Q: Let’s say my kink is edging and I edge myself for a few days leading up to a date. Is it my responsibility to tell my potential partner? There are a few variables here that are important to note. This is a first/Tinder date, and it’s just a coffee date, BUT she and I have talked about our expectations, and there will likely be a physical aspect in whatever potential relationship may ensue....
For most people, a heady quaff from a hoppy IPA inspires all sorts of synaptic fireworks you struggle to express. If only there was a way to digitize those feelings and express them as some sort of danceable art form, then—finally—someone might understand you the way your smartphone understands you. Marz Community Brewing understands you. And so does digital design firm M1 interactive. Together they’ve collaborated on the brewery’s newest release, Tech Noir, “a West Coast IPA inspired by cyborgian sci-fi masterpiece, The Terminator....
The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Old newspapers are really fun. No writer in Reader history understood this better than Cliff Doerksen. Trained as a cultural historian, Doerksen was highly skilled in combing through archives in search of really good stuff. In his ongoing blog series Bad News From the Past, Doerksen would conduct a search for a random term....
Chicago-based, Taiwan-born bedroom-pop auteur Layton Wu blurs boogie, yacht rock, and sun-kissed 60s pop into a calming sound that helps dial back my anxiety when every scrap of news cranks it to “high.” He released the luxuriant Summertime Mixtape (Sunset Music) four days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and since I first listened to it, I’ve absolutely needed to keep listening to it. Wu sings in a soft-edged but outgoing coo that’s both sultry and endearing, accompanied by tight funk bass, nimble percussion, and soothing keys that float in the background or gleam like sunlight off a window....
In March 2017, local pop wunderkind Victor Cervantes, aka Victor!, sold out the first run of his self-released debut CD-only EP, Glitter98. Now 18, he’s doubled down on his music career, transforming it from an extracurricular activity to his main focus—in fact, he left high school early in order to pursue his art (per the Chicago Tribune, he’s been working toward receiving his GED). The labor Cervantes has poured into his creative output has paid off, and his distinctive approach along with the harmonious way he blends genres in his most recent tracks makes it feel like he’s hit upon the shape of music to come....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, November 8, 2017. Emanuel slams Trump for “pointing fingers” at Chicago again Mayor Rahm Emanuel slammed President Donald Trump for “pointing fingers” at Chicago’s gun violence issues again instead of focusing on gun control measures after a devastating massacre at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, left 26 people dead. Trump used Chicago’s gun laws as an example of why he refuses to support stronger gun control legislation....
British filmmaker David Lean is the current Director of the Week on the streaming-video channel FilmStruck, which offers almost all of his films for viewing. Tucked between his celebrated Charles Dickens adaptations from the 1940s and his later, grandiose epics are four more unassuming films from the 1950s, leading up to the classic Bridge on the River Kwai. Summertime Katharine Hepburn, a lonely spinster on a European vacation, is seduced by the charms of Venice in this expert 1955 melodrama by David Lean....
It’s difficult to describe Elizabeth McKenzie‘s new novel, The Portable Veblen, because it is so many different things all at once. It’s the story of the courtship of Veblen Amundsen-Hovda and Paul Vreeland. It’s an exploration of complicated family dynamics. It’s a philosophical contemplation of life in northern California through the lens of the writings of the other Veblen, first name Thorstein, who coined the term “conspicuous consumption” and after whom Veblen Amundsen-Hovda is named....
AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth An unmanned U.S. Predator drone Chivalry is a spent force in warfare, drones are the latest culprit, and the dramatic arts have taken up the case. In a new movie, Good Kill, Ethan Hawke is a former pilot who operates drones from a trailer outside Las Vegas but longs to be back in the cockpit. According to the New York Times reviewer, it’s a “blunt, outspoken critique of remote-control warfare, which is transforming the ugly reality of battlefield carnage into a video game whose casualties are pixels on a screen....
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. International Contemporary Ensemble, On the Nature of Thingness: Music by Phyllis Chen and Nathan Davis Keyboardist Phyllis Chen and percussionist Nathan Davis are terrific composers and key members of New York’s International Contemporary Ensemble. This 2016 release collects ICE commissions from both, including toy-piano works by Chen (such as “Chimers”) and Davis’s four-movement title piece, a tour de force for soprano Tony Arnold and a large ensemble....
