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It hasn’t even been a year since I first wrote about Ethan Lim and Hermosa, his extraordinary sandwich shop in the Hermosa neighborhood, but it feels like a consarn lifetime, doesn’t it? Back then, encouraged by the popularity of his Cambodian-inspired fried chicken sandwich and the pork belly prahok ktiss, Lim dangled the possibility of mounting a Khmer-food pop-up in his snug spot. That’s not a rule. I’m asking you do it for Ethan....

The Reader‘s first gig poster of 2021 is a tribute to jazz, Cuba, and collaborative concert organizing by a designer with roots in alternative weekly papers. Venerable local arts presenter HotHouse, which has been bringing diverse online programming to international audiences for the past few months, celebrates its 34th year with HotHouse Meets Havana, a five-night stream of Latin-jazz musicians based in Cuba interspersed with sets by artists based in the States—including current and former Chicagoans Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang, Tomeka Reid & Junius Paul, Ari Brown (with Josef Ben Israel and Charles Heath), Ben LaMar Gay (with Mike Reed and Mayda Del Valle), and Edward Wilkerson Jr....

Earlier this decade, new bands recontextualizing 90s emo and the torrent of 90s emo bands reuniting (even for just a few anniversary tours) provoked a surge of interest, but it has been petering out over the last couple years. This has led to situations such as elder statesmen Giants Chair playing a rare reunion show in late 2017 to a half-filled room at Chop Shop. It’s also meant a bit less anticipation around shows by highly influential Texas outfit Mineral than when they first regrouped in 2014....

How’s this for a New Year’s resolution: get out and do something fun this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Wed 1/6: Community meal project Soup & Bread returns to the Hideout (1354 W. Wabansia) to serve delicious food and raise money for Chicago food pantries and other hunger-relief organizations. 5:30 PM Thu 1/7: Celebrate David Bowie’s 69th birthday at the Bowie Ball, happening this year at Berlin (954 W....

This remarkable combo from Cleveland only formed at the start of 2016, but they’ve grabbed my attention with a flurry of recordings since then. Led by producer RA Washington, Mourning [A] BLKstar features a trio of dynamic singers—James Longs, LaToya Kent, and Kyle Kidd—and an indeterminate number of musicians. The ensemble traffics in a gritty strain of DIY Afrofuturist soul music, balancing hip-hop production techniques with lo-fi experimentation that bathes sultry grooves in darkness, either in scratchy samples or washed-out synth tones....

Writing and dance have always been connected for choreographer Lin Hwai-min. The founder and artistic director of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre began his professional career as a writer, and his dancers study calligraphy because the two art forms share a core philosophy of releasing and controlling energy to create. “A writer does this with a brush, a dancer with the core of the body,” says Lin. As he approaches retirement in 2019, Lin returns to his writer’s roots with Formosa, a tribute to the land and people of Taiwan....

Few active country artists possess the deep knowledge and love of the tradition’s history and lore of singer-songwriter Marty Stuart, who’s evolved into a gray eminence with a mixture of elegance and unquenchable curiosity. His latest album, Way Out West (Superlatone), draws upon this background to send a trippy love letter to the southwest, cowboy culture, and the drifter lifestyle. The record was coproduced by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell at his studio in Los Angeles....

On the first day of October, the Washington Post carried a portrait of a Trump supporter named Melanie Austin. A middle-aged woman living in a coal town in western Pennsylvania, Austin has a strong hunch, based on some evidence at her disposal, that President Obama is gay, Michelle Obama transgender, and their children had been kidnapped. All this may be true. But it’s uncurious. And it’s kind of lazy. It admits only one uncertainty: after the election maybe Trump’s supporters will go away; but maybe they won’t....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, September 29, 2016. Go inside the northwest-side state rep race that Rauner and Madigan are funding Governor Bruce Rauner and Illinois House speaker Mike Madigan are playing out their rivalry in the expensive race for the 20th District Illinois House seat. The race between Republican incumbent state rep Michael McAuliffe, the only Chicago Republican in the Illinois General Assembly, and Democrat Merry Marwig has been infused with cash from Rauner and Madigan’s camps....

If the great surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and iconic LSD proponent Timothy Leary designed an after-hours club during the height of a pandemic in Cabaret-era Berlin, it would definitely look something like Eschaton. Its title comes from the Greek for (roughly) the end of history, or the last event in some higher power’s divine plan. Eschaton didn’t start out as a virtual show, with audiences meandering via mouse clicks through the tantalizing shenanigans of a labyrinthine club where a weird new adventure lies within each of a dozen or so Zoom rooms....

