There’s never been a more important moment for alternative newsweeklies in America. Nor have they ever been so difficult to pull together. There’s no funding, little support. The very notion of unfake news has been degraded in recent years—it’s downright reviled by the White House. Daily newspapers are shrinking as they struggle to keep themselves afloat. How can we possibly think about recommitting to alternative journalism? It’s the city that works....
An Elton John look-alike plays piano beneath a pink spotlight in the middle of a Wrigleyville apartment-building courtyard. Donning a white boa, platform heels, and blinking sunglasses, he busts into a spot-on rendition of “Bennie and the Jets.” A flapper and a vampire roam the grounds, chatting with corpses and taking selfies. Lured by the spectacle a group of drunken Cubs fans stumble toward the apartment’s entrance, woo-wooing in the neighborhood’s native tongue....
Formed in San Francisco in 2006 and named after a Black Sabbath song (a pretty, mostly acoustic interlude on the 1971 LP Master of Reality), Orchid play the kind of old-school doom metal that tempts people to call it “occult rock” or “heavy psych” instead. (As though you couldn’t tell that from the photo.) They hail from deep in the hazy realm of bell-bottoms, black-light posters, custom vans, and amplifier cabinets large enough to sleep in....
This week, preorders opened up for a career-encompassing box set by Norwegian black-metal pioneers Emperor. Released by Finnish label Blood Music, this massive collection is among the biggest box sets ever made, and for just under $800, all 24 of its LPs can be yours. Copies are going fast, so take note, black-metal completists with plenty of disposable income: this set compiles pretty much everything Emperor recorded in their 23-year run, including all their studio albums, demos, outtakes, and covers, as well as multiple concerts....
Tony Magee founded Lagunitas Brewing in California in 1993 and has built it into one of the largest craft breweries in the U.S., opening a 300,000-square-foot brewery and taproom in Chicago in 2013. (Lagunitas is also in the process of building a brewery in Azusa, California.) Magee has been in the news quite a bit this year, first for filing suit against Sierra Nevada for trademark infringement over an IPA label—which he immediately dropped in the wake of customer backlash—and then in September for selling a 50 percent stake in Lagunitas to Heineken in order to export his beer internationally....
On the third floor of the Stony Island Trust & Savings Bank Building, a 17,000-square-foot neoclassical edifice in South Shore, roughly 5,000 vinyl records sit on rows of shelves salvaged from a defunct hardware store. There’s not much about the collection that suggests a museum, but these records are a cultural treasure far more valuable than the music in their grooves—their presence here, in the newly christened Stony Island Arts Bank, is intended to preserve them and make them accessible to the public....
I haven’t read the best-selling Dutch novel on which the Italian drama The Dinner is based, and I disliked the film so much that I don’t intend to read the book anytime soon. Scripted by Valentina Ferlan and director Ivano De Matteo, the movie trades in moral simplifications and heavy-handed arguments, dressing them up with posh architecture, sensitive acting, and swooping camera movements to pass them off as sophisticated. Philosophically inclined yet lazy in its storytelling, it’s reminiscent of such lesser Woody Allen dramas as Melinda and Melinda and Cassandra’s Dream....
Masaharu Morimoto arrived in Chicago a few months ago like a lot of telegenic chefs who decide to launch satellites into the Chicagosphere: with plenty of advance warning. Maybe this one’s more instructive: Last week I reviewed a new restaurant called Kinmont, which is doing all the right things in terms of serving sustainable seafood in thoughtfully conceived dishes. And yet the kitchen hadn’t been able to execute them consistently well....
There is no food more adaptable to the human requirement for joy than pizza. You can share it, hot and steaming, with your best friends, and it’s near guaranteed that before you’ve finished, you’ll all burst out laughing together for some reason or another. You can stumble out of bed in the middle of the night, sleepless from the ghosts moaning in your head, and the holy light of the refrigerator will spill upon a cold leftover slice on a paper plate, and for a few minutes those ghouls will be silenced, along with your hunger....
Last spring, when Prince died, I wrote about all the near misses I’d had trying to see him perform live. I never managed it, and in writing that piece, I couldn’t help but start a mental inventory of other great artists I had yet to see—a sort of “please don’t kick the bucket” list. On that list, PJ Harvey is definitely near the top. So when Pitchfork announced this year’s festival lineup, she became my must-see....
