Michael Gebert Founder Andrew Lutsey addresses visitors at Local Foods. Chicago food media went gaga when the news broke that David Chang would be doing a pop-up of his New York hipster Chinese chain Momofuku at the Publican after the James Beard Foundation Awards are held here. I’m as happy about it as the next person, but something that will have a considerably greater and longer-lasting impact on our food scene happened on Wednesday and, while it drew a nice crowd of farmers and restaurateurs, I was one of only a few food mediaoids to turn out for it....

Richard A. Chapman / Sun-Times Challenger Tim Meegan (left) says 33rd Ward alderman Deb Mell (far right) used dirty tricks to come out ahead on Election Day. The Logan Square restaurant Ceviche may not look like a hub of political controversy, but that’s just what it was on election day, according to 33rd Ward aldermanic candidate Tim Meegan, who currently stands just 13 votes away from a runoff in the ward....

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons Own this man’s finger Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That Quality Record Plant in Kansas recently purchased 13 new presses that were sitting in a Chicago warehouse? —Leor Galil • That the Justice Department has found evidence of racial bias in the Ferguson police department, including an e-mail making a racist joke about President Obama? —Mick Dumke • That Rahm is trying really hard to be more likable?...

Many series have tried to capture Chicago on the small screen with little success. The comedy Happy Endings is supposed to take place here, but is obviously filmed in LA—it’s riddled with incorrect references, and there’s almost never snow. Chicago Fire attempts to be Chicago so aggressively that the Sears (er, Willis) Tower is somehow constantly in the background. Swanberg deftly captures the internal struggles that plague a range of simple, everyday decisions, like whether or not to ride a bike, or when to completely cut off an ex....

In the wee hours of Sunday, June 20, music journalist (and Reader contributor) Scott Morrow was struck in the back by a stray bullet in Humboldt Park when an unknown assailant opened fire on a nearby car following a traffic altercation. Morrow was taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital, and according to sister Susie Rowley, he lost his spleen and one kidney, as well as suffering damage to his stomach, abdomen, and pancreas....

A cool new record label in Chicago? Gossip Wolf says yes, please! A few months ago, punk rocker Jamie Girlsville (who grew up in Naperville) moved back to Chicago from San Francisco, where she used to run the rad label Show and Tell, which released tunes from the likes of John Dwyer’s pre-Thee Oh Sees band Coachwhips and garage rockers the Hipshakes. Her new imprint, Girlsville, launches with a slew of rad projects, including a tape from 90s New York punks the Prissteens and a compilation called Stupid Punk Boy with Coachwhips, Julia Cafritz’s post-Pussy Galore/pre-Free Kitten group STP, and mid-90s UK riot grrrls Golden Starlet....

Grease belongs to the ages. Well, it obviously doesn’t belong to Jim Jacobs and the late Warren Casey, who wrote and composed the show that debuted at Chicago’s old Kingston Mines in 1971. Fox is airing a live performance of Grease on January 31, and Sunday’s New York Times carried a story on the show that didn’t bother to mention either of its creators. Something comparable would be a story about a live production of Oklahoma!...

There’s plenty to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 12/6: Members of the sartorial group the Rational Dress Society discuss counterfashion from the 1700s to the present at the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E. Chicago). 6 PM Thu 12/8: Have a special someone itching for a pair of vertebrae earrings? Sideshow Gallery (2219 N. Western) hosts the Bizarre Bazaar, a holiday market featuring local vendors specializing in goods including taxidermy jewelry, apothecary, and plant arrangements....

Drummer Bill Rieflin lived in Seattle, but he made an indelible mark on Chicago industrial music as a founder of Pigface and longtime member of Ministry and Revolting Cocks. (He’d go on to play with many other notable bands, including King Crimson, Swans, and R.E.M.) Rieflin died in March after a long battle with cancer, and on September 30—which would’ve been his 60th birthday—his friend and collaborator Chris Connelly released a tribute single, “Prayer,” with harpist and certified music practitioner Jessica Gallo....

My daughter Molly wiped away her own tears as she entered her grade school classroom last Wednesday morning. Molly was as prepared as she could be. Already that morning the head of Near North Montessori had sent the faculty a teaching tolerance article meant to help teachers like Molly process the election with their students. What her kids needed to know, Molly tells me, was “that they were safe, and that their feelings were valid, regardless of what they were....

