When the publisher of the Daily Herald announced last week that his paper would be throwing up a pay wall around its online news content, public comment on the publication’s website was overwhelmingly negative. “I’ll be dammed if I would ‘pay money’ to read the poor info the DH provides,” wrote one of the first posters, setting the tone. “This paper will go down.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Ryan Sullivan invites me into the Fulton Market loft he shares with a couple roommates and an art studio and pours me a vodka tonic. Then he shows me where he recorded the first Golden Birthday album, Infinite Leagues. It’s not a studio but a table—a long work table that fills most of his cluttered, warrenlike living space, which he’s walled off from the rest of the loft. It’s strewn with keyboards dating from the Reagan years, effects units like an 80s Korg phaser and a Danelectro delay pedal, and, most significant, a Tascam eight-track cassette recorder....
Director Matthew Singletary misses the boat, narrowly, in telling Diana Son’s story of two women whose friendship deepens into romantic attraction, prompting a kiss that leads to a gay bashing. The crux isn’t the kiss or even the attack but the women’s response to them, revealed between the lines. Thanks largely to the script’s easy banter (Son’s chops as a Law & Order writer are apparent), it’s easy to relate to Jennifer Tullock and Kay Capasso as the two women....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Arguably the biggest local election this fall will be for Cook County state’s attorney, where Democrat Anita Alvarez will try to hold off Republican Tony Peraica. If you think about it, Alvarez is kind of a Peraica Bizarro (if it’s not the other way around). Peraica, a former precinct captain for Bill Lipinski, lost a couple runs for office as a Democrat before switching parties and winning a suburban seat on the Cook County board in 2002....
For “Mix With Six,” the Seldoms’ first-ever company showcase, artistic director Carrie Hanson asked her dancers to step outside their comfort zones and choreograph. Five of the six did, with remarkably fine results. Two of them—like Hanson over the last several years—incorporate provocative spoken texts. Not surprisingly, these budding choreographers are good at it too, poking and prodding the psyche. Amanda McAlister’s funny, emotionally spot-on duet, (I’m)barrassed, for instance, conflates two men into one who relives and reflects on shameful episodes....
There’s no greater testament to the ethnographic diversity of the northern suburbs than Niles’s Fresh Farms International Market (5740 W. Touhy, Niles, myfreshfarms.com), featuring products from at least five continents. Those numbed by the galaxies of banality that are Dominick’s and Jewel should prepare to have their doors of perception blown from their hinges as they wander among the mountains of produce, the oceanic-depth seafood department, the deli counter with its meats, cheeses, and prepared and preserved foods from around the globe, and towering aisles of international eats....
On a recent Wednesday evening, with hours of summer daylight left, dozens of people were out enjoying the Bloomingdale line, a dormant railroad right-of-way that runs 2.7 miles across the northwest side, 15 feet above its namesake street. They strolled, they jogged, they cycled, and they exercised their dogs, oblivious not only to the carpet of glass, weeds, and garbage but to the law: the Bloomingdale line is private property, and everyone on it was trespassing....
Eagle vs. Shark (2007), the first feature by New Zealand comedian Taika Waititi, struck me as a fairly obvious knockoff of Napoleon Dynamite, the reigning cult comedy of the day. For this second feature, Waititi has reached into his past for a story that belongs to him alone. The protagonist is an 11-year-old Maori boy (James Rolleston) living in a small coastal village, and because the year is 1984, he’s obsessed with Michael Jackson’s Thriller....
Trap Door Theatre is bringing its fine 2009 production of A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians to Poland and Romania next month, and to warm up for the trip, Trap Door is remounting the production for one night—Tuesday, May 4—at the University of Chicago’s Reynolds Club, 5706 S. University, in the third-floor theater. The play, by noted—and controversial—27-year-old Polish writer Dorota Maslowska, is a black comedy about a stoned young couple stranded in the Polish countryside on a snowy night, trying to get back to Warsaw after a late-night “extreme poverty” theme party....
To their credit, it occurred to the student journalists of Walter Payton College Prep that an important question to ask about nearby Cabrini-Green was whether their own fancy new school sticks in the residents’ craw. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Antos (a junior) and Bennon (a senior) draw a contrast between Payton, just northeast of Cabrini at 1034 N. Wells, and Schiller, in the heart of the project....
