A slender woman in a leather catsuit posed gracefully on a crowded convention show floor—her whip gripped in an outstretched hand as if ready to strike. She smirked as a trio of men holding smartphones snapped a quick photo of her. Granted, porn stars autographing photos of their own bare breasts for eager middle-aged couples or vendors hawking bath soap in the shape of dicks and vaginas is bit more risque than, say, superheroes clad in snug spandex at Wizard World—but the difference is fewer than 50 shades of grey....

Chicago sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and noise weirdo Angel Marcloid creates meticulously teetering collages out of vivisected bits of various incongruous genres under several different monikers. She’s already put out two albums this year: March’s Bubble Universe! (Hausu Mountain), where she appears as Nonlocal Forecast, has a gently frothy ambience that verges on jazzy fusion before sliding into semi-ironic new age. Tonight she celebrates the second album, the recent Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace), released under the name Fire-Toolz by the Orange Milk label....

Stories of C.K. behaving in this way have been floating around for years. A 2012 Gawker post, filed under the tag “blind item” and headlined “Which Beloved Comedian Likes to Force Female Comics to Watch Him Jerk Off?,” describes a rumor about a female comedy duo’s encounter with a “our nation’s most hilarious stand-up comic and critically cherished sitcom auteur.” The details of the incident in the Gawker item are remarkably similar to the event Goodman and Wolov recount in the Times story: As soon as they sat down in his room, still wrapped in their winter jackets and hats, Louis C....

ARTIST: Daniel MacAdam SHOW: Heron Oblivion, Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band, and Ryley Walker & Bill MacKay at Beat Kitchen on Fri 6/3 MORE INFO: crosshairchicago.com

It is a testament to the power of art when a fictional film can change how an entire country addresses LGBTQ+ rights. Such is the case with And Then We Danced, whose screening in the country of Georgia led to antagonistic riots and ultimately shed light on marginalized communities. Director Levan Akin’s beautiful love story is set to traditional Georgian dance and music, as Merab, a young competitive dancer, puts his future in jeopardy when he falls for a talented fellow male dancer....

Because I am too cheap to pay for cable, last night’s World Series game between the Cubs and the Indians was the first one all season I’ve been able to watch on TV in the peace and comfort of my own living room. Usually it’s my custom to listen to Pat Hughes and Ron Coomer on the radio, WSCR (670 AM). Though I still miss the original Ron—Santo—Pat’s voice never fails to comfort and soothe me, even when the Cubs are irrevocably losing....

It’s really not a question of whether the building was worthy of designation,” then-alderman Edwin P. Fifielski said of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building in 1971, months before it was demolished for a modern office building, 30 N. LaSalle. “It was a matter of weighing the aesthetic value of the building with the money involved to buy and maintain it. It would be true of any landmark in the city.”...

Guitarist Joel Paterson is a devoted student of American roots and early jazz guitar who pointedly ignores the lines between the once racially defined genres. Although he’s recorded only a few albums under his own name, his technical ease and versatility have made him a ubiquitous presence on the local scene, where he’s collaborated with Devil in a Woodpile, Jimmy Sutton’s Four Charms, and Cash Box Kings, and he’s done session work with national acts like JD McPherson, the Cactus Blossoms, and Pokey LaFarge, among others....

“It’s all the same movie,” says writer Susan Nussbaum in the opening moments of the 2020 documentary Code of the Freaks. “It’s all inspiration.” A Chicago-based collaboration between Nussbaum, director Salome Chasnoff, and scholars Alyson Patsavas and Carrie Sandahl, Code of the Freaks shines a searing light on ableism in mainstream film. During the age of the #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo movements, when Hollywood’s discriminatory practices are coming under increased scrutiny, Code of the Freaks gives much-needed voice to the myriad ways disabled people’s lives are directly impacted by these stories....

