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Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Media Chuy Garcia fielded questions about his son in the final debate. Journalists sometimes regret the questions they ask, but not very much. It’s the questions they don’t ask—or ask clumsily—that can bug them for years. Phil Ponce didn’t apologize for the series of questions he asked Chuy Garcia about his wayward son during Tuesday’s mayoral debate, though upon further reflection he told John Kass that one question “was off the mark....

If the delicious cream puff of baroque is your musical dish of choice, I can heartily recommend that you get yourself to the Studebaker Theater tonight to catch the final performance of Haymarket Opera Company’s production of Antonio Cesti’s L’Orontea. The music is sublime, as are the performances, especially by the distaff side of the cast: mezzo-soprano Emily Fons (as the title character, an Egyptian queen), and sopranos Nathalie Colas (as her primary romantic rival), along with Kimberly Jones and Addie Hamilton, both handling double gender-bending roles admirably....

Navy Pier is one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of the midwest because it’s what people from small towns think cities should be: a mall with rides and chain eateries with large portions. Navy Pier gaslights you. It insists you’re having fun, that there’s something for everyone—and you’re an everyone, right? It traps you in its labyrinth of light, sound, and smells that are either food or people....

Last winter singer-songwriter Andrew Smith posted flyers around Chicago to promote the oh-so-sweet solo recordings he’d made as Jungle Green, and he’s since completely transformed his bedroom project into a six-piece band. The lineup is fleshed out with friends Smith made as a student at Columbia College, including Mattie McCall, Adam Miller, Adam Obermeier, Alex Heaney, and Emma Collins—each of whom plays an assortment of instruments. Smith released Jungle Green’s full-band debut, Space Cadet, via his Atlantic City Melodies imprint in October....

Blue/Orange The adventurous Runcible Theatre Company, which specializes in offbeat English fare rarely tackled by larger troupes here, delivers a crisp and compelling rendition of Joe Penhall’s chilling yet hilarious dark comedy, a 2000 hit for the National Theatre of Great Britain. It concerns a power struggle between two white doctors in the hidebound National Health Service over the fate of a black psychiatric patient, Christopher (Nathaniel Andrew), who claims to be the son of Idi Amin Dada, the brutal dictator of 1970s Uganda....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About Ashima Shiraishi, a 14-year-old New Yorker who is already being called the most talented rock climber in the world? —Tal Rosenberg

I’m writing to encourage reporters who hesitate to toot their own horns to make an exception. This is the time of year when I promote the Anne Keegan Award, giving annually for journalism “reflecting the dignity and spirit of the common man.” Len Aronson, husband of the late Tribune columnist, and some friends (myself included) launched the award after Keegan died in 2011. It’s been given four times since, most recently to Maureen O’Donnell, the elegant obit writer of the Sun-Times....

Since opening five years ago, Finch’s Beer Co. has struggled to find its place in Chicago. Its original lineup failed to impress the local beer-drinking community, the majority of its distribution was outside of Illinois, and plans to build a facility on the river (and then out in the suburbs) fell through. But following a February sale of the brewery—from the Finch family to several of the original investors—the company acquired Hopothesis Brewing and Breakroom Brewery....

Rapper-producer Frank Leone grew up in the town of Monticello, just southwest of Champaign, and began taking music seriously after a chance meeting with Vic Mensa at a downstate Lupe Fiasco show in 2011. Since dropping his debut mixtape in 2015, he’s reworked his sound, moved to Los Angeles, and scrubbed the Web of large chunks of his catalog. His self-released new debut album, Don’t, is full of playful experimentation: He pitches his voice down till it oozes like molasses, and up till it squeaks and hiccups (“Don’t Want”)....

Last summer, Garland Martin Taylor Jr. drove 5,500 miles across the country with a 400-pound stainless-steel revolver in the back of his pickup truck. It’s not an actual, working revolver. Rather, it’s a sculpture, titled Conversation Piece—Taylor calls it a “war memorial”—made of scrap metal provided by a south-side manufacturing company. Welded onto the trigger are faces, which are meant to be anonymous. Stamped on the barrel, grip, and cylinder of the revolver are the names of people age 20 and younger who’ve been killed by gun violence in the neighborhoods surrounding Taylor’s home in Hyde Park....

