Vlad the Impaler no longer presides over the dining room at 3661 N. Elston. I know this because I’ve seen the photos—not because I’m ready to sit down inside Mis Moles. That’s the new restaurant from Chicago’s most tenacious chef, Geno Bahena, who opened its dining room to the public on Friday—the day the mayor said it was OK to serve food indoors at 25 percent capacity, 50 guests max....
We didn’t need the death of architect Helmut Jahn to bring the plight of the James R. Thompson Center to our attention. The state’s May 3 request for proposals to buy the iconic structure—minus any stipulation that it not be torn down—had already drawn widespread notice. The building was controversial before it opened in May, 1985 (as the State of Illinois Center), and more so afterward. From the outside, it resembled nothing so much as a spaceship improbably plunked down (at 100 West Randolph) across the street from the classical City/County Building....
Wishbone founder Joel Nickson confirmed Thursday that he is moving his southern food icon, a pioneer of the West Loop/Fulton Market District restaurant scene, after 26 years on Washington and Morgan. Wishbone’s potentially getting forced out of its second location in the city had been rumored for months. He also didn’t want to give out his new address just yet.
It’s been a damn cold winter in Chicago. And even without a polar vortex, ice storms, and weeks of slush and gray, this time of year can make you just want to huddle somewhere it’s heated. “It’s totally crucial that even when it’s cold and shitty outside, you still do what you can to put some energy into the scene and care about it,” says Emily Rose of art-pop duo Zigtebra....
It looks like a postapocalyptic landscape. The people in this part of Harrisburg have disappeared, leaving their quaint, once-tidy homes behind only to be reclaimed by prairie grass and field mice. The cozy gazebos, children’s playground equipment, spacious porches, and basketball backstops that remain are cracked and peeling. Residents once enjoyed these amenities while gazing out at the rolling hills and lush forests of southern Illinois. But that landscape has been replaced by huge gashes in the earth that reveal tumbled gray rocks, reddish soil, and the all-important seams of glistening black coal....
“Being lesbian, gay, or bisexual is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming.” More than two dozen national medical and mental health organizations—including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, and the National Association of Social Workers—have taken positions against the practice of conversion therapy. Such efforts, they note, “have serious potential to harm young people because they present the view that the sexual orientation of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth is a mental illness or disorder, and they often frame the inability to change one’s sexual orientation as a personal or moral failure....
I’d made a habit of visiting Bandcamp multiple times per week, if not per day, long before Bandcamp Fridays became a thing. (For those days, the digital-music retailer has been passing along its usual cut of sales to independent musicians and labels struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic.) One of my favorite Bandcamp finds of the past eight months is Anomia by OK Cool, the Chicago duo of Bridget Stiebris and Haley Bloomquist....
Barring divine intervention, the 90-year-old reigning sovereign of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II, will eventually die, and her eldest son, Prince Charles (currently 68), will ascend the throne—assuming, of course, that he’s not also dead by then, which would be just his luck. In King Charles III, Brit playwright Mike Bartlett imagines a less than orderly succession. Best known to American audiences as Sir Anthony Strallan from Downton Abbey, Robert Bathurst neatly embodies the dignified confusion of an honorable but crucially limited man who requires a hell of an awakening before he’ll understand his place in the world....
Lifted Bells couldn’t have picked a better time to release their first EP than 2013, when “emo revival” had become an indie-rock buzzword. Now the local underground supergroup—made up of exacting musicians from spritely fourth-wave emo acts (including Options, Stay Ahead of the Weather, and Their/They’re/There) and second-wave heartthrob Bob Nanna (of Braid and Hey Mercedes)—have finally polished off their debut album, Minor Tantrums (Run For Cover), which they celebrate tonight....
A Saturday evening spent tooling around and looking for a place to get a decent steak at the last minute is usually destined to end with a stop at the nearest Whole Foods and a session over a hot cast-iron pan. Unless, of course, you’re downtown. Case in point: a smoked-trout Caesar salad made of finely chopped endive, with roasted grapes as a garnish. It’s crunchy, creamy, and tasty, but so far from being an actual Caesar that it practically amounts to false advertising....
