CHA Shortcomings Around 1939, when I was ten years old, my mother taught piano at the Abraham Lincoln Center social settlement house on Oakwood Blvd., a block from where the Ida B. Wells housing project was being built in the black ghetto (roughly, along 39th Street between Cottage Grove and South Park, now King Drive). Watching this early project go up, I noticed something disturbing. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
OK, I admit it. I’m easy. Even the name Mr. Spacky makes me laugh. But Emily Schwartz’s exquisitely silly, genuinely witty new melodrama for the Strange Tree Group–a “murder-muzical” in which the audience decides the ending–bears out the title’s promise. Despite Mr. Spacky’s star billing, the story belongs to three female characters: a gullible bride-to-be and her future sister-in-law and niece, icy Mrs. Dumont and needy daughter Edwina. In a jocular twist, Mr....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Actually, I’m a Northwestern fan, so I’m not sorry at all. But here’s the not-so-dispassionate truth: A year removed from its Rose Bowl run, Illinois came into this season expecting to compete for the Big Ten title. After a 2-1 start, it’s hard to see how they’re up to it. In their opening game they moved the ball and scored six touchdowns against a really good Missouri team, but they also surrendered 52 points....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Holy cow!” moans Harry Caray. “What a lousy break. Boy, the Cubbies find more ways to lose . . . “ And then the camera pans the grandstand, from the left field line to the right field line, following a row of seats. And each seat is occupied by a famous actor who’s come out of Chicago — Cusack, Mahoney, Petersen, Malkovich, Murray, Allen, Metcalf, Arkin, Sinise, Frantz, Mantegna ....
LOOK BOTH WAYS: BISEXUAL POLITICS | JENNIFER BAUMGARDNER (FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX) INFO 312-362-8795 A largely bourgeois liberation struggle, feminism has always linked the pursuit of justice with the pursuit of self-actualization. Feminists have worked toward concrete, egalitarian goals–suffrage, access to education, abortion rights–but the movement has also offered the fuzzier prospect of personal transformation and utopian bliss. Thus early feminists hoped that when women gained the vote they’d cleanse political culture, creating a more peaceful, more honest world....
“Best technology moment: When panelist Eric Zorn outed a skeptical twitterer in the audience. “I’m not one of the young people in the crowd, but I cringed every time when an older person said, ‘Newspapers are giving it away for free.’ They aren’t giving it away for free. Their Internet sites promote the newspaper with very little overhead. Newspapers’ problem isn’t the Web sites; they aren’t utilizing the ad space well on those Web sites....
Go back to the “Valentine’s Day: Why Bother?” table of contents page Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We met at Third coast, on Dearborn, and when the guy arrived he went to another table. I guessed that he was intending to perform a “flyover,” seeing that no one in the room met his criteria. I identified myself. He joined me, with a terse apology: “You were writing so intently....
The River North neighborhood is getting into the street-festival racket with the inaugural Taste of River North, this Saturday and Sunday in Erie Park at Kingsbury and Erie. The fest opens at noon both days and presents music on one stage. Headlining Saturday at 8:30 PM is the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International, a local highlife band whose lineup includes two members of Ghana’s celebrated Western Diamonds; Reader critic Peter Margasak describes the OBDBI as a “strong live act that can get all sorts of crowds on their feet....
Aimee Levitt The House of the Rising Sun The song “House of the Rising Sun,” recorded by lots of people including Leadbelly, whose name was appropriated by the owners of a new northwest-side burger joint, is the tragic lament of a man whose life has been brought to ruin by the whorehouse of the title. The House of the Rising Sun burger is a thick slab of beef and smoked pork belly ground together and topped with bacon, cheddar cheese, Bloody Mary sauce (it tastes like ketchup), and a fried egg....
When you make a habit of going to shows, talking to bands, reading local music blogs, and scanning the schedule of every half-decent club in town, it’s always surprising—even a little disconcerting—when a record by a local band you’ve never even heard of before ends up in your lap. Doubly so when it’s really good. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Aside from Stach, at 23 a veteran of suburban power-pop outfits Surround Sound and Bachelor Party Weekend, no one in Secret Colours has previously played in anything more serious than a high school pickup band....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Next Wednesday, December 7, at the Portage theater, Northwest Chicago Film Society will present a rare screening of Liliom (1934), a lovely romantic fantasy that was the sole French film of Fritz Lang. By the early 1930s, Lang was considered the supreme artist of the German cinema, with a track record that included Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), The Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927), and M (1931)....
