Julian Leal is a 21-year-old college student majoring in business at Columbia College in the South Loop, but he’s better known by his stage name: DJ Drip. In his Instagram bio, he calls himself “The Midwest’s Youngest + Hottest DJ”—and depending on who counts as a DJ and how you measure hotness, that might even be true. “I’m from northwest Indiana. From East Chicago, Indiana,” Leal says. “That’s actually a city—I was born and raised there....
Miishkooki Art Space, a new gallery (not quite) in town, had a jubilant opening last weekend with “Sweet Spoils,” a 95-piece show of comics-inspired art from all over the U.S. and Europe. Miishkooki is the sole inhabitant of a one-story commercial building on Oakton Avenue in Skokie, where it’s nestled among dental offices and insurance agencies, down the street from a dollar store and Brothers Food Market, and a short stroll from the Oakton stop on the Skokie Swift....
Playwright Kristine Thatcher picked up where she and actor-playwright Larry Shue (The Nerd, The Foreigner) left off over 30 years ago with the world premiere of Waiting for Tina Meyer, a romantic comedy that the pair began cowriting decades ago and that reads in its completed form like William Inge crossed with Samuel Beckett, mixed with a hefty dollop of When Harry Met Sally. “To me this piece is about living life to the fullest....
Darryl King, who DJs and produces as King D, recently stumbled upon a relic from the past while digging through his old crates: a cassette copy of the first and only release from King D & the Struggle Unit, the 1991 EP Englewood. “I always had the old-school masters [on] two-inch tape, but with the cassettes I only had that one copy left,” King says. King had heard some hip-hop from New York, but LL Cool J and Run-D....
Giving artists a place to experiment and refine their craft is at the core of Links Hall’s mission, and the organization likewise recognizes the value of dialogue between different artists and audiences. In the past, Links has annually spotlighted a noteworthy work from a local artist who chooses an out-of-town creator for a shared presentation at Links Hall that then travels to the visitor’s homework. This tradition expands considerably with Trade Routes, which features five different pairings put together for a festival running from November 30 to December 9....
The graphic novel Map of my Heart begins with a cartoon map of Hoffman Estates: the high school, the Barrington Square Mall, a good spot to pick raspberries behind the hospital. At the bottom, everything is labeled: “Map of the Known Universe Circa 1982.” When the first issue of King-Cat Comics and Stories came out in 1989, it cost 35 cents. Porcellino was 19 years old, drawing simple stories about his surreal dreams, suburban Chicago upbringing, and the stray cats of Dekalb, Illinois....
America has shown itself capable of electing a president who’s black—but not yet capable, even eight years later, of electing a president who’s a woman. Of course, Hillary Clinton wasn’t running against a mere John McCain or Mitt Romney; her bad luck was facing an opponent with the rare gift of reminding the electorate by word and deed, and on virtually a daily basis, that women have no more worth than men allow them....
Eight years before the pivotal summer depicted in Between Riverside and Crazy, Walter “Pops” Washington, a 30-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, sat drinking in a bar at 6 AM. Soon thereafter a uniformed officer entered the place and unloaded all six of his revolver’s bullets into Washington. Washington, who’s African-American, sued, and since then the proud, angry, preternaturally defiant man has refused multiple settlement offers from the city, because they all stipulated that no one was at fault in the shooting—and Washington insists the officer called him a nigger before opening fire, although no one can corroborate his allegation....
“I dreamed about him, dreamed I had him in the witness box, a masterly cross-examination . . . and I flung at him—’And what did you do in the Great War?’ ‘I wrote Ulysses,’ he said. ‘What did you do?’ Bloody nerve.” And it’s all based on fact. During World War I, neutral Switzerland was a magnet for Europe’s better-quality refugees: artists and intellectuals looking for a place to carry on their investigations while the old order committed suicide....
Q: I’m having an issue with my boyfriend, and I don’t know if I am the crazy, paranoid, controlling party here. We have been together for more than a year and a half. We had troubles early on because he has a low sex drive. It made me very insecure, and I think that’s why, at the time, I became extremely jealous of his friendship with his very attractive intern. I fully owned up to my irrational jealousy and decided on my own that it was my responsibility to overcome that....
