Steve “Stone” Huff Steve “Stone” Huff and Caleb James Save Money rapper and producer Caleb James lands on the cover of this week’s B Side as he prepares to release the follow-up to last year’s The Jones, a mixtape packed with feel-good throwback party tunes that straddle the line between hip-hop and R&B. In my feature I mention that The Jones 2.0 is set to include at least one track he produced with his father, Steve “Stone” Huff, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with Cleveland R&B singer Avant, new jack swing singer Keith Sweat, and Kelly Rowland from Destiny’s Child; he now serves as a pastor at Safe House Church in Evanston....

In the early 1800s in Tokyo, sushi (as we would come to know it) was something you ate on the street. The first guy to hand-press pieces of fish onto nubs of vinegared rice sold it to everyday workers from a box he carried around on his back. In the society of the late Edo period, sushi was as accessible as the chum-stuffed plastic clamshells sold from the cooler at Walgreens (though probably a lot better)....

Purity, Jonathan Franzen’s long-awaited new novel, is an unwieldy mess, with only a handful of gems buried beneath layers of the dullest and drabbest material imaginable. Here, Franzen pulls a surprise. Instead of taking us to Bolivia, we go back in time to the “Republic of Bad Taste,” otherwise known as East Germany during the 1980s, the last decade of the communist regime. This proves an inspired choice; we meet a young Wolf, “whose embarrassment it was to be the megalomaniacal antithesis of a dictatorship too ridiculous to be worthy of megalomania....

Michael Gebert Pasta, because you’ve never seen a picture of it before. Roxy’s American Grill, a staple of the River North restaurant scene since 2012, will close this Saturday and reconcept in the next few weeks as L’Assurdità, an Italian restaurant. Owners Gus Andropolous and Stanley Kim said that business had been declining for some months. Customers increasingly entered the restaurant “only to be baffled by offerings such as steak and lobster....

While the machinations of the Illinois government can make even the most hardened political observers tear their hair out, Chicago has always thrived in spite of the failures of those at the top—corrupt governments come and go, but there will always be new citizens ready to remake their environment. That truth is the beating heart of No Small Plans, a graphic novel published by the Chicago Architecture Foundation that shows teenagers living through the city’s shortcomings as they contemplate Chicago’s possibilities....

Produced by the city Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, this free program celebrating the city’s creativity is Chicago’s version of the Kennedy Center Awards. Like last year’s rousing inaugural event, it will honor five stalwarts of the local arts scene, selected by DCASE and members of the mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council. The 2015 honorees are author Sandra Cisneros, children’s music icon Ella Jenkins, architect Stanley Tigerman, longtime WXRT program director Norm Winer, and the Joffrey Ballet, which has been a Chicago company for the last 20 of its 60 years....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, January 26, 2016. Rahm declares that Chicago will remain a sanctuary city despite Trump executive order to pull funding Mayor Rahm Emanuel says that Chicago will continue to protect undocumented immigrants from federal deportation despite an executive order from President Donald Trump to pull federal funds from sanctuary cities. “Jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply [with federal immigration laws] are not eligible to receive federal grants except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes,” reads the executive order signed by Trump Wednesday....

Diary comic, 2012, by Rachel Foss After a week of staring at a computer screen, it’s about time you expose your eyes to something exciting. Here’s what’s going down in visual arts this weekend. “Pigeon Hill: Then and Now” at Catherine Edelman Gallery Your last chance to see Jeffrey Wolin’s presentation of photographic portraits featuring low-income residents of Bloomington, Indiana. “Renoir’s True Colors: Science Solves a Mystery” at Art Institute of Chicago The conservation team tasked with maintaining Renoir’s Madame Léon Clapisson in all its glory discovered there’s more to the impressionist painting than meets the eye....

Blank Project In the annals of improbable pop-music career revivals, few have been as welcome or as gratifying as Neneh Cherry’s. The stepdaughter of jazz great Don Cherry released a couple commercially successful albums in the late 80s and early 90s (Raw Like Sushi and Homebrew) before working sporadically over the next 20 years. Last year her career got an unexpected jolt with the release of The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound), a collaboration with Scandinavian free-jazz group the Thing, a favorite among many music critics (the Reader‘s own Peter Margasak placed it on his year-end list)....