Sam Prekop has been a fixture on the Chicago scene for two decades, as front man of Shrimp Boat and the Sea and Cake and more recently as a solo artist. His forthcoming album for Thrill Jockey, Old Punch Card, is a departure from everything he’s done. There’s no soft nimble pop, no breezy vocals, no jazzed-up Brazilian bits. There’s no singing and no guitar licks—mostly it’s just modular synthesizer and a couple odd digital gadgets, which produce flattened drones and bursts of tones and distant digital whirrings and crunchings....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In this week’s Food & Drink, Mike Sula reviews Premise, where chef Brian Runge, formerly of Graham Elliot, has introduced a seasonal menu of modernist cuisine without the egoistic self-references. Here you’ll find lots of fish—a crispy bass fillet or a refined presentation of mackerel, of all things—and dishes like seared spring lamb loin, “silky and perfectly rare slices that spent some time in the water circulator, dressed with tahini and a spicy Greek yogurt sauce, and accompanied by charred zucchini batons....
Alas, first Michael and now Whitney. They represented two strains in 1980s pop culture: Houston, a child of the gospel tradition, and Jackson, the alien artist who took the music in directions nobody’d imagined. Not incidentally, that’s a tension that runs through the Museum of Contemporary Art’s powerful new “This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.” Curated by Helen Molesworth of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the show presents artists at a crossroads between the classical and the radical—between political complacency and impatience....
So, wow. We have our cultural plan. After months of hoopla it arrived in near secret last week from Canada (where it was crafted) as a Monday-morning pop-up event at an elementary school. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » They sang and played for the few folk who’d been passed the word to get there, along with some Perez school kids, for whom it’ll no doubt be a memorable if somewhat mystifying event, a star-studded launch for a plan that’s literally out of sight....
Nels Cline is a modern-day guitar wizard. He conjures the spirit of free jazz with the technical prowess of prog rock, and his innovative compositions are full of both hooks and Sonic Youth-inspired noise. Cline made a name for himself with his solo work and his collaborations with artists including Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, and Willie Nelson. In 2004 he joined Chicago-bred indie giant Wilco, who were working with another avant-garde hot-shot at the time, Jim O’Rourke....
Par-King Skill Golf 21711 Milwaukee, Lincolnshire 847-634-0333 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » OK, it’s a bit of a hike, but Lincolnshire’s Par-King Skill Golf (“The World’s Most Unusual Miniature Golf”) is the best mini golf for miles, opened in Morton Grove in the 50s and rebranded as Par-King in the 60s. In its current location, where it’s run by the grandkids of the founder, it boasts 18 elaborate holes, including a magnificent roller coaster hole, a replica of the Sears, er, Willis Tower, and an “elevator” hole....
“Ever since the mid-aughts, when they were still spinning parties at tiny north-side dive Town Hall Pub, Chicago-born DJ/production duo Flosstradamus have been motivated by a desire to combine rap music’s aesthetics with the energy and inclusiveness of dance-music culture,” writes Miles Raymer. “When they started out, that meant spinning Jock Jams techno alongside Dirty South rap to crowds of hipsters and hip-hop kids, but today, with more than a million followers on Soundcloud, they’re at the forefront of ‘trap music,’ which updates this blend by combining contemporary EDM and the trap sound that’s been dominating southern rap lately....
QYou may not be the right person to answer this, but your commenters might be able to help. I love and support my friends who are transgender, but I don’t understand all the 18- to 21-year-olds among my friends who are declaring themselves “gender neutral.” I am a bit older, and have always been interested in queer culture and history. But it feels like they’ve forgotten, or never knew, that butch lesbians who wear strap-ons are still women, or that it’s very common for straight men to wear lacy underwear....
QIs it normal for my man to be so attracted to boobs that even though mine are beautiful and perfect, my boyfriend still wants to look at every other woman with a set of big boobs that he can? Aren’t mine enough? —Boyfriend Ogles Other Breasts But your man shouldn’t be a dick about it. While it’s perfectly normal for a partnered straight guy to check out other women—just as it’s perfectly normal for a partnered straight woman to check out other men (see you at Magic Mike this weekend, ladies)—your man should be discreet....
