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Yes, the pandemic has been devastating for restaurants in Chicago, but for some reason it’s been a very good time for the food of the Malay Archipelago, encompassing the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and more; and by extension, that’s good for everyone. (The awful demise of Lincoln Park’s Rickshaw Republic notwithstanding.) But three years ago Low took issue with a passing comment from a customer that Malaysian food would never overcome its association with cheap street food....

Bail set “without meaningful consideration of an individual’s indigence and alternatives . . . violates the Fourteenth Amendment,” the department wrote. “There’s a public perception that [bond hearings] are detailed hearings, that they’re well-founded decisions,” says Sharlyn Grace, a criminal justice policy fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, a court watchdog group. “But the decision about whether they’re going to be incarcerated for that time is happening in 37 seconds, 25 seconds....

Most folks don’t know a lot about insects. Insects move fast and we have some sort of phobia. We urbanized animals have a penchant for cultivating turf grass and concrete and tend not to have that many insects around us. But the pollinator-plant connection (and sometimes dependency) is real. Apparently while tiny and almost a thousand times smaller, a bumblebee brain is vastly more efficient than our own brains and can compute visual information 15 times as quickly....

A haunted and haunting lead performance by the excellent Sean William Kelly drives AstonRep Theatre Company’s solid and moving production of Equus, the 1973 drama by British playwright Peter Shaffer (Amadeus). Kelly plays Alan Strang, a 17-year-old stable boy in southern England who blinds six horses with a spike, a seemingly inexplicable act of horrific cruelty. Committed to a psychiatric hospital, he comes under the care of Dr. Martin Dysart (Rian Jairell)....

Starting this week, we present a biweekly list inspired by a film screening or series taking place around town. In honor of Benny and Josh Safdie’s new heist film Good Time, screening this week at Music Box (in 35mm!), we’ve selected five additional heist films from 1955 to 2005 (that don’t have “Ocean” in the title and aren’t directed by Quentin Tarantino). Going in StyleThe cast—George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg playing three old men who rob a bank—promises a mug fest, but director Martin Brest imposes a quiet, attentive style on the story, saving it from cuteness and emotional facility....

Until Swans embarked on their current tour—promised to be their last, at least for this iteration of the band—they’d gotten some of their crushing power from drummer Thor Harris, a rhythm machine of awesome magnitude. Last year he stepped away from the group after five grueling years of touring, and he’s now focusing on his own music, which delivers a much different sound. Last month he dropped the debut full-length from his new project Thor & Friends on LM Dupli-cation, the label run by A Hawk and a Hacksaw‘s Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, both of whom appear on the record....

Last Friday the Reader said hello to the Chicago Newspaper Guild, which this paper’s editorial employees certified by a vote of 19-0. On Monday the Reader began saying good-bye to editor Mara Shalhoup. “There’s a time in life—and if you live in Chicago, that time is January—when the possibility of a new adventure becomes irresistible,” she told her staff. “I love this city. I love working with all of you. I love the Reader....

The bike helmet debate stirs strong emotions. Many of us have heard stories of people who suffered traumatic brain injuries after being struck by a motorist while biking without a helmet. It’s also common to hear testimony from people who believe that wearing protective headgear made the difference between life or death during a crash. On the other hand, there are many people—even mainstream American bike advocates—who say helmets aren’t necessary for all kinds of riding....

With his recent Manic Revelations (Rounder), Saint Louis roots maven Pokey LaFarge hasn’t surrendered his love of a simpler musical era, but he seems to have decided that polishing up his sound might net him a broader listenership. I enjoyed his 2015 album Something in the Water, which was made by a crew of skilled Chicago time travelers including members of the Fat Babies and Flat Five—artists who routinely balance their romance for American’s roots music past with a sly postmodern sensibility....

In Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, Rob Fleming asks, “What came first—the music or the misery? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?” A similar quest for truth is the basis of The Effect by Lucy Prebble (a writer for the HBO series Succession), now in a Chicago premiere with Strawdog Theatre. Two long-term, sequestered test subjects wonder if their desire for each other is a result of real love or the antidepressants they are given....

Honky Tonk Angels In performance style and attitude, the heroines of 20th-century American country music are about as theatrical as they come. Here, under the music direction of Jeremy Ramey, a trio of crystalline voices at Theo Ubique brilliantly capitalize on the live, unplugged, raucous energy of the western repertoire. Ted Swindley, author of the tribute show Always . . . . Patsy Cline, loosely ties together more than two dozen singles with some zero-sum plotting surrounding the formation of a girl group with characterizations and speeches that don’t add much but are harmless....