It can be lonely at the top—and it almost always is at the top of the monolithic musical instruments known as carillons. On Saturday night in Springfield, Illinois, UIC graduate student Hunter Chase was one of just five people chosen to venture alone to the peak of the 132-foot bell tower in Washington Park to perform at the Rees International Carillon Competition. A disproportionate number of the carillons in the U....

Erik Friedlander’s vibrant tone, vivid pizzicato, and fluid bowing have made the cellist a first-call accompanist for John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Laurie Anderson, and the Mountain Goats. He’s also sustained a varied solo career for more than 21 years. His 2008 release Broken Arm Trio celebrated the music of Oscar Peterson—one of jazz’s first cellists—while Claws & Wings, with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and electronic musician Ikue Mori, contrasted emotional melodies with ephemeral atmospherics to meditate upon loss and healing....

Chicago doesn’t just have a vibrant, busy music scene—it’s also full of busy music writers. This year some of the city’s best talents were at the top of their game, helping drive big, important conversations and refining their distinctive styles. It’s surely just a coincidence that several of them have also contributed to the Reader. (For the record, Reader staffers were excluded from consideration for this list.) This year Josh Terry started at the RedEye as a music reporter, interviewing bands and keeping commuters up to date with show announcements and track reviews....

The future of U.S. dockless bike-share—aka “DoBi”—isn’t looking so bright right now. DoBi technology lets customers use a smartphone app to locate and check out bikes scattered around the service area. Most companies use cycles that are secured only with a built-in wheel lock—which makes them easy to steal or vandalize. Last month a city official in Washington, D.C., reported that some companies in the District have lost about half of their fleets to theft and vandalism....

Chief Keef is running for mayor of Chicago, and as is the case with his rap songs, he doesn’t appear to follow any rule book but his own. After all, the city wrapped up a mayoral election just months ago, and Keef’s got some outstanding warrants preventing him from entering Chicago anytime soon. Keef made the announcement on Twitter yesterday as part of a response to his ongoing struggle to perform anywhere near Chicago via hologram....

With the scorching weather we’ve had for the past few days (not to mention the weekend forecast), it’s tempting to wish summer would hurry up and leave already. To be honest, I kind of do. But then I start thinking about all that’s going to leave along with the warm weather—peak-season tomatoes, peaches, basil, mint—and trying to figure out if I can live solely on tomatoes for the next couple weeks....

“Psyched to use pizza grease, something I am known to be very fond of,” Henry Prendergast of Analogue e-mailed me—about the last response I expected after the Violet Hour’s John Smillie challenged him to make a drink with the stuff. Not only was he psyched, Prendergast immediately knew the perfect source for his ingredient: Dante’s Pizzeria, whose pepperoni he deems “Chicago’s finest slice.” Rounding out the drink are simply lime juice and, of course, the King of Beers—his inspiration, after all, was pizza and Bud....

Flying Elephant Productions presents the Chicago premiere of Aurin Squire’s award-winning 2014 comedy, about a tight-knit group of friends whose bond is broken when a white boy moves into their black neighborhood in a small Florida town and joins their Michael Jackson fan club. Obie (Christopher Taylor), the protagonist, opens the play with a monologue listing 9/11, the Great Recession, and host of other cultural touchstones America had yet to reach in 1984, the year the play is set....

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in 22 Jump Street I recently wrote a favorable review of 22 Jump Street—more favorable, in fact, than my review of 21 Jump Street, which came out just two years ago. I’m not sure if the new film is that much better than its predecessor or if I came to it with a better of idea of what its directors, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, and stars, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, were up to....

At 41, Seattle singer-songwriter David Bazan is still searching for his life’s best path. In March he self-released his fourth solo album, Care, on which uncharacteristic synth-heavy music aids his quest to explore parts unknown—or at least helps him understand his journey as a songwriter in a different light. Care follows last year’s Blanco, Bazan’s first solo full-length largely made with electronic instruments; the artist also had a brief tenure leading the lo-fi synth-pop project Headphones, which occupies a special place in the cult of Bazan....

A father and husband strangles his wife and drops her out of a window in a staged suicide. Most people would view this act as cold-blooded murder—but might it be the tragic result of an untreated brain cyst? Such a possibility frames The Brain Defense, Chicago author Kevin Davis‘s true-crime book, which explores the emerging role of brain science in the criminal justice system. Davis is no stranger to crime writing....