I didn’t have a list the last time I went grocery shopping without a mask. It was Saturday, March 14, 2020, and I had booked it down the alley between my apartment and the Devon Market to stock up on “the essentials” before a rumoured two-week stay-at-home order began. My cart was half full before I realized something awkward—I didn’t know what the essentials were. So I started over, snaking up and down each aisle, and I ended my trip in the dairy section....
Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images What you want is a Coke. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • That some scientists now believe depression is caused by inflammation (courtesy if the immune system) rather than chemical imbalances in the brain? —Aimee Levitt • About singer-musician and Animal Collective member Panda Bear‘s life in Portugal and how the country has influenced his music? —Tal Rosenberg
Chance the Rapper’s new Coloring Book is expected to land on the Billboard 200 soon based on streaming plays alone—it’s an Apple Music exclusive for another week or so yet. He’s not the only rising Chicago rapper on the charts, though. South-side native Dreezy has been steadily climbing the Hot 100 (among several others) thanks to the January single “Body.” With her hard raps and sultry singing, she broke out after the February 2014 release of her Schizo mixtape; by the end of the year, she’d collaborated a couple times with Common, lit up a BET Hip-Hop Awards cypher, and landed a deal with Interscope....
Chicagoan Frank Zango possesses something like magic: under the name Zango the Third, he’s able to create oddly soothing, stylistically scrambled outsider-soul songs fast enough to fill several full-lengths a year. In early April, he self-released his second album of 2020, Aunt Ida’s Asteroid Mixtape, where he continues to stretch to the outer edges of his pop proclivities; on “They Ain’t Heavy, That’s My Devil” he warps his warmhearted voice into a high-pitched chirp, and on “Woo!...
Paige Wynne Elastic’s house piano. You have to bring your own candelabra. In early November 2014, the Elastic Arts Foundation ceased operations at 2830 N. Milwaukee, a second-floor space that the 13-year-old nonprofit had occupied since 2006. According to director and cofounder Sam “Samiam” Lewis, the HVAC system had failed, leaving Elastic with no heat or air-conditioning. And because none of the windows in the space would open (the stairwell to the front door provided the only source of ventilation), even the relatively mild summer had been “insufferable,” especially when the main room filled up for a concert, art opening, or other event....
The Yunahon Mixtape, the second full-length by Long Island punk lifer Jade Lilitri, who records and performs as Oso Oso, is about the denizens of a fictional town called Yunahon. It’s also the story of frustration—not necessarily in the creative process, but during the final stages of its birth. After an unsuccessful search for a label, Lilitri uploaded the album to Bandcamp last January as a pay-what-you-want release. Despite its beginnings, the album set a high bar for emo and indie rock that few other 2017 albums have surpassed....
Michael Hernandez de Luna has been designing phony stamps and sticking them on envelopes for more than 20 years. He’s a satirist and provocateur who intentionally courts conflict. Because stamps are legal currency, using one’s own designs could be construed as fraud—but Hernandez de Luna’s creations aren’t counterfeit, so he has never been arrested or prosecuted. And after all, who’s really being deceived? Hernandez de Luna’s unwitting collaborators, the United States Postal Service employees who are in charge of canceling stamps, could be viewed as the butt of the joke....
Chicago residents and visitors who like to “work it work it” show up in droves to the justifiably popular, city-sponsored Summerdance series in Grant Park. Live bands and DJs, and a first hour of dance instruction, make for a lively and free night out in downtown. Unfortunately, Summerdance doesn’t kick off this year until June 27. But there are some other free ways to work your body, stretch out, and discover your inner Aunt Viv before June....
Earlier this week the Chicago Data Collaborative quietly launched a website offering first of its kind access to local criminal justice data. Information about Chicago police stops and arrests, Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office charges, and Cook County Jail demographics is already public in theory, but it’s often costly and time-consuming to access. Getting that info sometimes requires trips to special computer terminals at county offices or protracted negotiations with FOIA officers....
At the end of May, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, creative director of local youth mentorship nonprofit Donda’s House—which has since been rebranded Art of Culture Inc.—went through a heated Twitter debate with Kim Kardashian West over Kanye’s alleged lack of financial and spiritual support for the nonprofit organization named for his late mother. Rapper Matt Muse, who joined Donda’s House in spring 2015, voiced his support for the embattled organization that weekend, and he continues to champion it as often as he can, as he did in a recent interview with local hip-hop outlet Elevator....
