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When I think back on my childhood, what first comes to mind are buildings that no one seems to care about. My mom would drive up and down Lake Shore Drive, ferrying me to the few places I went when I wasn’t home. She’d get off at the Belmont exit and I’d fixate on the kooky tapioca-colored high-rise on the corner of Belmont and Lake Shore Drive; she would coast on Marine Drive, two blocks north of Irving Park, and I’d consider the strangely narrow apartment building with a disproportionately large white stone awning; she’d take LSD all the way up to Hollywood, turn right on Sheridan, and glide past the shoreline towers with their ostensibly gauche, outdated designs, and ridiculous, escapist names—the Tiara, El Lago—then turn onto Devon and proceed right into the heart of the assembly-line two-flats where my Orthodox Jewish psychologist still lives....

Lots of cultures find beauty in burnt rice. In Spain it’s socarrat, the crispy layer of bomba that adheres to the paella pan. In Persia it’s tahdig, the saffron-stained crust of basmati that scrapes up from the bottom of the pot. In Senegal, the chef treats herself to the xoon, the dark matrix of broken rice that lurks beneath her thiebu djeun, the national dish of fish and rice. It’s rare to come across a specialist, so when I hear of one I investigate....

Lana Del Rey is smiling more these days. Sometimes she’s smiling through tears, like she does in a hazy shot from the recent video for “Fuck It I Love You,” but she’s smiling all the same—a sign of a new level of nuance from an artist who made a name for herself peddling dreamy, depressing cliches about heartbreak and self-destruction. On her fifth studio album, 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Del Rey harnesses the world’s perceptions of her—in the January single “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have—but I Have It,” she reflects those perceptions back at the world, calling herself a “24/7 Sylvia Plath....

As a child, the High Holidays—Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement)—were marked with reluctant trips to our family synagogue where the tone was somber and reflective. The gloomy music was as uncomfortable as the blue blazer I reserved only for services and bar mitzvahs. When I was not trying to decipher the purpose of the holiday through incomprehensible liturgy, I was making faces at friends or wandering out to the hallway to meet other wayward Jews, usually the parents of my friends who volunteered as ushers to avoid sitting through services....

Before the shutdown of live music this past March, if you’d asked tour manager Kat Lewis what she expected to be doing in February 2021, she would’ve been able to describe her workdays right down to the bands she’d be having wake-up coffee with. After nearly 20 years of booking and managing music events such as Warped Tour and West Fest Chicago, her life had settled into an unusual but predictable rhythm: she’d schedule commitments two years in advance that would require her to work in clusters of long days, starting around 2 PM and ending just as the sun came up....

The clavichord is an odd little keyboard popular in Europe from the 16th till the 18th century. It was designed as a practice instrument, and it didn’t produce enough volume for the typical concert experience. Its sound isn’t far from that of a harpsichord: little metal blades called tangents strike strings of either brass or iron. Most folks have heard a modern iteration of the clavichord called the Clavinet, popular in 70s pop music, that used a magnetic pickup to amplify the sounds....

If you were celebrating Pride last Sunday night, you may have been forced to cancel your plans and head home early. For the past 48 years, queer people and their allies have commemorated the 1969 Stonewall riots every June with marches, parades, and bar crawls through gay neighborhoods. The riots themselves were a reaction of transgender and gay people to the constant police raids on their bars and are considered the landmark event that sparked the LGBTQ radical liberation movement and its subsequent parades....

The Boystown gay bar Sidetrack always mounts an impressive spectacle in the Pride Parade—you can’t really go wrong with a bunch of scantily clad guys and gals thrusting their pelvises at the crowd from atop a moving platform—but this year, the back of the float was the real attraction: a mock scoreboard celebrated a 5-4 victory in the “Supreme Equality Championship.” Last week’s Supreme Court ruling making marriage equality the law of the land made the thrill of the parade all the more palpable....

On Sunday afternoon, in single-digit temperatures, two groups of protestors faced off across Dearborn Street over abortion rights. On the south side of the street, in Federal Plaza, behind a banner that read “Human Life Has Value,” was the March for Life. On the north side, on the sidewalk beside the Dirksen Federal Building, behind a banner that read “Abortion is Healthcare” was a pro-choice counterprotest. Both groups planned to march the same route through the Loop, up Dearborn to Lake and then back down State Street, past several state and federal buildings and City Hall....

With the steady upswing in the real estate market—and downtown properties fetching record sales prices—Mayor Emanuel’s getting ready for one of his favorite activities: giving your tax dollars to developers. He’s also proposing to give developers about $17.5 million to rebuild the Lathrop Homes at Diversey and Clybourn. Of course, that’s not its real name. Tony and Rezko—like Richard and Daley—are two words you’ll probably never hear coming from the mouth of Mayor Rahm....

