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The orca Tilikum was taken from the remote waters of Iceland at the age of 2 and penned in a pool proportioned like a bathtub away from the ocean and even the sun most of his waking hours. Tilikum became a killer by the age of 10, drowning trainer Keltie Byrne in an incident spun as an accident. The 12,000-pound behemoth killed and killed again, including among his victims senior trainer and SeaWorld poster girl Dawn Brancheau, dragged into the water, dismembered, and partially eaten minutes after a Dine with Shamu show....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Blink-155 podcast Another podcast that aims to cover a band’s entire career, Blink-155 is an effort by Canadian musicians and writers Sam Sutherland and Josiah Hughes to provide incredibly in-depth analyses of all 155 songs Blink-182 has written and recorded, one song per episode. The episodes are hilarious, with plenty of sarcastic bite, and an astounding amount of thought and research goes into each one....

For anyone interested in a whole range of issues, from women’s rights to collegiate culture to the state of American journalism, the story at the heart of Calamity West‘s Rolling was a big deal. The November 19, 2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine featured “A Rape on Campus,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s report on allegations made to her by a University of Virginia student called “Jackie,” who said she’d been lured into an upstairs room at the local Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house and gang-raped as part of an initiation rite....

Here’s the deal between you and that Donald Trump crowd: you don’t like them and they don’t like you. Come November, one or the other is moving to Canada. But until that happens, wet your whistle. The Nation has just made you a very sweet offer: “Are you looking for that perfect Malbec to pair with Donald Trump’s xenophobic and misogynistic rally speeches?” The Nation Wine Club is asking. “Perhaps a complex Cabernet over which to discuss Bernie’s case for democratic socialism?...

On Tuesday, December 19, Schubas hosts a release party for Take It Outside, the debut book by 24-year-old Chicago music-scene photographer Tim Nagle. Headlining the show is Phoelix, the talented multi-instrumentalist and singer who coproduced Noname’s Telefone and Saba’s Bucket List Project. Rookie opens, and throughout the night members of young rock bands (including Twin Peaks and the Orwells) spin records. The bill reflects the kinds of music Nagle follows: he spent most of his youth on Chicago’s south side, devouring rap and rock, and he was a teenager when the Smith Westerns broke out....

If you went to a lot of shows at defunct Bridgeport punk house Rancho Huevos, you likely caught the July 2019 debut performance of south-side underground supergroup Canal Irreal. The band, whose name means “unreal channel” in Spanish, features members of razacore outfit Sin Orden (who emerged in a second wave of local Latinx punk bands in the late 1990s), guitarist Scott Plant of oddball postpunk unit Droids Blood, and longtime DIY punk linchpin Martin Sorrondeguy, best known as the fearless front man of radical Spanish-language hardcore champions Los Crudos and queercore evangelists Limp Wrist....

With his open friendliness and his mane of curly hair—which earned him the nickname “Medusa”—Dave Shelton was a magnetic presence on Chicago’s nightlife scene in the mid-1970s. DJ Teri Bristol recalls first spotting him at a Lakeview gay club called Broadway Limited. “His hair was past his shoulders—it was in ringlet curls,” she says. “He stuck out to me. It was almost like he was illuminated. I was instantly drawn to him....

Music festivals as we’ve known them may be in jeopardy due to a virus, but festival culture keeps on giving: this summer’s bounty includes Deafbrick, the new album by brain-rattling São Paulo psych-punk trio Deafkids and maniacal London-based electro-noise-rock duo Petbrick, aka musician and producer Wayne Adams and Sepultura and Cavalera Conspiracy drummer Iggor Cavalera. The record grew out of the bands’ friendship, which led to a collaborative performance at the 2019 Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands....

Q: I’m 20, straight, male, fit, and active. I masturbated prone—flat on my stomach—for years. I’ve now changed to a more traditional position (on my back or sitting upright), and I’m using my hand rather than grinding against a mattress. I can easily orgasm when I masturbate. I’ve had sex four times in my life, and I’m worried because I wasn’t able to orgasm by someone else’s hand, through oral, or during penetration....

Much of the new energy injected into Chicago’s bustling free-jazz and improvised-music scenes over the past year or two has come from a small group of players associated with Amalgam Music, a modest local label run by drummer Bill Harris. His efforts have introduced me to the music of pianist Matt Piet and saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher, among others, and members of the circle to which they belong have made themselves ubiquitous at local spots such as Elastic, Slate Arts, and Constellation....

