Thursday’s release of footage from the killing of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Mexican American boy, in Little Village last month, which showed the child was unarmed with his hands up at the moment a white police officer shot him, has further intensified the calls for a racial reckoning that grew in May 2020 with the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. When the CMP website launched, there were limited—or no—explanations for singling out some monuments over others....
This clever 2003 Broadway hit by songwriters Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez and playwright Jeff Whitty, now in a breezy, intimate staging by director L. Walter Stearns at Mercury Theater, is the story of Princeton, a 23-year-old college grad with no job, no girlfriend, and no sense of purpose. After moving to Avenue Q, a fictional slum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Princeton meets plucky but lonely Kate Monster, a kindergarten teaching assistant with dreams of opening a school for monsters like herself—or “people of fur,” in her words....
December 15, 2012, was a bleak, rainy Saturday with a chill in the air. Chicago police officer Ruth Castelli, an eight-year veteran of the force, was patrolling the city’s southwest side with fellow officer Christopher Hackett. The two didn’t usually ride together, but Castelli’s regular partner was on leave. The day started innocuously enough—earlier that morning Castelli had participated in “Shop With a Cop,” a seasonal initiative that sends officers on a shopping trip to Target with underprivileged children on their beat....
A few weeks ago an e-mail popped into the inboxes of the authors of this post inviting us to swim like a mermaid. We knew we had to accept, because how often in your life do you get to fulfill one of your most cherished childhood dreams? Aimee Levitt: Did you have mermaid aspirations when you were little? I think I probably did because I couldn’t actually swim, so I had to find other ways to fill my free swim time....
Among the myriad injuries inflicted upon Americans by COVID-19 (though admittedly one of the mildest) is the impossibility of attending your favorite holiday concert. For the past dozen years, Chicago-based saxophonist Mars Williams has hosted a unique variation on that seasonal tradition. Each December he convenes Witches & Devils, his combo devoted to the music of saxophonist Albert Ayler (1936-1970), to play a set or two of ecstatic, free-jazz-style medleys that combine spiritually infused Ayler themes (“Bells,” “Universal Indians,” “Truth Is Marching In”) with holiday favorites (“12 Days of Christmas,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Ma’oz Tzur,” aka the Hanukkah hymn sometimes called “Rock of Ages”)....
For almost two years, self-described “pansexual dress-to-sweat party” Soft Leather has used Logan Square bar East Room as its home base. Founded by DJ Zain Curtis (aka Teen Witch), David Beltran of Chicago label and arts collective FeelTrip, and producer and promoter Johnny Love (probably best known these days from #HealthGoth and Deathface), Soft Leather is locally famous for its queer-friendly atmosphere, non-gender-conforming aesthetic, and boundary-pushing fashions, which start with assless chaps and ball gags and get wilder from there....
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine . . . they have nine different types of feta. Yeah. It’s a place called Devon Market.” The tall, white, American man drifted in front of the deli counter. If his euphoric expression and phone conversation hadn’t given him away as a first-timer, his massive, empty cart definitely did. Only a rookie would bother with a full-sized cart at Devon Market. Those familiar with the densely packed, winding aisles of the Rogers Park grocery store know that it’s better to stay nimble with a basket....
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. In another era, Carl Demma would have been a prophet or a saint. In late-2oth century Chicago, he was just another eccentric with a dream: to build a 33-foot-tall, 8,400-pound stainless steel statue of the Blessed Mother. It took him an entire lifetime to make it happen....
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Media Jesus “Chuy” Garcia opposes Mayor Emanuel’s use of social impact bonds. Outside a south-side child care center, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia yesterday blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s use of social impact bonds to fund an expansion of prekindergarten in Chicago. The investors only make money if certain targets are met. The targets in the pre-K program are increased readiness for kindergarten, improved third-grade literacy, and reduced need for special education services—all of which would save the city money while earning it for the investors as well....
Cracker Jack officially debuted at the World’s Columbian Exposition, but its founder (if not inventor) Frederick Rueckheim was hawking some form of the caramel corn-peanut snack mix on the streets of Chicago more than 20 years earlier, in 1871. Yes, Garrett Popcorn’s Garrett Mix—formerly known as the Chicago Mix—usually gets more credit, but debuting nearly a century and a half earlier makes Cracker Jack Chicago’s most enduring stoner snack; for stoners, sure, and now those about to be stoned....