The Reader is publishing this story in partnership with the Better Government Association. The former Lyons mayor assembled a team of candidates to retake the village government. In 2009, his son Chris, then just 26 years old, became mayor and has held the reins of power ever since. Over his two-plus terms, Chris Getty has built up a political army with campaign funds currently holding more than $400,000, restored the family fiefdom and transformed the financially ailing government under his control into a stronghold of nepotism and cozy deals, a Better Government Association and Fox 32 investigation found....
Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. “Syl Johnson‘s band was playing there, and I won a singing contest,” Ross says in Robert Pruter’s 1991 book Chicago Soul. “The award was a weekend of singing and being paid. And that started me singing in Syl’s band....
Three years after releasing their first record with new guitarist Brandon Ellis, the Billboard-charting Nightbringers, the Black Dahlia Murder have returned with their ninth studio album, Verminous. It turns out the Detroit five-piece have been trying out some new tricks and angles in their fervent death metal, making this release arguably their most diverse and varied yet. Front man and songwriter Trevor Strnad (one of two remaining original members, along with guitarist Brian Esbach) is more intuitive than technical, and takes a literary approach to his tales of vampires, serial killers, plagues (timely), and Things That Should Not Be....
In May 2020, the Quimby’s Bookstore Instagram started going live with a New Stuff This Week video. Store manager Liz Mason sits next to a stack of zines, comics, and graphic novels. The colorful Quimby’s shelves spread behind her. As she holds new titles towards the camera, comments start rolling in: “Miss you,” and “Love Quimby’s,” and heart-eye emojis. Chicago Zine Fest usually takes place at Plumbers Union Hall, but this year the fest went digital on May 15 and 16....
Consumers often choose hemp as a natural alternative to pharmaceuticals. However, they may not realize that many hemp products are pharmaceutical-ish in nature but don’t follow the science. The market is dominated by mass producers who use environmentally destructive factory farming practices, industrial extraction methods, and heavy production—then market the final product as natural. Leading hemp researchers and practitioners who oppose this over-processed approach support “The Entourage Effect,” a notion that synergy occurs between the natural interaction of the over 400 identified compounds found in hemp, thereby making the whole plant more effective than any one component....
On a winter day in early 2014, I was browsing at Permanent Records when the music on the shop’s sound system caught my ear—terse Krautrock-inspired grooves topped with buoyant organ licks that reminded me of a late-60s Walter Wanderley bossa nova record. I’m sufficiently jaded that I rarely ask a record-store clerk what’s playing, but this time I couldn’t help myself. Bill Roe was behind the counter, and though I only knew him by name, I also knew he was well established in Chicago’s garage-rock scene—he and his wife, Lisa, played together in the band CoCoComa, and in 2009 they’d founded a small label called Trouble in Mind....
I first wrote about Tim Daisy for the Reader 16 years ago. The occasion was a record-release concert by Triage, a trio with saxophonist Dave Rempis and bassist Jason Ajemian. “Daisy is the rare drummer who makes me look forward to his solos,” I concluded. “With his elastic sense of time and imaginative use of bells and cymbals, he makes unexpected accents sound like inevitable, even crucial gestures.” At the time, Daisy was a ubiquitous accompanist; in addition to his role in Triage, he was a steady member of Dragons 1976 and the Vandermark 5....
UPDATE Thursday, March 12, 3 PM: Court Theatre canceled all performances of The Lady from the Sea, announcing that it would pay its artists through the scheduled run. Ticket holders are encouraged to either donate the price of their tickets or apply them to future ticket purchases. A Court production of An Iliad at the Oriental Institute has been postponed. Clapp said the League is monitoring developments and is “sharing safeguards and best practices,” while member theaters are increasing cleaning, supplying hand sanitizers, and “encouraging audience members who are sick to stay home....
The mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando June 12 sent shockwaves of horror and grief through gay communities across the country. The suffering has been particularly acute for queer Latinx communities; the shooting took place on Pulse’s Latin night, and nearly half the people killed were of Puerto Rican descent. It was early Sunday morning. I was still in bed. My partner, Bryan, shook me, woke me up, and told me that there had been a shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando....
French-Cuban twins Lisa-Kainde and Naomi Diaz, also known as polystylistic R&B duo Ibeyi, masterfully transform firsthand experiences and thoughts into something universal on their ravishing second album, Ash (XL). The former wrote the song “I Wanna Be Like You” with the latter in mind. Though the lyrics recall her early memories of dreaming she possessed the qualities of her sibling, as the sisters sing, “I’m often down, often down / I often cry, often cry,” they come off as a powerful yearning for childlike optimism and hope....
