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Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Shawn Coleman, professional cuddler. “Clients get in touch through my website, and I e-mail them back and get a sense for what they want from the session. I do take safety precautions when interacting with people I’ve never met before. Thankfully, I have quite a few friends who live in the area and are happy to have me call them before and after the session....

When you read this, I have no idea what the weather will be like. Terminal Town: An Illustrated Guide to Chicago’s Airports, Bus Depots, Train Stations, and Steamship Landings, 1939-Present, by Joseph P. Schwieterman At Home In The Loop: How Clout and Community Built Chicago’s Dearborn Park, by Lois Wille In six thoughtful and well-arranged sections, Condit takes readers through the basics of the Chicago Plan of 1909, which would eventually bring us the Magnificent Mile and iconic cultural institutions such as the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium....

It’s not often that a bar manages to be both restrained and over-the-top, but Prairie School manages it. The West Loop spot from Heisler Hospitality and nationally recognized bartender Jim Meehan is inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie style, which itself was inspired by the flat prairie landscapes of the midwest. Meehan built his reputation in New York with the speakeasy PDT, but he grew up in the Chicago suburbs and is making a return to his midwestern roots....

In an effort to teach my beloved fellow Chicagoans how our school funding system works against us, I visited the land of milk and honey: Winnetka, hometown of Governor Bruce Rauner. Still the best line in recent memory, as far as column writing goes. The median value of a house in Winnetka—one of the wealthiest municipalities in the country according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey—is about $1....

The organizers of WBEZ’s ninth-annual Winter Block Party took inspiration from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing when they named this year’s event: Do the Winter Block Party Thing. The all-ages hip-hop gathering begins at noon and runs till 10 PM at Metro, bringing together dancers, poets, visual artists, and musicians who do right by their communities. Genre-blurring singer-songwriter and poet Tasha Viets-VanLear, one of the party’s marquee acts, honed her craft in informal freestyle circles and as a participant in the Young Chicago Authors program, and till recently she worked as an executive assistant for young black activist organization BYP100....

I don’t think I ever enjoyed watching a movie that annoyed me so much as The Trial of The Chicago 7, Aaron Sorkin’s latest, streaming on Netflix. In 1968, the Democrats held their national convention in Chicago, where Mayor Daley (the father, not the son) had his police beat the crap out of hippie demonstrators, plus a few reporters who got in the way. SCHULTZ: Didn’t you state, Mr. Hoffman, that part of the myth that was being created to get people to come to Chicago was that “We will fuck on the beaches”?...

The disastrous Trump transition and ridiculous weather have sapped this wolf’s holiday spirit. Luckily, on Thursday, December 22, at the Hideout, local guitarists Ryley Walker and Bill MacKay headline what they’re calling a “Holiday Feel Good Real Good Night of Live Music & Cheer,” which also features a reading from playwright Gabriel Wallace, a set from pianist Charles Joseph Smith, and new full-band jams from singer-songwriter Azita. In May, this wolf mentioned an upcoming seven-­inch by Chicago darkwave act Staring Problem on local label Modern Tapes, and this month it finally dropped!...

Act two: a flute trill hurries over a plodding bassoon, chased by string pizzicato, a merry sound that sounds “fun,” “festive,” and “not authentically Chinese“—in this way, not unlike your average takeout, particularly in the rapidity of its delivery. At just about a minute long, Chinese Tea is the shortest divertissement in The Nutcracker. Blink your eyes or blow your nose, and it’s over. But for many people of Asian descent, whether on stage or in the audience, the sound of Chinese Tea is about as festive as a dentist’s drill, and that minute of choreography—which in most renditions includes bowing, scraping, shuffling, head bobbing, and finger jabbing in costumes that are orientalist at best—is an annual testament to centuries of exclusion, objectification, fetishization, and humiliation....