One of the worst things about Disney’s recent screen adaptation of Into the Woods is how it mangles a perfectly good Stephen Sondheim score. In the movie’s overblown orchestrations, too many instruments serve to reinforce the vocal melodies, drowning out Sondheim’s brilliant use of counterpoint and dissonance—much as Rob Marshall’s grandstanding direction papers over the unsettling narrative themes. By contrast, the movie version of The Last Five Years, Jason Robert Brown’s popular stage musical (which debuted at Northlight Theatre in 2001), derives much of its emotional force by preserving Brown’s minimal arrangements....

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: the pandemic has been uniquely hospitable to the proliferation of condiments and therefore dangerously enabling to those of us suffering from Condiment Acquisitive Disorder. That’s where Padanilam was born and lived until he was six, when his family emigrated to Springfield—not a hotspot for Keralan expats. But he really didn’t become an avid home cook and student of the food he grew up eating until he moved to Chicago to study accounting and history—specifically post-colonial theory....

In this age of identity, when so many people are obsessed with their ethnic, racial, religious, or sexual selves, Tim Wardle’s documentary Three Identical Strangers hits like a thunderbolt. Wardle tells the incredible true story of three 19-year-old men in New York, all adopted as children and complete strangers to each other, who discovered that they were triplets and had been separated at birth by a prominent Jewish adoption agency. When their story broke in 1980, the young men—Bobby Shafran, Eddy Galland, and David Kellman—became a media sensation, appearing on numerous TV talk shows and, inevitably, opening a restaurant together....

A few nights ago, several buildings in Wicker Park were pasted with black-and-white posters featuring a shirtless Vic Mensa with a target on his chest, his body surrounded by bullet holes—a block of them took up a brick wall next to streetwear store Saint Alfred, where posters of the cover art for Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book had previously hung. These posters, which include the phrase “There’s Alot Going On,” followed an Instagram photo from late May that Mensa posted of himself crouching over a whiteboard laid flat on the floor, apparently working on track lists for an album and a tape—its caption reads “mark your calendar....

Raise your hand if you’re familiar with the work of Alice Childress. I thought not. Me neither. Sure, it’s easy enough to ID her as one of a constellation of black playwrights who flourished in New York during the civil rights era. But until I checked I’d have had a hard time telling you what exactly it was that she wrote. Childress’s ten plays died before her own death, in 1994....

Playwright Jillian Leff’s tale of a rookie novelist whose big break depends on her ability to convert her partner’s trauma into a commercial blockbuster is an eye roller. Long story short: there is so much to side-eye in the Right Brain Project’s 90-minute, four-person drama that you might well leave with improved peripheral vision. Directed by Kathi Kaity, (Non)fiction wades toward the preposterous before wholly diving into the deep end of what-even-is-this folderol....

Dr. Devon Price had always been an overachiever. They sacrificed social events to get top grades (aiming to fulfill a teenage dream of getting a PhD in psychology), mechanically ran through tasks on their to-do list, and still made time for activist work, live lit performances, and rewatching Mad Men. Daily life was exhausting but somewhat manageable. That article, originally written to blow off steam, became Price’s first book. Laziness Does Not Exist (Atria Books) is a science-based self-help manual for those run roughshod by capitalism....

Chicago electronic artist Brett Naucke has been a scarce presence on the local scene in recent years, suggesting that his commitment has shifted toward forging new terrain in his home studio rather than performing. He’s released a steady stream of underground cassettes since his acclaimed 2014 album The Seed, but next month he’ll drop The Mansion, his second for the Spectrum Spools imprint. The record, a deeply personal effort that reflects on memories of his childhood home, registers as his greatest achievement thus far, and it’s instructive to hear what he’s worked through leading up to it....

The Chicago Underground Film Festival, which takes place Wednesday, June 6, through Sunday, June 10, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. We take a look back at some notable features that screened in previous editions of the festival, movies demonstrating that “underground” is a happily elastic term. Migrating FormsChicagoan James Fotopoulos directed this stark 1999 drama in which a man and woman meet repeatedly in a mostly bare room for nearly wordless and apparently passionless sex, filmed in low-contrast black and white....