Today’s biggest pop-country stars take lyrical tropes from 80s and 90s hits—drinking cold beer, driving trucks, praying, partying, feeling heartbreak—and bulk them up with hip-hop beats, hyperslick production, and catchy hooks that sound engineered in a lab. Twenty-nine-year-old Mississippi native Hardy (aka Michael Hardy) began his career as one of Nashville’s song scientists; he was a cowriter for bro-band duo Florida Georgia Line, then worked on smash singles by the likes of Blake Shelton and Dallas Smith....

No sensible person can argue against the proposition that America is crying out for a cleansing ritual fire. The only grounds for disagreement that I can see concern which oppressive institutions should be fed to the flames first. As it happens, I’ve recently discovered a wonderful soundtrack for torching prisons of all kinds. Frenzied, mutating cycles of hand drums and trap set tangle in a dense polyrhythmic weave beneath sinister smears and screams of brass, while synths buzz and pulse and a kick drum throbs like your heartbeat when you can feel it in your eyes....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, October 28, 2016. Have a great weekend, and go Cubs! OpenOversight allows civilians to match police names and badge numbers with their photos Web developers at Chicago-based Lucy Parsons Labs are trying to make it easier for civilians file misconduct complaints against Chicago police officers with a new tool, OpenOversight. (Disclosure: the Reader collaborated with Lucy Parsons Labs on our recent investigation into CPD’s secret budget....

Aging is wild. You wake up one day and realize that Matt McGachy, who joined Cryptopsy in 2007, has had the longest tenure of any of the four vocalists who’ve fronted the beloved Canadian technical death metal band, and also that your knees don’t work very well anymore. I vividly remember metal-forum wars over which was was better: the guttural incoherence of original singer Lord Worm or the hardcore theatrics of his replacement, Mike DiSalvo....

You can always find great musicians on the streets of Chicago, but not usually members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But now those performers are walking a picket line, striking mostly for something American workers of the last century commonly had: a dependable pension. This “defined contribution” plan is what most private-sector employees have now, if they’re lucky enough to have any employer- funded retirement benefits. If you have a 401(k) at work, it’s what you’ve got....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, October 4, 2017. Inspector general report: Chicago Police Department wasting money on overtime pay The Chicago Police Department has been wasting millions of dollars on overtime pay for police officers, and the extra hours have caused burnout in the force, according to a new report from Chicago inspector general Joseph Ferguson. “CPD’s management of overtime speaks directly to how inefficient management can lead to wide scale waste and a culture of abuse,” Chicago inspector general Joseph Ferguson said in a statement....

AP Photo/Matt Marton George McCaskey People say things every day that make us cringe, but nothing lately has hit me in the pit of my stomach like George McCaskey’s explanation of why the Bears took a flyer on Ray McDonald. San Francisco had cut the defensive end because his “pattern of poor decision-making” could “no longer be tolerated.” McCaskey had his own doubts; but the Bears need a few decent football players, and when McDonald’s own mother and his college coach, not to mention McDonald himself, pleaded his case, McCaskey’s heart melted....

We define ourselves by where we’re from. Where we are at the moment isn’t as important. And I was from Detroit. Gordie Howe was the reason I might have gotten a little peevish a few years ago defending hockey against the charge it’s mainly “for the white and affluent.” He grew up a mechanic’s son in a huge family, playing hockey in skates the wrong size, on frozen Saskatchewan ponds, and he was dyslexic and flunked third grade twice....

On the evening of June 17, 1935, Victor de Visé and his young sons arrived in Chicago after pedaling 793 miles from Trenton, New Jersey, over 13 days on their bicycles. They had 2,349 more miles to go. Why Victor would choose to lead his sons on a 3,000-mile bicycle ride is a question I never heard a satisfactory answer to in childhood—Victor died a few years after I was born....

Chicago rapper Taurus Bartlett, better known as Polo G, rose to national prominence so quickly that new listeners could be forgiven for assuming he’s been a star for at least a few years. He broke out in January 2019 with “Pop Out,” a collaboration with New York MC Lil Tjay, where Bartlett mixes irrepressible joy and gut-wrenching sorrow in prismatic pop. Bartlett maintained that single’s narrative gravitas and melodic sweetness for the entirety of his debut album, June 2019’s Die a Legend....