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Russ Johnson walks the line. “There’s a saying: ‘Too in for the out crowd, too out for the in crowd,’” says the Wisconsin-based trumpeter. “In some respects, this describes my career.” Russ Johnson Quartet Sun 9/1, 1:50-2:45 PM, Von Freeman Pavilion In the mid-1980s, having just left Berklee College of Music, the young Johnson dug into traditional jazz, working hard to master its rudiments and conventions. He did everything right: he moved to New York, developed a network, gigged incessantly, and established himself as a go-to session player and sideman....

My work weeks aren’t that nine-to-five Dolly was singin’ about—I’m on that running-a-wine-bar/shop-4-PM-till-late-night-six-days-a-week grind. And on Sunday night, after a long week of slingin’ grape juice, I need a fucking drink. If you work in the service industry you know how important this postshift libation is. That sacred ritual can be the one thing stopping you from body-slamming a rude guest, WWE-style. My place of choice for this therapeutic act is Red & White Wines in Bucktown....

The Japanese fascination with Italian food goes back decades, but it wasn’t until the 90s that itameshi, as it was known, came into its own and informal, inexpensive Italian food prepared with quintessentially Japanese ingredients supplanted high-end French as the exotic foreign obsession della giornata. It’s difficult to imagine two world cuisines more suited to one another, if only for their mutual fidelity to pasta. Running concurrently with Stephen Gillanders’s dim sum menu, Osaka’s selection of dishes is rather focused: mainly pastas and secondi, a few contorni and insalata, and a handful of appetizers and antipasti....

Break ups suck! Do you have a break up playlist, TV show, book or any other break up ritual you practice during a heartbreak? Tag us with the #BreakupRituals hashtag for a chance to be published in our special Feb. 13 issue! #TindeRinPrint katelyn harper @kharpersays Breakups indeed suck but good jams can help ease your pain. After mine, I created “but first, forgiveness,” a playlist to help myself move on and to remember hate doesn’t get you very far....

Like all great social justice movements, Chicagoan Kale Williams’s revolution involves cats—namely, Gingy, a sweet lil fur baby with quite the social media following. Williams and Gingy are at the helm of #iPlan2Live, a two-veined project that involves animation and personal testimony via social media platforms. As of writing this article, the hashtag is trending on TikTok with over 150K views and is still gaining traction. How did your perception of racism change as you got older?...

Q: I’m a very sex-positive girl and I finally convinced my boyfriend to open up about his fetishes. I could tell he was ashamed and torn about sharing them with me, but I’ve been with my fair share of guys and surfed the net for years, and I was convinced nothing would shock me. Well, it turns out he’s into soft vore. I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit put off, but of course I didn’t tell him....

Robert Morris University’s League of Legends team rmueagles.com, @RMUeSports Some folks snickered when Robert Morris University announced the nation’s first athletic scholarship program for a PC game called League of Legends. But by breaking college athletics’ “virtual barrier,” the school is merely keeping up with times in which competitive gaming has come of age. As of last year, League of Legends claimed 27 million active daily players around the world—far more than the 1....

Presidio is a new Bucktown cocktail barstaurant that’s supposed to remind you of San Francisco—kind of like the way Monti’s is supposed to place diners in a Philadelphia state of mind. Well, not really. Monti’s has cheesesteaks. But at Presidio there’s no sourdough or cioppino, no green goddess dressing, no hangtown fry, no Rice-A-Roni. There are a few nice, arty shots of the Golden Gate Bridge on the walls, and some classic cocktails that were first created in the City by the Bay....

This week some copies of the Reader’s print edition are served with a lagniappe. Tucked inside 2,700 copies of the paper is the premiere issue of the Chicago FoodCultura Clarion, the culmination of a collaboration between artist Antoni Miralda and University of Chicago anthropologist Stephan Palmié. Instead Palmié and Miralda, along with an editorial team consisting of noted investigator of south-side culinary oddities Peter Engler, chef and founder of Roots & Culture Contemporary Arts Center Eric May, and food writer Paige Resnick, put together the Clarion, a 12-page folded insert of original Chicago food writing and artwork....

If the woozy, intergalactic raps on Knife Knights’s debut full-length, 1 Time Mirage (Sub Pop), remind you of Seattle hip-hop outfit Shabazz Palaces, they should. Ever since rapper Ishmael Butler and multi-instrumentalist Tendai “Baba” Maraire launched Shabazz Palaces more than a decade ago, they’ve grown their catalog by finessing songs in jams with engineer Erik Blood—and the core of Knife Knights is the duo of Butler and Blood. Shabazz Palaces is so closely linked to Knife Knights that “offshoot” or “side project” falls short of describing the incestuous relationship between the two....