As soon as I walked through the door, Saint Lou’s Assembly felt familiar. I’d never been to a meat-and-three cafeteria, a once-beloved, now mostly extinct institution that offers a choice of entree and three sides for one low price. But there was something about the vinyl booths, Formica tables, and wood paneling, not to mention the candy counter and the bowling trophies, that made me feel like I’d seen them before....

Ever since Frankie Knuckles died in 2014, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) has ramped up efforts to commemorate the sound and culture that the famous house DJ and producer helped birth. Over Memorial Day weekend in 2016, DCASE threw a six-hour “Chicago House Party” at Pritzker Pavilion, and its success inspired the department to develop the concept into a more robust event that includes a conference. In 2018, it finally became a full-fledged festival, with four stages spread throughout Millennium Park and a small army of record dealers selling dance 12-inches right by Cloud Gate....

The very cool, really dope, first-ever Obama Foundation Summit, held at the glassy new McCormick Place Marriott earlier this week, made one thing clear: the foundation has picked a worthy mission for itself. The summit drew 19,500 applications, and 450 young people from 60 countries were selected to attend. A global audience watched online at Obama.org, where some of the proceedings can still be viewed. So, although speakers like Glass House author Brian Alexander and public policy expert Heather McGhee pointed to root issues with the financial system (“What is capitalism for?...

Of all the producers who emerged during vaporwave’s early years, few captured my interest like Yyu. Bicoastal label Beer on the Rug, which doesn’t focus on vaporwave but enjoys the distinction of having released some of the genre’s touchstones, put out Yyu’s TimeTimeTime&Time as vaporwave’s bubble grew in 2012. On that album Yyu (the production alias of a nonbinary artist who goes by “B” and uses they/them pronouns) eschews the retro kitsch common to most Bandcamp tracks filed under “vaporwave,” but the loops of stumbling samples and textured blurs of melody nonetheless fit into the emerging style’s vibe....

Warning: This review contains spoilers. From there the film presents a dramatic prologue, set in 1986, in which the heroine, Adelaide (played effectively by newcomer Madison Curry), gets separated from her parents at a beachfront carnival in Santa Cruz, California. Adelaide wanders near the ocean, then comes upon a fun house. Inside, she explores the hall of mirrors and encounters another little girl who looks exactly like herself. (Peele creates a nice surprise by making the stranger appear to be a reflection at first; some people in the audience when I saw the film jumped when the stranger turned around....

Paul Krugman warns against “false equivalence” in the coverage of the presidential race between Trump and Clinton. I agree—with a stipulation. False equivalence is something the media should avoid yet pay close attention to: it could be Donald Trump’s ticket to the White House. “Trump could commit a gaffe so outrageous that many of his followers would abandon him and the Republican Party would be forced to find a way to deny him its nomination....

Akeelah and the Bee In Cheryl L. West’s adaptation of the 2006 inspirational film of the same name, Akeelah Anderson (La Shone T. Kelly) needs the help of her entire community if she’s going to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. West transports the action from Los Angeles to Chicago and cuts down the size of Akeelah’s family, but otherwise the story is the same. Brandon Rivera’s gleefully over-the-top performance as Akeelah’s preppy friend Javier delights the children in the audience, and Aaron Quick’s projections add excitement to the spelling sequences as words form around the set....

Q: I have a question about biking and female genitalia. I’m a woman in my 40s, and I love biking! My husband and I often go for long rides on the weekend. Unfortunately, this makes various parts of my crotch sore, especially the clitoris. Certain bike seats are better, but none eliminate the soreness. Two years ago, we had a baby, which not only made my crotch more prone to soreness but makes it a lot less likely that we’ll have sex except on weekends, often after biking....

It’s not altogether unbelievable that Bernice’s Tavern will celebrate its 50th anniversary in May. After all, the heart-of-Bridgeport watering hole is a tangle of just the kind of dusty tchotchkes, vintage instruments, random framed photos, and other artifacts that betray a bar’s age. John died about 16 years ago at the age of 85, leaving Bernice and Steve to carry on the family business. “He pretty much did outlive all his regulars,” Steve says....

What has the Reader staff been up to in isolation? Last Friday we had a virtual staff happy hour complete with drinking games pulled from Cosmo magazine. We’ve had marathon video chats with our loved ones that went on so long we could tell which one of our friends or relatives could take at least a minute out of their pandemic sheltering to dust (we won’t name names). We all finally made a list of “projects to do during a pandemic,” and checked off “make a list of projects to do during a pandemic....