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Since November, local media have been running celebratory stories about Chicago Police Department lieutenant John Garrido’s efforts to help Anthony Johnson, a homeless veteran. Garrido, who met Johnson at a dilapidated newspaper stand in Jefferson Park, launched an online fund-raiser that collected money to help him find a place to live and pay for a renovation to the shack. None of the television or newspaper reporters who covered the story, however, noted Garrido’s involvement in a push against an affordable-housing development in Jefferson Park that would prioritize veterans....

People are capable of acting like irresponsible idiots whether they’re traveling on foot, by bicycle, or in a car. And obviously the potential for causing death and destruction is exponentially greater when you’re piloting a high-speed, multiton vehicle. Drivers have also hit Lehrer. For example, she says, once when she was walking her dog in Rogers Park, a motorist ran a stop sign, knocking her over, and fled the scene. “But with drivers it’s different, because you know you’re in a danger zone....

On January 2 my mind was blown by a tweet from the Divvy bike-share account congratulating a guy named Kerdia Roland for being the program’s number one rider of 2017, with a staggering 2,462 trips for the year. “That’s 6,275 miles of riding—enough to get you to Alaska!” A lifelong Chicagoan who grew up in Streeterville, Roland transports everything from Big Macs to pricey French-Vietnamese cuisine from Le Colonial in the Gold Coast....

After releasing her middling 2011 album, 101, and giving birth to her first child, French-Israeli singer Keren Ann largely retreated from the music business apart from some work in theater and film. In 2016 she returned with her strongest effort in years, You’re Gonna Get Love (Polydor), which sadly hasn’t been released in the U.S. Working with producer Renaud Letang (who’s wracked up credits with Feist, Amadou & Mariam, and Jarvis Cocker) and benefiting from arrangements by Brazilian great Eumir Deodato, she maintains the placid, shimmering beauty of her past work....

Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad has an uncanny ability to merge rock and jazz in arrangements that transcend the cliches of both genres. On her new album, Ding Dong. You’re Dead. (Rune Grammofon), this hybrid sound is defined in no small part by a sense of play. She returns to her long-running trio following the 2020 detour Ekhidna, where she was backed by a larger ensemble. The perpetual shredding on the new record could sound over-the-top alongside some of the more somber work on Ekhidna, but it’s well-suited for this trio setting....

Cate Blanchett (center) in Cinderella; the magisterial costumes are by Sandy Powell I’m not sure if children are going to enjoy Disney’s new live-action version of Cinderella, which opens in wide release today. It’s a subtle film, marked by greater consideration for psychology and decor than one typically finds in children’s entertainment. Barring the broadly comic performances of Helena Bonham Carter (who turns in a cameo as the fairy godmother) and Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger (who play the wicked stepsisters)—not to mention the presence of some anthropomorphized mice held over from the 1950 animated original—the characters are introspective and the performances are reserved....

This week Chicago’s revamped Department of Housing rolls out an online dashboard with maps and statistics on developers’ compliance with the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance—a law that’s meant to spur construction of new affordable housing units. Users can explore a map of all the developments that have “triggered” the ARO since 2008 through requests for zoning changes or city funding or purchases of city land below market prices. The dashboard shows the number of affordable units planned, in progress, or constructed by community area....

A couple weeks ago, when I spoke with director Steven Cergizan about his documentary on Chicago hardcore, No Delusions, he told me that what motivated him to make it was the desire “to contribute something to the scene.” Cergizan didn’t start going to local hardcore shows till the early 2000s, but his desire to give back connects him to the young musicians in the 1980s who planted the seeds for the jumbled, expansive, multigenerational community he explores in No Delusions....

Joe Segal, my cantankerous friend and inadvertent mentor, died last week on Monday, August 10. He was a champion of creative music for more than 70 years. His once peripatetic Jazz Showcase—firmly settled at Dearborn Station since 2008—drew jazz fans from around the world like moths to a flame, and in 2015 he became only the second nightclub owner to be named an NEA Jazz Master. He was 94; even in a wheelchair, having been in ill health for the past several years, he still showed up at the club once in a while....

The 2016 Brock Turner rape trial, which ended with Turner receiving a slap-on-the-wrist six-month sentence for assaulting an unconscious woman, is the obvious antecedent for Selina Fillinger’s Something Clean, now in a coproduction from Rivendell and Sideshow Theatres. But the rapist never appears in Fillinger’s drama, which focuses instead on his parents. Charlotte (Mary Cross), the mother, volunteers at a center for sexual assault survivors, where she forms a friendship with Joey (Patrick Agada), a gay survivor and counselor whose own mother kicked him out as a teen when he told her about being raped by a male babysitter....