Bass clarinetist Jason Stein spent a good chunk of last year and most of 2016 playing large theaters and basketball arenas with his scrappy trio Locksmith Isidore as the opening act for his half-sister, comedian and actor Amy Schumer. Since then he’s gone back to playing more modest stages, but his latest music is bigger than ever. In September, he dropped one of the strongest albums of his career, Lucille! (Delmark), a spry quartet recording built around his interplay with reedist Keefe Jackson....
Born in Arkansas in 1918, John H. Johnson relocated to Chicago with his mother, Gertrude, to further his education after his father, Leroy, was killed in a sawmill accident when Johnson was just six years old. After graduating from DuSable High School and the University of Chicago in 1942, Johnson took out a $500 loan using his mother’s furniture as collateral to open the doors of Johnson Publishing Company. Launched in 1945, Ebony revolutionized the way black journalists and advertisers engaged with black readers....
For her hour-long Saturday-morning set at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s 50th-anniversary celebration, MCA Hearts Chicago, Lakshmi Ramgopal has put together the biggest ensemble of her musical career. Though she’s played in bands (most notably synth-pop duo Love and Radiation, with ensemble member Adele Nicholas) and enlisted the occasional musician to support her solo project, Lykanthea (which debuted in 2014 with the EP Migration), she’s never attempted anything as ambitious as the nine-piece group she’ll debut this weekend....
What differentiates Koogler’s play from other suburbia-as-existential-limbo stories is a wary, perhaps misanthropic suggestion that a bohemian fidelity to youth and adventure is equally as doomed and futile a course of action as giving in to the man. When we meet Suzan (Natalie West)—a housing-insecure aging folk singer with a broken car and breaking back—she’s suffering the indignity of a warehouse-mandated, stopwatch-timed walking test around a course of safety cones as part of an interview for a seasonal gig....
“It’s not like we’re saying sex doesn’t happen—when you get adults in a hotel somewhere, stuff’s going to happen,” says Matt Berger, media relations lead for Midwest FurFest. “But sex is definitely not something that’s predominant, especially in public spaces.” He’s shrugging off a persistent misconception that all furries are sexual fetishists who enjoy cavorting about in animal costumes. While a vast majority of individuals consume anthropomorphic-related content at some point in their lives (think: Mickey Mouse, Zootopia, Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Rocket Raccoon), furries exhibit a focused, lifelong interest in this world....
Remarkable German trombonist Johannes Bauer died today at 61. (No other details have yet been made public.) The younger brother of fellow trombonist Conny Bauer, he was a longtime fixture in European improvised music, an imaginative and talented player who privileged an ensemble-oriented approach over individual grandstanding. In fact, in his vast discography, which stretches back to 1979, I can’t find a single recording where name sits alone on an album’s cover—he always worked as sideman or a participant in collective endeavors....
Even if you don’t know their names, you may already have heard Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles. The former is a local guitarist whose versatility has enabled him to conjure late-night streetscapes with poet Dmitry Samarov, make like the Velvet Underground with Circuit des Yeux, and roll with the mercurial jams of folk-rocker Ryley Walker. The latter is a North Carolina-based banjo and percussion player who has put driving rock beats behind singer-songwriters Steve Gunn and Jake Xerxes Fussell, evoked the void with improvisational drone outfit Pelt, and kicked up the sawdust with old-time dance band the Black Twig Pickers....
A crowded festival weekend means a crowded cover! This year artist Jason Wyatt Frederick added the Silver Room Block Party and ComplexCon Chicago into the mix, which means that along with the who’s who of Pitchfork (Ryan Schreiber, Grapetooth, Robyn) we got to see the likes of Silver Room owner Eric Williams, Ayana Contreras, and Fat Tiger Workshop (an adorable favorite among Reader staffers). The key is below, and the numbers in the illustration above will tell you who’s who and what’s what:...
Green Day is blasting from the kitchen of Iliana Regan’s Elizabeth. It’s 4 PM on a Thursday, an hour and a half before the doors of the 20-seat Lincoln Square restaurant open, and the staff of about ten finishes prepping for a nearly sold-out service and sits down—or leans against a counter or stands over a sink—for the customary family meal. Staff meals typically allow the cooks, no matter their experience level, to flex some creative muscle in the kitchen....
There’s plenty to do in Chicago this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Thu 11/17: SAIC MFA student Cassandra Davis presents her solo show “Of Roses and Jessamine,” investigating “spatial and corporeal sites of ritual.” Opening reception at the LeRoy Neiman Center (37 S. Wabash) features performance by Industry of the Ordinary. 4-6 PM
