turn away from the horror show in Washington, D.C. With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve shaken the cobwebs off of a few seasonally appropriate favorites from the Reader archives for your reading pleasure. Reader social media editor Ryan Smith was spooked by the sights and sounds of southern Illinois’s Shawnee National Forest and the surrounding area during a road trip earlier this year. The piece includes a creepy cabin, a haunted hotel, a dank cave with a murderous history—as well as dying rural towns....

I’m not going out on a limb saying that most CTA subway stations are nothing to write home about. They’re relatively cramped tunnels whose cream-colored walls are often streaked with grime and worn, brown platforms are caked with dirt. Corners reek of garbage or worse. Dirt and grime is all over the place at the Washington station, which with 3.8 million rides in 2016 was the busiest stop on the line other than O’Hare Airport....

If you’re looking for an album to give you courage as you peer out at the apocalypse from behind your living-room blinds, you could do worse than Sampa the Great’s The Return (Ninja Tune). The Zambia-born, Australia-based artist released this sprawling, languid record last September, and it’s full of 90s beats, heart-on-the-dashiki rapping, and such a crowd of guest stars—Brooklyn MC Whosane, Australian singer-songwriter Thando, Melbourne artists collective Mandarin Dreams—that it feels as much like a family affair as a solo effort....

In January 2020, I was the owner of a highly respected catering company, FIG Catering. I loved food and was most happy developing menus, testing recipes, and being in the chaotic excitement of live, in-person events. First quarter is always difficult for caterers—we lose money and rely on client deposits/borrowing to get through until the busy season. We were in debt, but confident we’d get out of the hole, as in past years, as events kicked off....

The sharp wit and stinging analysis of the Back Room Deal podcast got us through the interminable election run-up. Now hosts Maya Dukmasova and Ben Joravsky are ready to take us to the finish line—well, this first one anyway—on election night. Call Ben and Maya at 312-488-9265 starting at 5 PM. They can’t promise to take every call, but they’re eager to hear from you! Keep the conversation going on Twitter using #BackRoomDealLive....

Joe Mande seems to have done everything he can to become famous. He’s billed himself as the “Drake of comedy.” He attempted to raise $1 million on Kickstarter for a celebrity podcast (he raised $30,000). He tried to become the face of LaCroix, but La Croix asked Mande to “please immediately stop misrepresenting yourself as an official spokesperson for LaCroix.” And he dropped a mixtape—his first comedy album, 2014’s Bitchface....

“My designs are unapologetically bold,” says Kelley D. Moseley, 42, about K-FLEYE, her accessory line. Pronounced “kay fly,” Moseley’s label offers handcrafted jewelry, reclaimed leather bags, hats, and other kinds of adornments. Her designs feel organic and earthy, yet very festive, exuding a sense of joy and adventure in each item. “I like to have fun when it comes to creating and designing,” Moseley says. “I don’t like looking like everyone else, and that is why I create unique pieces....

Experimental jazz is not a stadium-packing pop genre. But you wouldn’t know that from the enthusiasm of the shoulder-to-shoulder capacity crowd stuffed into the narrow space along the bar at Dorian’s on a Sunday earlier this month. Programming director Joe Bryl spun a set of classic spiritual jazz from the likes of Brother Ah and Infinite Spirit Music, and then the crowd cheered as Jeff Parker‘s New Breed Band took the stage....

Shortly after 5 AM on Monday as many Chicagoans were just waking up and turning on their televisions, CBS2 was broadcasting footage of a mostly desolate Loop shot from one of its roving vehicles. Police lights flashed across the horizon of the grainy footage. The video was combined with the crackly voice of a reporter phoning in. She told viewers that the Chicago River bridges had been raised. The screen flashed text: “Chicago police respond to multiple smash & grab break-ins all morning,” and “Looting & unrest overnight across downtown Chicago....

Q: Married from 28 to 36, single the last three years, and celibate most of the last couple years. The last two years of my marriage were sexless, and I saw professionals until I was priced out. I could probably earn twice what I’m making now if I moved away, but my current job gives me the flexibility to spend afternoons with my young kids. Last year, I had a brief relationship (that included the best sex of my life), but I ended it because I needed more me time....

We can’t know how many decades it will take for humanity to heal from the physical and psychological damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, but musicians are already honoring in song the dignity of the sick, suffering, and dead—and the bravery of their caregivers. The folks at Bellissima Opera, an incubator run by Chicago nonprofit Working in Concert, were so moved by the plight of health-care workers that they created the hour-long Zoom opera On Call: COVID-19....