Composer and guitarist Daniel Wyche has long been a vital figure in Chicago’s experimental music scene, most notably at Elastic Arts, where he’s curated, produced, and organized concerts since 2013. His upcoming show at the Logan Square venue, where he’ll perform alongside frequent collaborator and fellow guitarist Mark Shippy, celebrates his 40th birthday and his completion of a PhD at the University of Chicago. Wyche speaks admiringly about Shippy, an exploratory musician best known for his work with Chicago bands U....

When W. Somerset Maugham’s British war drama For Services Rendered premiered in 1932, it offered unprepared audiences a stark exploration of the enduring consequences of the First World War and a critique of a political system that offered no protection for those who fought for its honor. In its Chicago premiere, presented by the Griffin Theatre Company and directed by ensemble member Robin Witt, this message feels contemporary and urgent....

It’s their weekly lunch date. They’re sitting in the restaurant where she and her daughter always go, where she has her usual order of Caesar salad with salmon bits and a rum and Diet Coke (OK, three), and where the waitress fusses over her like a favorite customer. “Poetry is in the details,” Peggy (Meg Thalken) tells her children, Ellen (Amy Montgomery) and Warren (Bruch Thomas Reed), who has joined them this week....

In this week’s cover story, I reported about “the Chicago Housing authority’s sleeping giant”—the 47,000 households participating in the Housing Choice Voucher program (also known as Section 8)—and attempts of those residents to organize a representative group. “You had patronage precinct workers who had jobs in City Hall or the like, whose business it was to go door to door [in the projects] to register people and turn out the vote,” says Dick Simpson, a former 44th Ward alderman and elections expert who teaches political science at UIC....

Last week, popular Chicago punk-scene pug Chloe died at age 13. She was a constant presence on the long-running music and culture podcast Better Yet, whose host, Tim Crisp, frequently photographed Chloe alongside his interviewees. If you’re plugged into the local punk and rock scenes, chances are you’ve seen pics of Chloe relaxing on a couch with the likes of Kelly Hogan, Touche Amore’s Jeremy Bolm, Lala Lala’s Lillie West, Piebald’s Travis Shettel, Stef Chura, Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo, and Laura Stevenson....

Black hair. A jilted woman. A sacrifice. Snow. “She’s a geisha who falls in love with a samurai. They have their one secret night together, but she realizes the future of the clan depends on his marrying this other woman, so she says, ‘Go.’ It’s their wedding night. She’s alone and undoing her hair. It’s black hair—a symbol of youth, the strength of a woman, resilience, beauty,” says choreographer Rika Lin on Kurokami (“Black Hair”), an excerpt from the now-lost 18th-century kabuki play Oakinai hirugakojima....

Almost five years ago, I happily joined the chorus of Chicagoans straining to find clever ways to describe the bizarre boundaries of the newly created Second Ward, which zig and zag around several north- and near-north-side neighborhoods. But I’m starting to realize there was another—perhaps even more significant—consequence of the mayor’s creative gerrymandering that’s only now becoming apparent. Now Hopkins is clearly the mayor’s front man on the issue of industry on the near north side....

Well that was good while it lasted! Sort of?! The city of Chicago and Cook County have advised city and suburban residents to follow a stay-at-home protocol again for at least the next 30 days. Here’s the City’s official advisory in PDF form if you didn’t see it when it was issued on Thursday, November 12. Tue-Sat at 8 PM and Sun at 7 PM, through 11/21: Catch the last showings of Theatre in the Dark’s online production of A War of the Worlds....

The Thompson Center cost $172 million to construct. Helmut Jahn, who died in a bike accident last month, began designing the 17-story building in 1979. Located on the corner of State and Lake, it was originally known as the State of Illinois Center, and named after its keeper, then-Illinois Governor James R. Thompson. After Thompson left office, he contributed to Illinois’s long-standing history of political corruption by having his firm represent Governor George Ryan pro bono....

That’s another feature you won’t find at most bars: the draft system allows beer to be stored (and poured) at its optimum serving temperature, so a stout will be served a little warmer than a saison or pale ale. When I was there the selection ranged from classics such as Founders Harvest Ale and Big Sky Moose Drool Brown Ale to the bizarre-sounding Omnipollo Hilma Vanilla Burger & Fries IIPA, described as a “hazy imperial ‘hoppy meal’ IPA....