You can watch Santelli freak out here. Let’s address it briefly. Santelli asks, and it is a perfectly fair question that people should be asking, why should my tax money go to bail out my neighbors? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Now your loser neighbors start defaulting (it is significant that Santelli specifically uses the word neighbors). As their houses get repossessed, they get boarded up, the grass gets high, and your suburb turns into a squatter village as it returns to nature....
Last year West Fest attracted an estimated 60,000 people, and this year’s awesome music lineup makes it more than likely that the crowd will top that number. The festival takes place on Sat 7/13 and Sun 7/14 along Chicago between Damen and Wood, with a Main Stage produced by the Empty Bottle and a DJ Stage whose bookings reflect a “Chicago house” theme. Saturday on the Main Stage, Chicago postrock godfathers Tortoise headline, with openers including electronic duo Javelin, countrified Nashville rockers Those Darlins, and multifarious 60s girl-pop tribute band Girl Group Chicago....
Last summer DNAinfo ran a short item about Sze Chuan Cuisine, the latest of many newer Chinatown restaurants specializing in the food of China’s southwestern Sichuan province, known primarily for the dual sensations of ma and la—respectively, the electric charge of the seeds and pods of the prickly ash tree and the blaze of chiles. Given the Sichuanese proliferation—thanks to an increasingly diverse influx of Chinese expats over the last half-dozen or so years—at first glance the news didn’t seem that earth-shattering....
THE MYSTERIOUS ELEPHANT AND THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY OF THE UNLIKELY ADDINGTON TWINS* (*WHO KILL HIM) The Strange Tree Group Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Comparisons to Edward Gorey also inevitably crop up in discussions of Schwartz’s work. The aura of macabre elegance is similar. But where Gorey maintained a light, even astringent touch, Schwartz is all about excess—for better and for worse. On the one hand, her casts have expanded to routinely include live musicians, as in last year’s brilliant country-goth tuner, Mr....
Now in its 33rd year, Evanston’s annual Bach Week festival concludes with Bach’s emotionally intense choral masterpiece Saint John Passion (1723). Its surprisingly creepy chromatic opening turns chilling with the entry of the choir, and after several hypnotic repetitions the story begins, told primarily through the recitative of the evangelist (tenor William Watson). But it’s the gorgeous chorales, spectacular orchestral writing, and moving vocal solos–such as the aria for bass with interjecting chorus “Eilt Ihr Angefochten Seelen”–that make this music powerful even if you don’t share the faith it proclaims....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thursday30Food Network junkies can get their fix at a live cooking demo featuring Foodease Chef Partner Naoki Nakashimi, who will provide tips and tricks on sushi rolling technique. One guest will win a $100 Water Tower Place Shop Etc. gift card, while all attendees receive a gift bag filled with goodies from various Water Tower Place retailers. Noon-2 PM, Water Tower Place Level 7, 835 N....
Challenged by Perennial Virant’s Erin Hayes with stinging nettles, a wild perennial used as a medicinal herb as well as in pastas, soups, and other dishes, Johnny Costello Jr. of GT Fish & Oyster paid a visit to local forager Dave Odd. Eaten raw, Costello says, the plant has “kind of an earthy, spinachy flavor,” but “it really does sting the inside of your mouth.” His cocktail, which he judged “totally quaffable,” employs it, defanged, in three forms: dried, blanched, and juiced....
One of Nagisa Oshima’s very best, this Japanese feature from 1968 is concerned with the death penalty and the public’s understanding of a rape and murder committed by a Korean youth. The inventive staging is not merely dazzling but purposeful: a group of Japanese officials discovers, through a fantasy conceit, that the Korean prisoner refuses to die because the issues of his crime and his punishments aren’t understood, and the film works through a series of imaginative reconstructions of the events leading up to the rape and murder....
It was my third time back at the temp agency in as many weeks. They hadn’t found me work yet, but the lady, whose name I forgot as soon as I finished reading her business card, said that they’d gotten a new test they wanted me to do. I’d already taken the typing test, the spreadsheet test, and the data entry test, but she told me the firm’s clients were clamoring for more statistics and diagnostics, the percentiles and charts with which they could make the most informed hiring decisions in the history of business....
Kris Swanberg’s handcrafted ice cream company, Nice Cream, started with a wedding gift that turned into an obsession. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » She went even crazier with the attachment, using the basic KitchenAid recipe, which makes between two and four pints at a time. “The first flavor I tried was cookies and cream, and it wasn’t very good,” she recalls. “It was melty and icy at the same time....
