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In a time when the question of whether to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border dominates the national discourse and the question of who belongs on each side is omnipresent, two Chicago exhibits wrestle with what citizenship means today, especially for those who are deliberately and structurally denied these rights. Educator and visual artist Fidencio Fifield- Perez, who was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, learned to hoard mail at a young age....

For more than a decade, Chicago singer-songwriter Lee Ketch has used his band Mooner to perfect an earthy indie-rock sound that draws equally from Americana and power pop. On the group’s new third album, The Alternative Universe of Love (Aerial Ballet), he reflects on his past with an irresistible combination of nostalgia, regret, and forgiveness. Longtime listeners will pick up on this backward-looking theme from the album’s title—it’s named after a song from Mooner’s self-released 2009 EP, Nudè Barmados, which came out before Ketch moved here from Portland, Oregon....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is the owner of Good News Laundry (817 Noyes, Evanston), Jeffrey Kelly. “Waking up—that is the hardest part of my day. Because at the end of my day, I’ll be at home in bed anywhere between 2 and 4 AM. I live in Dolton. That’s an hour away. It’s easier to wait until traffic is completely gone and I can get home in 40 minutes....

If there’s a more efficient and affordable way to build a high-quality experimental music collection than subscribing to Kevin Drumm’s Bandcamp page, I don’t know about it. Over the last couple of years he’s produced new work at a prodigious clip, releasing multiple titles each month that alternate between restrained, deeply resonant drones, furious noise excursions, and deliciously tactile experiments in dynamics. His rapidly expanding body of work has shown that he’s a restless creator who’s seriously invested in trying new things within his abstract milieu....

During the past year, comedians were forced, like so many others, to get creative. Dave Helem, producer and host of the Dope Comedy Summer Series, had a wrench thrown into a major career milestone and had to quickly adjust—instead of filming a traditional stand-up special as planned, his first hour-long special, DJ The Chicago Kid, was filmed at a drive-in outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. A Dope Comedy Summer Series...

Courtesy Thinkstock Under the weather? Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About Tribune Publishing’s acquisition strategy—and the cuts it relies on? —John Dunlevy

AP Photo/Harold Filan RIP Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • That a 97-year-old man’s death was linked to a stabbing he suffered five decades earlier, thus making it a homicide? —Kevin Warwick • The NYT Book Review’s Q&A with Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket? (“I’m trying to start a Dive Bar Proust Club, . . . but the people I invite keep asking, ‘Do we have to meet at dive bars?...

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images The U.S. women’s soccer team began their World Cup campaign with a victory. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About how swimming pools in private communities contribute to racial tension? —Steve Bogira • The Guardian on the “amazing imploding Chicago Fire“? —Kate Schmidt

It was a gloriously sunny afternoon as the Hideout’s annual block party kicked off late last month. Beer was flowing, hot dogs were being grilled, and bands played into the night. But there was a touch of melancholy in the air. Some attendees were quietly murmuring that such celebrations may be coming to an end. At least at this location. I call this phenomenon Disposable Chicago. Sometimes it seems as though the Emanuel administration can’t dispose of people, places, and things fast enough....

In the Before Times—before the Moth, before the Stoop, before the phrase “live lit” was even coined, much less a thing—Sharon Evans’s Live Bait Theater was HQ for Chicago storytellers. At least it was for a frenetic month every year, as legions of narrative spinners arrived to the tiny space for the Fillet of Solo Festival. The diminishment is, obviously, that the real-time live communal thrill is gone. The nightly community Fillet cultivated in previous fests isn’t possible if we’re not all packed into a 40-seat house or the back of some bar, where the collective energy can’t help but ricochet off the walls....

Poor iPod Classic On Sunday more than a dozen local record labels will join together at the Empty Bottle for the Chicago Independent Labels Pop-Up Shop. The list of imprints slinging new records and cassettes includes classical-focused Parlour Tapes; the in-house label belonging to Permanent Records; and the eclectic FPE Records, which was founded in 2012 by Matt Pakulski (he also came up with the idea for the pop-up event)....

L M Feldman’s Grace, or the Art of Climbing is a character-driven exploration of the world of competitive rock climbing that seeks to apply a vital rule of the sport to life: there is no shame in falling so long as you never let go. Alex Molnar stars in the show’s midwest premiere, presented by Brown Paper Box Co., as Emm, a young woman who decides to train as a rock climber in the face of her struggle with depression and the deterioration of important relationships in her life....

If you’re reading this and you’re against rent control, don’t worry: it’s not coming to Chicago . . . yet. But last week thousands of Chicago voters agreed the state should repeal its ban on rent control in response to a nonbinding referendum on the primary ballot. Over the last two years, a citywide coalition of community groups has mobilized a “Lift the Ban” campaign, and since Guzzardi introduced his bill, seven other state legislators have signed on as cosponsors....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Die Enttäuschung, Lavaman On their first new album in five years, Berlin’s Die Enttäuschung not only withstand the loss of founding drummer Uli Jennesen (seamlessly replaced by Michael Griener) but grow into a quintet with the addition of trombonist Christof Thewes. They remain one of the most agile, imaginative, and satisfying improvising bands on the planet, especially with Thewes joining the highly interactive front line of bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall and trumpeter Axel Dörner....

But when it comes to forking over $2.3 billion—at least—to the world’s richest man who runs the world’s biggest corporation, money’s no problem. Party like a rock star! Here’s a sample from a 2018 Tribune editorial, which in retrospect reads like a scene from the lusty romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey . . . I mention this just in case any of my brothers and sisters at my beloved Chicago Teachers Union actually believed Toni was the true-blue progressive they made her out to be in this year’s mayoral election....

“No matter if you’re stunting, tumbling, jumping, or sitting on the sidelines, you always need to look clean, tight, and confident,” says Charles McDavid Jr. The 26-year-old cheerleading coach is speaking about “perfect posture,” but he might as well be describing his style. McDavid, who works for the Keeping Adolescents Off the Street (KAOS) Bulldogs, is calm and self-assured in his rainbow puffer jacket on his way to a job interview in Lincoln Park....

Instrumental five-piece Monobody have the tenacity and vision to add to Chicago’s storied postrock legacy, and they proved it with 2018’s Raytracing, which borrowed its frenzied energy from punk and metal. On their new third album, Comma (out on Sooper, the label co-owned by Monobody drummer Nnamdi Ogbonnaya), the group maintain the seat-of-the-pants spirit of their previous records while softening their touch and redirecting their energies toward a sound more reminiscent of jam-band music and jazz....

Could there possibly be a more overworked, banal question of the cultural moment than “What’s your passion?” It’s so ubiquitous, from job interviews to dating apps, that it has supplanted the equally risible “What’s your sign?”—as if anyone could instantly recognize real passion in a society as corporatized, monetized, and intimacy averse as ours. (As pervasive as social media is, sharing everything with everyone is the opposite of intimate, which means private and personal....

I was never a huge David Bowie fan. He was part of the musical background of my life, particularly the year I worked at a Barnes & Noble and the staff unanimously decided that Best of Bowie was the only one of the CDs chosen by corporate that we would work to; “The Jean Genie” had a particularly good rhythm for shelving. But I never really paid close attention to him until last fall when “David Bowie Is” opened at the MCA....

Earlier today the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events announced the full lineup for the 39th annual Taste of Chicago. This year’s big headliners include the Flaming Lips, Juanes, Black Star (aka Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli), and George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. Those last two are particularly notable: last week Clinton said he’d retire from touring in 2019, and Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) announced his retirement in 2016, though obviously it didn’t stick....