I think my biggest issue with working in an office is that it’s socially unacceptable to do a few jumping jacks, squats, or burpees during the workday. Trust me, I’ve tried. I’m not a fitness freak by any means but I do love to move. As a trained dancer, I’m just not well equipped to sit for eight hours a day. So, one positive for me during this self-isolation period is my ability to break out into movement whenever the hell I want—it’s something I desperately need during this time of chaos, panic, and overwhelming stress....

Meet Me in St. Louis The Music Box is currently running a weekend matinee series titled “Weepie Noir: The Dark Side of Women’s Pictures,” dedicated to those studio melodramas influenced by the expressiveness of film-noir style. The first film on the program is Vincente Minnelli’s adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, an ideal selection. Minnelli, of course, is among the most expressive American filmmakers ever, a master of aesthetic design and transcendent style....

UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Actors Gymnasium primarily functions as a training school in the circus arts, but they put on a full-length show for an extended run every winter. And in the case of The Ghost in Gadsden’s Garden, you’d be a fool to miss it. A reclusive gardener, Gadsden (Adrian Danzig) spends his days tending the beautiful flowers on the grounds of an old (and allegedly haunted) mansion....

The need for a good Chicago bike map has never been greater. Thankfully those key corridors have reopened with restrictions, and the city has been gradually rolling out several miles of Slow Streets in neighborhoods like South Shore, Kenwood-Oakland, Bucktown, Logan Square, and Ravenswood. But we’re still way behind other U.S. cities. For example, Oakland, California, with a fraction of the population of Chicago, is doing 74 miles of Slow Streets, many times more than our city....

Weezer Nachos It’s no secret that a lot of crap is put out as “exclusive Record Store Day releases.” So leave it to brutal powerviolence four-piece Weekend Nachos to issue something worthwhile and hilarious on the fully overblown holiday. Last Saturday, Boston-based Run for Cover Records released the Weezer Nachos seven-inch, and as the name suggests, it features the superheavy band covering two Weezer classics. I was expecting them to take on the songs in their usual, crushing style, but they instead turn out completely faithful renditions....

Jeremy Joyce, the dynamo behind @blackpeopleeats, is one of the pandemic’s great pivoters, scrapping plans for an inaugural outdoor food festival set for tomorrow into the Juneteenth Restaurant Celebration, where some 70 Black-owned restaurants across the city will be offering $6.19 specials in socially distanced celebration of the day in 1865 when slaves in Galveston, Texas, were told they were free (two and half years after the fact). The restaurant celebration offers an astonishing number of tempting deals that collectively present the potential for an infinite combination of al trunko food crawls....

Ward Eight wardeight.com Bourbon, Fernet, chartreuse, and a splash of cava? Gin, maple syrup, amaro, and sparkling white wine? A slurpee mixed with turtle’s blood and Bulleit rye? Stop, I want to get off! After drinking so many outrageous half-dozen-ingredient concoctions, sometimes I just want someone to serve me a fucking drink. Evanston’s unimpeachable Ward Eight does some gimmicky craft-cocktail stuff: they host a tiki night on Tuesdays and typically feature a couple multicomponent libations on their chalkboard....

Walking down the stretch of North Milwaukee between Diversey and Fullerton is enough to give you whiplash. To your left, there’s a farmers’ market; to your right, a movie theater; to your left, an arcade; to your right, a giant mural; to your left and your right and your left and your right again, a craft cocktail bar—I’m getting dizzy just thinking about it. The first time I actually walked through Comfort Station’s doors, it was daytime and I wasn’t going to or coming from a local watering hole....

Here’s a rule of thumb that will never let you down: if you come across a magazine more than 20 years old, pick it up. We all like to think we live in exciting times, but the truth is we’re all so jammed by the details of lives needing to be lived that today is in many ways the least interesting day there is. The article I came to was a discussion of Marston Moor, the biggest and bloodiest battle of the English civil war, the one that put Oliver Cromwell in power and Charles I on the chopping block in the early 17th century....

Japanese multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Eiko Ishibashi has spent the past couple decades working in a multitude of idioms, including art-pop, jazz, postpunk, and free improvisation. It’s been thrilling to hear her move among styles and ideas from album to album, and her latest, Hyakki Yagyō (“Night Parade of One Hundred Demons”), is one of her most arresting to date, replete with tantalizing, haunting atmospheres conjured by electronics, acoustic instrumentation, and field recordings....