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GlenStar, the luxury developer at odds with 41st Ward alderman Anthony Napolitano over a proposed 299-unit apartment building near the Cumberland Blue Line, has sued the city in an attempt to secure the necessary zoning changes to proceed with construction. But buried in its demands that a judge find city officials’ actions regarding its proposed building unlawful is a major legal challenge to the age-old practice of “aldermanic prerogative.” GlenStar’s attorney, Peter Friedman, explains that the developer played by both the formal and informal rules from the beginning....

Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative When I interviewed artist Theaster Gates for a Reader profile in 2011, the Dante Harper Chicago Public Housing project two blocks from his home was boarded up and deserted. A series of two-story redbrick town houses that spread across two blocks on 70th Street in the Grand Crossing neighborhood, it had been abused, but had pleasing lines and was only 31 years old. Gates, his Rebuild Foundation, and his partners at Brinshore Development were proposing a public-private redevelopment for it designed by Landon Bone Baker Architects....

Michael Gebert Michigan Avenue windows in the lobby at the Chicago Athletic Association A couple of weeks ago there were events showing off the renovated public areas of the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, opposite Millennium Park, and I could have gone to the ribbon cutting with Mayor Emanuel, but it was a hectic week and, anyway, I don’t really like crowds. (Hold that thought; it will be ironic in a minute....

Courtesy the artist District 97 Some prog rock sounds like the work of a sweaty, chain-smoking obsessive holed up in a cellar full of ammunition and Spam, trying to suss out the workings of a sinister conspiracy on cluttered bulletin boards a la the unhinged cops in Se7en or True Detective. But despite prog’s often fiendish complexity, it doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with what you might euphemistically call disordered mental processes—sometimes it’s gleaming and triumphal, like the product of a futuristic laboratory in a Marvel superhero movie....

A Back in Chicago, Rothenberg returned to Spertus and began thinking about the relationship between her photos and the various objects in the archives and how they connected to the institute’s gallery space. “I didn’t want to talk about individuals,” she says. “I wanted to talk about systems.” She found she could get the sense of historical distance and disorientation she was aiming for by photographing objects from oblique angles. A photo of a passport of a Jewish refugee who came to the United States via Mexico, for instance, focuses on the taped and frayed edge of the cover, not the information inside about its owner....

Some people dance to the beat of a different drum, but choreographer and director Faye Driscoll beats the drum of a different dance. At first, her performances seem spasmodic or juvenile; the cast behave like kids in a kindergarten class after they’ve chased Pop Rocks with Pepsi. But Driscoll often addresses adult subject matter—most prominently, sex—and her pieces are so obviously structured that it’s impossible to accuse them of being thrown together....

Looking for a good time? One night of fun that you will likely soon forget? NSA? Some BDSM and possible VBD? Then come all over Grindr the Opera at Pride Films and Plays, a comedic skewering of the modern gay-dating scene. This well-written, over-the-top musical by Erik Ransom stars Grindr (Bruno Rivera), an operatic siren who lures four gay archetypes as her aficionados: Devon (Justin Cavazos), the starry-eyed idealist; Tom (Ben Broughton), the experienced skeptic; Jack (Evan Wilhelm), the adventurous twink; and Don (director John Cardone), the in-the-closet daddy....

As a serious young grunger, I was determined to turn over every mossy Seattle-sounding rock. In addition to the big boys (though we all knew Pearl Jam were poseurs), I was a fan of sub-poppin’ bands including Skin Yard, Green Magnet School, and the Fluid. The scene wasn’t all hairy dudes, but few of the gnarly lady bands really thrilled me. L7 were a different story. The foursome’s second album, 1990’s Smell the Magic, seemed to have it all: hilariously snarky lyrics, style to spare, and crunchy, catchy tunes (especially the fist-pumpin’ single “Shove”)....

Cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir performs with orchestras and smaller ensembles all around the globe and teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle. But Vernacular, her new CD on Sono Luminus, affirms her Icelandic roots even as it acknowledges her geographic distance from her native land. Thorsteinsdóttir has lived outside Iceland most of her life, and the four Icelandic composers whose work she performs on this recital have likewise lived abroad for extended periods....

Andy Warhol once observed that “dying is the most embarrassing thing that could ever happen to you because someone has got to take care of all your details. . . . You’d like to do them all yourself, but you’re dead, so you can’t.” That goes double for the emotionally taxing process of sorting the physical possessions loved ones leave behind, a process that inspired Steppenwolf ensemble member Molly Regan‘s new solo play, The Accidental Curator....

