Emmanuel Dunand/Getty Send in the clowns, because the elephants are done. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That the Ringling Brothers circus will stop using elephants? —Brianna Wellen • That descendants of Holocaust survivors have altered stress hormones? —Gwynedd Stuart
The barbecue gods are cruel. No one knows better the Sisyphean challenges of making good barbecue than Bruns. Twice a week for two summers, the Tru and Spiaggia vet and his wife Taylor trudged across the North Avenue Bridge to the beach, pushing wheelbarrows and dragging wagons full of produce from Green City Market to a small kiosk owned by the Park District, equidistant between Fullerton and North Avenues. They also brought their own oak wood and meat and a combination smoker-grill setup that they chained to the wall....
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Jamie is curious what’s in the rotation of . . . Kate tempest performs “People’s Faces” in the Paste magazine studios in July 2019. Marc is curious what’s in the rotation of . . .
This spring Chicago rapper Adamn Killa dropped the mixtape Back 2 Ballin, whose forlorn, shimmering “Jeremy Lin” featured a typically moody beat from LA producer (and Jeremih collaborator) Shlohmo. Shlohmo is a compatriot of Canadian pop wunderkind Ryan Hemsworth, and not at all by coincidence, yesterday Hemsworth and Adamn Killa dropped the collaborative track “Commas.” Killa raps with a zonked lilt that makes him sound like he’s just woken up from a deep sleep, but he can assert himself against Hemsworth’s animated instrumental....
Update: Navy Pier has posted an official announcement on its website, which you can read here. Since her appointment by Emanuel in 2011, Boone has presided over cutbacks and consolidations at DCASE, as well as a much-publicized new cultural plan, the creation and first run of the Chicago Architectural Biennial, and other new or “revitalized” programs including the Fifth Star Awards and the Lake FX Summit and Expo.
With Mayor Emanuel under fire over police scandals and the schools crisis, it’s a strange time for him to move forward with a plan for an airport express train aimed at well-heeled business travelers. But last week the city awarded a $2 million contract to local engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff to identify possible routes, station locations, and a cost estimate for pricey high-speed rail service between the Loop and O’Hare....
Reports of electioneering are cropping up around the city as Chicago prepares to choose a new mayor and treasurer, and 15 wards host runoff elections for alderman. But in the 46th Ward on the north side, incumbent Alderman James Cappleman has put a sweet twist on the age-old practice of trying to entice voters right before they cast their ballots. On Friday, poll watchers began to complain that Cappleman and his allies were dropping off batches of frosted cupcakes decorated with the words “Team Cappleman” at nursing home polling places....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, September 27, 2017. City Hall has few details on replacing police oversight agency head Sharon Fairley Mayor Rahm Emanuel “declined to say how much input community members will have in finding a new head of the just-launched police oversight agency that’s a key piece of his effort to increase public trust in the Chicago Police Department” following the resignation of Civilian Office of Police Accountability chief Sharon Fairley, according to the Tribune....
The new third full-length from Seattle five-piece Eye of Nix, Ligeia (Prophecy), is a gloriously self-possessed howl and wail that floats through the walls between genres like a vengeful ghost. In a 2015 interview with Vice, front woman Joy Von Spain eloquently described the band’s process: “A piece or song that begins in silence and climbs to these weird places, pushing icy noise into blast beats and screams or aria high notes, takes a lot of structural choices....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, November 8, 2017. Chance the Rapper slams Emanuel plan to build $95 million police training academy Chance the Rapper appeared at the City Council meeting Wednesday to slam Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to build a new $95 million police training academy in West Garfield Park, according to the Tribune. Emanuel left before the Grammy Award-winning rapper spoke during the 30-minute public comment allotment....
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Deads by LLNN Priest – New Flesh by Priest Hank is curious what’s in the rotation of . . .
courtesy of the Chicago Jazz Festival Muhal Richard Abrams This morning the city announced the full lineup of the annual Chicago Jazz Festival in September. (Full disclosure: I serve on the volunteer committee that programs the event). The focus in 2015 is squarely on the 50th anniversary of Chicago’s deeply influential and paradigm-shifting Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), including a rare performance by the Experimental Band, led by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, that concludes the festival—the group is widely considered the first AACM ensemble, a kind of workshop project for members to work out their radical ideas....
The point of theater, according to Hamlet, is to hold a mirror up to nature. But all too often on Chicago’s stages it seems like the mirror is being held up to the members of a yoga class in Lincoln Park. Strides have been made in recent years (just look at Broadway’s hip-hop musical Hamilton, in which the Founding Fathers are played by black and Latino actors), but when it comes to casting, particularly of commercial and canonical work, the default setting is still thin, gender-conforming, able-bodied, and lily white....
Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here.
Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here.
Bail set “without meaningful consideration of an individual’s indigence and alternatives . . . violates the Fourteenth Amendment,” the department wrote. “There’s a public perception that [bond hearings] are detailed hearings, that they’re well-founded decisions,” says Sharlyn Grace, a criminal justice policy fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, a court watchdog group. “But the decision about whether they’re going to be incarcerated for that time is happening in 37 seconds, 25 seconds....
Most folks don’t know a lot about insects. Insects move fast and we have some sort of phobia. We urbanized animals have a penchant for cultivating turf grass and concrete and tend not to have that many insects around us. But the pollinator-plant connection (and sometimes dependency) is real. Apparently while tiny and almost a thousand times smaller, a bumblebee brain is vastly more efficient than our own brains and can compute visual information 15 times as quickly....
A haunted and haunting lead performance by the excellent Sean William Kelly drives AstonRep Theatre Company’s solid and moving production of Equus, the 1973 drama by British playwright Peter Shaffer (Amadeus). Kelly plays Alan Strang, a 17-year-old stable boy in southern England who blinds six horses with a spike, a seemingly inexplicable act of horrific cruelty. Committed to a psychiatric hospital, he comes under the care of Dr. Martin Dysart (Rian Jairell)....
Starting this week, we present a biweekly list inspired by a film screening or series taking place around town. In honor of Benny and Josh Safdie’s new heist film Good Time, screening this week at Music Box (in 35mm!), we’ve selected five additional heist films from 1955 to 2005 (that don’t have “Ocean” in the title and aren’t directed by Quentin Tarantino). Going in StyleThe cast—George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg playing three old men who rob a bank—promises a mug fest, but director Martin Brest imposes a quiet, attentive style on the story, saving it from cuteness and emotional facility....
Until Swans embarked on their current tour—promised to be their last, at least for this iteration of the band—they’d gotten some of their crushing power from drummer Thor Harris, a rhythm machine of awesome magnitude. Last year he stepped away from the group after five grueling years of touring, and he’s now focusing on his own music, which delivers a much different sound. Last month he dropped the debut full-length from his new project Thor & Friends on LM Dupli-cation, the label run by A Hawk and a Hacksaw‘s Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, both of whom appear on the record....