Reaching the delegate majority he needs to be nominated at the Republican convention remains a “big challenge” for Donald Trump, the New Yorker’s John Cassidy observed Wednesday. But even if Trump falls short, Cassidy doubts he can be denied: Trump will come into the convention with far more delegates than anyone else, and he’ll have won them all over the country. It’s now a commonplace to observe (here for example) that the Republican Party is getting what it deserved: when Barack Obama was elected president its leaders indulged his demonizers, contentedly riding the tiger that today is swallowing them....

Sharon Fairley came to public prominence in 2015 as Rahm Emanuel’s pick to lead Chicago’s police oversight agency—then the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA)—in the wake of revelations about the city’s attempts to conceal the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. She’s now among ten candidates vying to replace her former boss, Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan. Fairley has spent the last two years under intense public scrutiny as the head of an agency that the Department of Justice found failed to deliver justice to victims of police misconduct....

Dwight Yoakam’s most recent single sounds like it could’ve been found in a jukebox of obscure 45s at a 1960s California honky-tonk, despite having been written and released (on Reprise) last year. “Pretty Horses” has a steady backbeat shuffle, and Yoakam peppers his smooth tone with twangy flourishes. He leans into his high notes hard, almost turning them into pitch bends, and gives an occasional yelp—though they’re usually masked by driving drums or dropped into organ solos....

On Halloween, Auburn-Gresham one-stop shop and hip-hop hot spot Exclusive773 handed out bootleg rap CDs by Chicago rapper G. Herbo to trick-or-treaters. That evening owner Steve Wazwaz tweeted a video of fans gleefully clamoring for them. Their enthusiasm went through the roof after one of Wazwaz’s employees casually activated his phone’s video-chat program and turned the screen toward the kids so they could talk to his friend: G Herbo himself. I can’t blame the kids for freaking out....

To help you keep track of the alfresco entertainment this summer, here’s a roundup of 29 free films playing this week: West Side Story Tue 8/2, 6:30 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph, 312-742-1168, cityofchicago.org. Inside Out Wed 8/3, 6 PM, Rutherford Sayre Park, 6871 W. Belden, 312-746-5368, chicagoparkdistrict.com. Star Wars: The Force Awakens Thu 8/4, 8:05 PM, Portage Park, 4100 N. Long, 773-685-7235, chicagoparkdistrict.com. Annie Thu 8/4, 8:30 PM, McKiernan Playground Park, 10714 S....

New Jersey native Harry James Brenner found his footing in Chicago’s music scene partly by playing in art-rock group Chandeliers; he joined in the mid-aughts as a percussionist, and he’s since played keys for them too. The sharply defined clatter of Brenner’s drums has kept Chandeliers’ mercurial instincts from running away with them, giving even their most ostentatiously experimental escapades an irresistible groove. He’s also part of Chandeliers offshoot Songs for Gods, whose 2017 single “Boss” grafts mutant synth blurps and swooning R&B vocals onto a driving, workout-ready rhythm....

With another mayoral election upon us, my urge to offer advice is matched by my sense of futility. I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, Chicago, but when it comes to mayoral elections—man, you suck. It’s sort of like my love for the Bulls. After each devastating season I declare—that’s it, I’m through with those bums forever. Under a promise of confidentiality, I asked what they thought were the most important and compelling issues the next mayor faced....

Chris Aldana, 27, inspires Chicagoans—especially many who are LGBTQ and people of color—to listen to each other’s words. So, she decided to do something about it and, in July 2018, created Luya. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.How did you come up with the name “Luya?”I knew that I wanted to use a word that was from my language and my culture. I was at AFIRE, a community organization here that does immigrant rights and domestic worker rights, and they had posters on the wall from a previous workshop about food....

Michael Gebert Michigan Avenue windows in the lobby at the Chicago Athletic Association A couple of weeks ago there were events showing off the renovated public areas of the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, opposite Millennium Park, and I could have gone to the ribbon cutting with Mayor Emanuel, but it was a hectic week and, anyway, I don’t really like crowds. (Hold that thought; it will be ironic in a minute....

Courtesy the artist District 97 Some prog rock sounds like the work of a sweaty, chain-smoking obsessive holed up in a cellar full of ammunition and Spam, trying to suss out the workings of a sinister conspiracy on cluttered bulletin boards a la the unhinged cops in Se7en or True Detective. But despite prog’s often fiendish complexity, it doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with what you might euphemistically call disordered mental processes—sometimes it’s gleaming and triumphal, like the product of a futuristic laboratory in a Marvel superhero movie....