The Seattle-based Twitter feed Dockless Bike Fail hilariously showcases the downside of dockless bike sharing, one of the newest developments in the shared-mobility boom. With this technology, customers can use a cell phone app to locate and access cycles distributed around a city and secured with built-in locks. Unlike traditional bike-share systems like Chicago’s Divvy, there’s no need to install expensive docking stations, and users can leave the cycles right at their destinations....

Michelle L. Quinn/Sun-Times Media Just wait until you eat it Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That some DEA agents had “sex parties” with prostitutes paid for by drug cartels in South America? —Mick Dumke • Or see, in preparation for the impending Passover holiday, this video of Americans tasting Israeli snack foods? —Aimee Levitt

With their ruffled shirts, baggy Tripp pants, and signature painted-on mustache, Dorian Electra always look like they’re ready for a goth meetup at the Renaissance Faire. The nonbinary pop star is all about being too much, and though they’re still a relative newcomer, that energy has already earned them a fervent indie-pop following. Electra’s debut album, last year’s Flamboyant, consists of 11 energetic hyperpop tracks that explore a wild array of sounds and subjects: The campy “Career Boy” satirizes cubicle culture, and “Live by the Sword” (cowritten by 100 Gecs’ Dylan Brady) sounds like a backing track for an intergalactic joust....

Ryan, the bright, witty, psychologically damaged protagonist of Steven Strafford’s dark domestic comedy (played with uncommon power and pathos by Esteban Andres Cruz) begins the play by dividing all comedians into three types: the Godzillas, who come on strong, firing joke after joke; the more subtle Mothras, who hold back but then destroy the audience with a few well-aimed quips; and the Gameras, clumsier than the other two, but equally devastating....

Baba Petra was getting old. She wanted to see her family in her village near Banja Luka again, so during the middle of the Bosnian War in the early 90s, she left her Chicago garden to go back home and say goodbye. Back in the day, Baba Petra and her daughter regularly helped out on the farm, so when she returned from Bosnia, she gave Videnovich a backup stash of black pole beans specific to the region that she smuggled back in a pair of socks....

Lady Bird, which hit theaters earlier this month, has collected sterling reviews proclaiming its writer- director, Greta Gerwig, an important new voice in American movies. Yet Gerwig isn’t really a new voice at all—in the past decade she’s racked up ten screenwriting credits, including collaborations with Chicago indie Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs and Nights and Weekends) and New York indie Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha and Mistress America). When I saw Lady Bird, her first solo flight, it struck me as something completely fresh, though I knew I’d already seen several movies she’d cowritten....

With high-schoolers from across the area getting ready to hit Chicago’s streets this week and on March 24 to demand sensible gun laws, the time has come for me to give these youngsters some avuncular advice and history lessons. In my defense, I voted for none of them. “We want sensible gun laws,” says Toomey. “But eventually, we want to address the root of the problems—cycles of poverty and mental illness....

Sue Kwong This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and the wide range of people who live here and assembled them into an NCAA-style bracket. Then we recruited a crack team of writers, editors, booksellers, and scholars as well as a few Reader staffers to judge each bout....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, October 6, 2016. Aldermen want to remove honorary ‘Trump Plaza’ designation GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has his own honorary street sign in Chicago, “Trump Plaza,” near the Trump International Hotel and Tower in River North. Led by Alderman Brendan Reilly, 47 City Council members signed on to an ordinance that would remove the designation because of his “hateful and racist campaign against immigrants and minorities....

Q: I’m a gay guy who’s involved with a guy I met a few months before COVID-19 took off. He’s a great guy, smart, funny, hot, healthy, and easy to be around. It started as a hookup but we have chemistry on several levels and, without either of us having to say it, we started seeing each other regularly. We both live alone and decided to be exclusive due to the pandemic....

The spaceship under construction across from Old Orchard Mall was the first thing that gave me comfort after I moved to Evanston on March 10. Moving during the first week of a pandemic-induced global lockdown that one suspects might also signify end-times is unnerving, but back in the early days that immediately followed the end of the before times, that spaceship made me smile. I decided to investigate. The dog owners are a tough crowd....