The Music Box‘s 70-millimeter film festival (this year subtitled “The Ultimate Edition”) begins tonight, right on the heels of the theater’s installment of a new 41-foot screen and 7.1 channel sound system. These technological augmentations, which debuted right before the Music Box screened the “Special Roadshow Engagement” of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, don’t register as significant improvements (speaking as someone who regularly sees movies at the venue). For one, the sound still bounced around the main theater in a tinny, movie-palace way....

“Little one, I have dreams to sell,” begins one of a parcel of two-part choral songs by Alfred H. Hyatt and E. Markham Lee “especially suited for ladies’ schools, the higher classes in girls’ schools, and well-trained boys’ voices,” purveyed at six for a shilling. “There is tender and genuine feeling in these pieces, and they are calculated to raise the musical taste of all who sing them,” reads the advertisement in the Musical Herald on July 1, 1904....

In 2018 Chicagoan Eric Christopher launched Hospital Bracelet as a solo act: they began by releasing a couple of loose singles, whose disarming mix of overcaffeinated, looping acoustic guitars and tender, showstopping vocals bore fruit with 2019’s Neutrality Acoustic EP. They’ve since recruited bassist Arya Woody and drummer Manae Hammond (of synth-pop duo Oux) to turn Hospital Bracelet into a full band. The trio’s new debut full-length, South Loop Summer (Counter Intuitive), draws even more deeply on the supercharged energy Christopher brought to their solo acoustic material, most obviously on new versions of two songs from Neutrality Acoustic....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Jeremy W. Floyd: The color scheme approach was presented by the director at an initial design meeting. Geoff wanted to show a shift of the world and the people in it through color: a visual manifestation of the world changing around the Prozorov sisters. The choice of pink/mauve and celadon green colors stemmed from them being complementary colors that proved a distinct difference between the “old” world of the sisters to the “new” world of Natasha....

I wonder if one day we’ll be able to correlate a second surge in Chicago COVID-19 cases to the fact that five months into the pandemic, Lincoln Park got sick of its own cooking. If it turns out June’s reopening of bars and restaurants is even partly to blame for another wave of tragedy, I’m gonna blame the sourdough bros who traded their boules for Corona buckets this summer. This tradition hasn’t died....

British five-piece Paradise Lost had already helped pioneer death-doom by the time they put out their second album, 1991’s Gothic, and laid groundwork for subsequent generations of bands that combined metal’s harshness with dark, romantic textures. They’ve since gone through nearly as many drummers as Spinal Tap, but the rest of the lineup—vocalist Nick Holmes, lead guitarist and keyboardist Gregor Mackintosh, rhythm guitarist Aaron Aedy, and bassist Stephen Edmondson—has remained intact since the band’s founding in 1988....

The New 400 Theater is “the oldest and longest surviving movie theater showing movies in Chicago,” according to Scott Holz, general manager. Opening first in 1908, it was a fixture of the Rogers Park neighborhood with a name that spoke to the optimism of the era. “The New 400 meant what the Fortune 500 means now,” says Holz. “It meant money, it meant the elite.” The theater was shut down for a year due to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic....

How to illustrate our annual pot issue? We dug up props to illustrate the stories. Best of all, it was free.

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. But what about recreational pot? In 2016, Katie Campbell wrote that Illinois probably wasn’t ready to legalize non-medical marijuana, although earlier this year Cook County voters overwhelmingly chose “yes” on a ballot referendum. In 2001, Cara Jepsen reported on attempts to reorganize Hemp Fest, which, its organizers claimed, was a serious political event, not a smoke-in....

Born in Davao in the Philippines and raised in Des Plaines, Dee Alaba began dancing at the age of four. A graduate of Columbia College, she currently performs with the Seldoms, Loud Bodies, and Erin Kilmurray. She has also appeared in New Dances with Thodos Dance Chicago and DanceWorks Chicago, and with the Cambrians. Here, Alaba reflects on her experiences as a transfemme dancer in Chicago. Before she moved, I was always with her because I was the youngest....