Visual art and multimedia forays, including—album covers, music videos, merch designs, stage productions—are a big part of Animal Collective’s distinct flavor, so it makes sense that for his new solo album, Cows on Hourglass Pond, core member Avey Tare (the pseudonym of David Michael Portner) would incorporate some extramusical creative flourishes. By the album’s release on March 22, he’d already released two contrasting videos, the audio-only single “Taken Boy,” and a short story in both text and audio forms—in the latter the words are enhanced with multiple effects including dripping slapback delay over sprawling, airy loop-based soundscapes....

The films of London-based contemporary artist Ben Rivers resemble elaborate works of science fiction. His solo show “Urth,” now on display at the Renaissance Society, is filled with imaginary worlds inhabited by shaken and isolated societies. Each piece, projected throughout three adjoining rooms in the gallery, is a chilling portent of a future devastated by climate change and miserable with human solitude. “I liked the idea of these different temperate regions and people attempting to live inside that, and be separate from the world,” Rivers said during the artist talk....

Luke Sangerman, who performs and records as Luke Titus, is 24 years old but has the skill set and intuition of a seasoned veteran. He’s had a long music career for someone his age: He joined the Blue Man Group as a stage-band drummer at age 15, becoming the youngest American ever hired by the international performance-art ensemble. And for a decade now he’s been a key player in the young Chicago scene where pop, hip-hop, and rock overlap....

Chicagoan Manasseh Champion first picked up the trumpet at age seven. Now 22, he’s teaching young people how to play brass instruments at the West Point School of Music in South Shore. Over the past few years, Champion has focused his extracurricular energy on hip-hop, releasing a slew of stylistically varied singles under the name Doso. Last year’s [Extended] (A Rugged Interest) veers between trap-inflected tracks that highlight Champion’s agility at rattling off aggressive bars and melodic pop tunes that show off his sultry singing....

In October one of Gossip Wolf’s favorite local rappers, the Boy Illinois, dropped Windy, a triumphant EP featuring a great slate of Chicago guest MCs, among them YP, Rico Recklezz, and Pivot Gang members Saba and Frsh Waters. Windy is the Boy Illinois’s first release since signing a distribution deal with Priority Records through his label, Born Leaders, in May 2017. Those of you keen to see these feel-good tracks performed live are in luck: the fine folks at music site Illanoize are throwing the Boy Illinois’s first big show of the year on Tuesday, February 6....

Almost three decades ago, Darrell “Artistic” Roberts decided he needed to document the history of Chicago hip-hop. He’d started breakdancing in 1982, and soon took up hip-hop’s other foundational elements: MCing, DJing, and graffiti writing. His love of graffiti blossomed in the mid- to late 80s, and at a citywide writers’ meeting in 1987, he met his future collaborator in this ambitious project, a graffiti artist named Fere (pronounced “fear”). By 1992, they’d both been involved in the local scene for about a decade, which made them veterans in a still-emerging movement....

Seeking: men Occupation: director of alumni engagement for a law school What do you do when you’re not working? Her friend says: “She was included in a story on Buzzfeed entitled “11 Inspiring Stories of People Who Left Normal Life and Embarked on an Adventure.” ” Traveling, running, writing, watching sports, checking out hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants, trying to learn French. Smoker? No. Pets? Two cats. Dietary restrictions? I have celiac disease, so I can’t eat anything with gluten....

Earlier this year, Gossip Wolf broke the news that after Disappears went on hiatus last fall, three members had formed dark art-rock juggernaut Facs. Ever since, this wolf has been catching their shows and copping the free demos they’ve intermittently posted to Bandcamp, which sound like a spacious, hypnotic mix of Lungfish and Flowers of Romance-era PiL. It’s definitely a combo meal that any weird postpunk can dig—so of course Bill and Lisa Roe of Trouble in Mind Records have already signed Facs....

The cover of Kima, Keisha & Pam Hyde Park’s the Promontory has been hosting some of the finest shows in town, partly thanks to the ingenious bookings of jack-of-all-trades (and Reader writer) Jake Austen. One such performance takes place this Saturday, when 90s R&B trio Total plays two shows at the south-side concert hall. Members Kima Raynor, Keisha Spivey, and Pamela Long were the biggest R&B act on Sean “Puffy” Combs‘s initial Bad Boy Records roster, making their debut on two of Notorious B....