Last year, the York Civic Trust caused a minor stir with its efforts to pay homage to the Yorkshire author, mountaineer, and English queer icon Anne Lister. Outside the church in which, in 1834, she declared a marital commitment—with the church’s blessing, remarkably—to Ann Walker, a rainbow-bordered plaque recognized Lister as a “gender non-conforming entrepreneur.” Some saw the descriptor as one that devalued her contributions to the lesbian community. It’s since been updated to “Lister ....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Peter Alexander Bresnan, stand-up comic and podcaster. “When you start out in comedy, there’s so much failure. It’s just part of the work. But I’m pretty sensitive, and I take criticism personally. So I had the idea for my podcast, Tell Me I’m Funny, which is a serialized audio journal. The podcast lets me turn that inevitable failure into something productive, so I don’t have to go to an open mike and bomb hard and go home and be sad about it and eat tuna from the can....

The ads are on el platforms and 15 Brown Line cars. They’re on social media, in downtown health clubs, and on beer coasters in local bars. A typical placard juxtaposes dejected-looking young straphangers with shiny, happy people drinking beer on a terrace above Madison’s Lake Monona, playing Frisbee golf or competing in beach volleyball. The accompanying texts pose dilemmas such as “Rush hour or happy hour?,” “An hour commute or an hour with friends?...

Last fall, in the vein of its long-running, now-retired Sketchbook festival, the social-issues-focused theater group Collaboraction brought together more than 200 artists to share 24 short “prayers for peace” in Chicago as part of a new performance festival, Peacebook. This winter, the company hones in more specifically on racism and racial healing between communities within the city by curating Encounter, a series of full-length solo plays, free staged readings, film, dance pieces, and more presented by a diverse array of local artists—including some familiar names like Sandra Delgado and Sir Taylor and the Example Setters....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. “Disco folk” is how Sara Basgall describes her retro-leaning statement look. “I’m very inspired by Turkish psych, folk, and disco,” she says. A parallel source of inspiration for her, not surprisingly, is the 1960s and ’70s, which she became infatuated with during childhood while delving into her dad’s large vinyl collection and through mixtapes he used to make for her....

Randy Holmes/Getty Images Diddy attacked a strength and conditioning coach, which is rarely a good idea. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • Claudia Rankine on Black Lives Matter? —Aimee Levitt • That Yale’s rare books library is saving old Chipotle cups and bags? —Evin Billington

Last week my brother texted to ask if my mother-in-law had a kimchi pancake recipe. I’m not worried about her swallowing too much of this nonsense. She’s a fully-vaxxed anti-Trump voter, and she knows her neighbors are nuts. But a few weeks ago she did ask her daughter if she should be worried about leaving the house. None, yet, seem to be offering a kimchi pancake (What about it Gaijin?). But that’s the sort of thing Omma wouldn’t dream of ordering from a restaurant anyway....

Joshua Lott/Getty Images Mayor Emanuel was caught laughing at his own joke yesterday at the Carole Robertson Center for Learning. But that likely won’t happen again as the mayor leads Chicago on a major new humility campaign. “Chicago Is Waiting to See if Runoff Battle Has Humbled Rahm Emanuel,” this morning’s New York Times reports. The source observed that a shortage of humility has long been a trait of Chicago mayors—it didn’t begin with Emanuel....

Over the past two decades the European Union Film Festival, presented by the Gene Siskel Film Center, has become a serious rival to the Chicago International Film Festival and a spring counterweight to CIFF’s annual blowout in October. The EU fest may lack the racial diversity and global reach of CIFF, but its programming is just as ambitious if not more so. The 19th edition of the European Union Film Festival opens Friday and runs for four weeks, with 62 new features and numerous personal appearances....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Brian McVey, 38, ex-cop. “I was in one shooting. This guy jumps out of a stolen car with a gun in his hand. I chased him, screaming, ‘Put the gun down!’ It looked like he was going to shoot, and that’s when I fired the one round. It grazed him. I’m grateful that I didn’t kill him....

This weekend’s events include two marathons—one that’s 26.2 miles, one that’s 24 hours—plus plenty of other goings-on about town. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 10/7: Chicago’s mobile restaurants park it for a makeshift Taste of Chicago at the West Town Food Truck Social, on Noble between Chicago and Chestnut). The galleries along Chicago are also open for free viewings—enhanced with food truck fare. 11 AM-10 PM, $20 for six samples...

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