If art is all about subverting the expected, then the people at Lay’s are some of our most popular and profitable contemporary artists. Forget Jeff Koons: you can find Lay’s experimental flavors in every goddamned grocery and convenience store in our fair nation. Every year, they give us the opportunity to appreciate their genius even more when they turn over new-potato-chip-flavor-devising duties to their loyal customers. Coming up with a new potato chip flavor isn’t easy, y’all!...
Is the Lucas Museum just like the Field, the Shedd, and the Adler? Another great civic institution funded by some guy whose name is on the building? If it did, what we’d already have on the lakefront would be three museums celebrating the art of retailing. Maybe with a library of catalogs and a monument to Frango mints. Followed by “I’m not going to give you a million dollars.” John G....
Entering the country illegally—without going through an immigration checkpoint—or overstaying a visa isn’t a criminal offense but rather a civil violation of federal law. A growing percentage of the “undocumented” population in the U.S. are people who overstayed their visas rather than people who made unauthorized border crossings. Of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today, about 500,000 reside in Illinois, mostly in the Chicagoland area. After processing, adults arrested in Illinois are then taken from the processing centers to one of seven county jails in the region that hold immigration detainees for ICE: to the Kankakee, McHenry, or Pulaski county jails in Illinois, the Kenosha or Dodge county jails in Wisconsin, the Clay County Jail in Indiana, or Boone County Jail in Kentucky....
Mike Sula Cucumber, mint, yogurt, Pita Puff Last week I used up considerable space lamenting the dreary Middle Eastern food at Logan Square’s Masada and its inverse relationship to the elaborate and lysergic decor. I’ve also spent considerable time over the last few years whinging about the overall decline in Middle Eastern food in Albany Park, once a bastion for the stuff that has long since ceded its preeminence to the southwest suburb of Bridgeview....
John H. White/Sun-Times Media Alderman Willie Cochran says “a change in the mentality about guns” is a leading cause of violence. Alderman Willie Cochran has been trying to get to the roots of the violence battering the south and west sides since long before the latest carnage—14 people killed and 68 others wounded over the three-day weekend, and more in the days since, including a fatal shooting on the Dan Ryan Expressway Wednesday morning....
In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the Loyola University Museum of Art brings us “LUMA at 10! Greatest Hits,” an eclectic mix of works from past exhibitions tied together by LUMA’s mission to, in the words of cultural affairs director Pamela E. Ambrose, “examine the arts across all cultures engendered by faith, religion, and spirituality.” The centerpiece of this exhibit is no doubt Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds, returning to LUMA after a very popular run in 2008....
I must start with a disclosure: Leah Ball is a neighbor and a friend. But it took me a while to realize what a powerhouse she is, because she’s about as modest as she is talented. And she’s megatalented. Her work has been featured in trend-setting magazines like Nylon and Creem, her jewelry has been sported by artists such as Alyson Fox and Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan, and her line has been carried by major retailers including Free People and Urban Outfitters....
When I interviewed him over the phone last week, comedian Brennen Reeves was huffing and puffing while taking a walk on a hot day in Savannah, Georgia. When I followed up with him later, he was packing for a move. These two routine activities—walking and lifting—are borderline miracles for Reeves, who underwent a double lung transplant when he was 19 years old. He was aware of his life expectancy during his youth, but most kids see the future in the abstract....
New York-based cellist Daniel Levin is in the midst of another busy year, toggling between rigorous free improvisation and outward-bound ensemble-oriented projects. He’s at his most visceral on the new Spinning Jenny, an abrasive improvised session with double bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and percussionist Chris Corsano, where terse arco jabs and knotted-up pizzicato patterns turn up as often as snaking, exploratory lines, and the bare-knuckled attack by all three creates an exhilarating physicality....
The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with The TRiiBE that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Navy Pier has been a refuge for rapper Taylor Bennett and his homies for years. They aren’t drawn to it for the obvious reason, though—that is, free admission to 3,300 feet of restaurants, shops, theaters, and parks, with regular firework shows, spectacular views of Lake Michigan, and a Ferris wheel that’s just as iconic a part of Chicago’s skyline as the Sears Tower....