Like so much else in the Trump era, declaring bankruptcy has come to seem like business as usual. After all, Trump’s companies have done it numerous times. So a tiff over Web design brings elephant and flea jokes to mind. According to the bankruptcy documents, Lillstreet contracted in 2015 with Trilogy Interactive, a national firm with a Ravenswood office, to redevelop its website. The cost was to be no more than $137,050 and work was to be completed by September 5, 2015....
As the Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once cautioned, there’s danger in a single story. Those words of wisdom could be readily applied to black women and their voting motivations in this election cycle. For black women in Chicago on Tuesday night, their reasons for voting—and who they voted for—spanned the spectrum. On the south side, black women voters at precincts in Ashburn and Hyde Park were as much motivated by voting for a woman president as they were by mobilizing against a Trump presidency....
UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. In 2013, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum wrote an article for Wired magazine titled “The Imperfect Myth of the Female Poisoner” that dispelled the persistent cultural assumption that, as far as murder methods go, homicides-by-poisoning are inherently ladylike. “It’s not, you see, that poison is a woman’s weapon,” says Blum. “It’s that it is an evil one....
Live music has helped keep the silent cinema alive, and Chicago is such a rich music town that revivals of silent features often rank among the more promising events on the fall arts calendar. On October 2 the University of Chicago Film Studies Center will welcome the inventive Alloy Orchestra to Logan Center for the Arts to premiere its score for Varieté (1925), a German melodrama starring Emil Jannings as a middle-aged carnival barker who falls for a beautiful young trapeze artist....
What makes a street great? If you don’t like Lake Michigan, well, pick another Great Lake. Just ask local news-gathering organizations. “People like to eat. Why can’t you buy food right off the street like you can in New York?” Thinking broadly about such a renewed commitment to food vendors, one can imagine that this would also present a new opportunity for minority- and women-owned businesses to participate in this heavily trafficked area....
In a newly developing legal market, cannabis has been making its way into the public eye in more ways than dispensaries alone. As the cannabis industry begins thriving in Chicago and Illinois as a whole, opportunities have been opening up for cannabis-adjacent industries to find their footing in the Illinois business world post-legalization. One company, Chi High Tours, is the first of its kind for the city. Instead of pushing for a license to operate a dispensary, Chi High Tours is the first official cannabis tour to hit Chicago....
On Friday, the Pitchfork Music Festival kicks off its 14th year—technically its 15th, if you count the Pitchfork-curated Intonation Music Festival in 2005. Since late 2015, Pitchfork the website has been owned by publishing conglomerate Condé Nast, but fortunately that hasn’t affected the distinctiveness of Pitchfork the festival. It stands out even in a city where every summer weekend seems to have half a dozen fests—this year, for instance, Pitchfork overlaps not only with the Silver Room’s long-running block party but also the debut of ComplexCon Chicago, a two-day music and fashion event presented by Complex magazine....
Zack Stoner dedicated his life to documenting parts of Chicago that few outsiders with video cameras ever bother to visit. He uploaded his interviews to YouTube as ZackTV, so you could call him a vlogger—his channel, ZackTV1, has more than 175,000 subscribers. You could call him a journalist too, because he did tremendous work capturing local artists in their elements, sometimes before anyone outside Chicago knew who they were—Chief Keef, 600 Breezy, Rico Recklezz, Queen Key, FBG Duck....
Caldbeck’s concern for others grew throughout his educational experiences. “I was able to go to private schools, see movies, and go to college with fewer concerns about how to pay for it.” His involvement with sports, clubs, and other organizations taught him the importance of lifting others up, and it shaped how he approaches relationships and business to this day. Now, helping people is as natural as breathing. “One of the first organizations I joined....
If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’m a fan of avant-garde Ugandan labels Nyege Nyege Tapes and Hakuna Kalala. And now and then I’ve written in the Reader about current African artists, among them Nihiloxica, Kirani Ayat, and Muthoni Drummer Queen. But I’ve long listened to older sounds from the continent—soukous, juju, mbalax, highlife, mbaqanga, apala, benga, fuji—and I don’t often have a timely reason to post about them in Chicago....