Richmond quintet Inter Arma have just released their fourth full-length, Sulphur English (Relapse), and it is a monster. The band, who share three members with furious black-metal environmental avengers Bastard Sapling, bring a razor-sharp, savage edge to their lumbering, spine-crushing atmospheric doom. Unlike many superheavy slow bands, Inter Arma don’t make music that feels relaxing or somnambulant—the new album’s down-tempo passages, proggy space voyages, and acoustic interludes provide enough mystery and surprise to keep you on your toes before bringing you to your knees....

I recently finished reading the 2011 Will Hermes book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (Faber & Faber), an entertaining and well-researched account of cutting-edge music in New York between 1973 and 1977. Hermes crafts a strictly chronological, diaristic collage, each entry addressing one of the various scenes—Latin music, free jazz, hip-hop, classical minimalism, protopunk—that were then colliding in a thrilling, freewheeling way. I thought of the book when I read violinist Sam Bardfeld’s liner notes to his new trio album, The Great Enthusiasms (BJU), where he briefly describes growing up in New York in the 70s and early 80s:...

In a November radio interview, Meek Mill gave a shout-out to a trio of rising Chicago rappers: Lil Zay Osama, Polo G, and 147Calboy. “I’m putting y’all on some real vibes right now,” Mill said. “These the vibes that’s gonna be poppin’ and streamin’ crazy in the next 30, 40 days.” Meek’s Nostradamus skills were eerily on point with Lil Zay Osama: the south-side rapper dropped his breakthrough video, “Changed Up,” just before the New Year, and it’s racked up roughly 16 million views in the months since....

Every year about this time the venerable Chicago composer George Flynn celebrates his birthday with a Sunday afternoon concert at the Green Mill, and this year’s event—marking his 78th year—doubles as a celebration of a strong new album of compositions performed by some of the city’s finest players. (Flynn’s actual birthday is January 21.) In fact, all of the musicians who appear on American Forms (the latest in a superb series of albums released by Southport Records that collect the composer’s work) will be present to perform the four pieces on the album....

After Rolling Stone published its April cover story on shape-shifting pop musician and actor Janelle Monáe on the release of her third album, Dirty Computer (Wondaland/Bad Boy/Atlantic), it felt like every traffic-hungry news outlet cherry-picked the quotes where she opens up about her sexuality. Monáe’s transparency about being pansexual is well and good, but in the midst of stories that boiled her statements down to one cheap talking point—for example, the Washington Post piece headlined “Janelle Monáe comes out as ‘pansexual’—what does that mean?...

When Robyn first played Pitchfork in 2010, she was the closest thing to a mainstream pop artist the festival had ever booked. That day, her glistening dance music stood out on a stage whose lineup also featured the relatively hard-edged sounds of rapper El-P and rockers Modest Mouse. But her first Pitchfork booking seemed to open the door for the festival to include more pop in that vein: Sky Ferreira in 2013, Grimes in 2014, and most prominently Carly Rae Jepsen in 2016....

Coincidentally, I sat down for breakfast with former governor Pat Quinn to talk about mayoral term limits last week on the very day that a certain mayor named Rahm laid off 1,000 employees, including 500 teachers, from Chicago Public Schools. Quinn calls it his “Take Charge Chicago” referendum, though I think we might call it the “Protect us from Rahm” initiative.” Since we, the voters, seem unable or unwilling to protect ourselves from him on our own....

Gossip Wolf is routinely bowled over by Chicago’s Spektral Quartet—not only do these supreme string shredders totally rip it up, but they also chuck stereotypes about classical music right out the conservatory window! This month, Spektral fire up their 2019-2020 season, entitled “Totally Obsessed,” which showcases a ludicrously wide range of creativity. On Wednesday, August 14, at Constellation, they perform a totally far-out piece from longtime collaborator LJ White that’s based on the Shaggs’ 1969 outre-rock classic “My Pal Foot Foot....

Chocolate meat is on the menu every day at Albany Park’s Subo Filipino Kitchen. If you happen to jump off at the Brown Line’s terminus with a taste for dinuguan, the thick, fortifying, iron-rich blood stew of the Philippines—sanguineous pork butt, snout, and stomach lit up with an acidic spark of rice vinegar—you need only turn your anemic bones a half block south on Kimball Avenue. If you have an even more particular hankering for dinuguan Ilocano, a drier, less gravylike regional variant, the cooks can do that too, but only if you’re having a party....

Ten former students of Northwestern University professor Alec Klein have issued a public letter accusing the award-winning journalist and Medill Justice Project director of sexual misconduct ranging from inappropriate remarks to unwanted touching. In the letter, addressed to Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications dean Bradley J. Hamm, the women said, “We are writing to tell you that Alec Klein’s time is up. His harassing behavior. His predatory behavior....