Q: You say people need to be in “good working order” to be in a relationship. What if you will never be in “good working order” because you cope with a mental health condition? Q: I’m way more into BDSM than my huzzben. He enjoys it, but he does not initiate play. How can I encourage him to be the instigator of rough sex? We have negotiated limits and safe words but he finds using restraints and toys to be too much work!...

After Ronin, the long-running band of Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bartsch, dropped its 2010 studio album, Llyria (ECM), the group experienced some major personnel shifts. In 2011 six-string bassist Björn Meyer left the group and was replaced by Thomy Jordi, who plays a conventional four-string model. When percussionist Andi Pupato split a year later, Bartsch chose to shrink his quintet into a foursome. This month, the new lineup has finally released a new record....

Chicago would have been a much more mundane place over the last two decades without the tireless efforts of musician, artist, promoter, historian (and Reader contributor) Plastic Crimewave, aka Steve Krakow. Sometimes his music can seem overshadowed by his work organizing and promoting shows of great psychedelic trip-meisters from all over the world, but a new Plastic Crimewave Syndicate album is always a cosmic event. The power trio—currently includes Anjru Kieterang on bass and Jose Bernal on drums—is about to drop Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom on EyeVybe (run by erstwhile drummer Karissa Talanian)....

Years before there was the Invisible Institute suing Chicago’s police department in hopes of cleaning it up, there was Citizens Alert, doing the same thing. And by years, I mean decades. In 1970, three years after it was founded to monitor the police, Citizens Alert filed a suit charging the city with racial discrimination in the hiring of recruits. Mary Powers died Saturday at Evanston Hospital at the age of 93....

No initial visit to a restaurant engenders the kind of nervous, soaring expectations an Alinea Group spot inspires. Whether it’s the forthcoming reboot of the mothership, the latest incarnation of Next, predinner drinks at the Aviary, or the hope of a rare postprandial descent into the Office, Grant Achatz, Nick Kokonas, and company have set such lofty standards for some of the most exclusive and elusive (actual) tickets in town that it’s difficult to maintain a steady heartbeat in anticipation of eating or drinking in any one of them....

A few years ago, LA reissue label Now-Again led the rush to share with the world the joys of Zamrock—a beguiling take on psychedelic rock recorded in the mid-70s by a small coterie of bands in the African nation of Zambia. The music—by artists such as Witch, Amanaz, Paul Ngozi, Chrissy “Zebby” Tembo, and Rikki Ililonga & Musi-O-Tunya—inevitably sounded like a mutated hybrid of several different styles, combining a clear reverence for the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, the influence of James Brown, and rhythms borrowed from indigenous forms....

Gospel singer Tasha Cobbs Leonard produced her latest full-length album, Royalty: Live at the Ryman, with a multiracial, multigenre crew of singers and musicians who joined her on the storied boards of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on August 3. Even though the pandemic eliminated the possibility of a live audience, the Ryman was an ideal location for Leonard’s inclusive recording because of what it represents. Built as a place of worship in 1892, the auditorium was the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 till ’74, and its historic relationship with race is as complicated as gospel music’s own....

In his 2018 one-act, actor and writer Greg Keller creates a relationship between two young men so poignant, agonizing, and fundamental that it’s difficult to believe no other playwright (at least to my knowledge) has explored this terrain before. Describing the true nature of their pathologically intertwined past, about which only one is aware until late in the play, would spoil nearly everything in these intermittently riveting 75 minutes—largely because Keller unwisely turns what might be the play’s animating event into the eleventh hour big reveal....

On day 600,000 of Illinois’s stay-at-home order, it happened to you. You’re on your living room floor. You’re doing a 1,000 piece custom-ordered jigsaw puzzle of Cardi B and Bernie Sanders photoshopped partying at Tao. You jab one of the dozens of blue pieces into a spot with no luck. You sigh, devastated. This puzzle is just not cutting it anymore. Something’s missing. You need gossip. Real gossip. You need reality TV....

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times Media Senator Mark Kirk went there. A few days after last week’s election, a few of us political junkies were trying to predict who would be the first mayoral flag waver to mention Detroit. But leave it to a Republican—the party of Willie Horton—to rip that scab right off the wound. Plus, it’s been hurled at me for almost ten years. These are the neighborhoods most in need of jobs and economic development funds....