Michael Gebert Phillip Foss returns to his food truck—for one day. Once they were the future—food trucks, bringing innovative new tastes to the hungry masses of the Loop and other places where drab fast food dominated. It was Phillip Foss with Meatyballs Mobile and Matt Maroni with Gaztro-Wagon who led the movement to change the city’s laws and attitudes toward food trucks and make them the center of street-level culinary innovation, way back in 2010....
Chicago hip-hop had a tremendous year in 2016, but despite all the attention local artists got, plenty of great material didn’t see the spotlight. Among those unfairly overlooked releases was Free the Fall, the second mixtape from Bolingbrook-based rapper Jayaire Woods. He put it out through Quality Control, the Atlanta indie label that’s worked with Migos, Rich the Kid, and Lil Yachty. Woods opened Yachty’s solo tour last summer, and I wish he could’ve benefited even more from the rapid rise of the King of the Teens....
There was a feast of epic proportions under way a few weekends ago at the then month-old A Bite of Szechuan. At the center of the sunlit dining room the staff had pushed nearly half the restaurant’s tables together to accommodate a family of some two dozen grandparents, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins, all celebrating some happy occasion with a long, leisurely Sunday lunch. And that’s why A Bite of Szechuan seems to have already attracted a devoted following in its brief existence....
Nobody has ever sounded quite like Elvis Costello. For that matter, Costello has never sounded quite like himself—at least, that sneering, brash version of Elvis Costello that the world quickly got to know in the late 70s, when he burst into public consciousness with a trio of albums, starting with My Aim is True, that still stand as some of rock’s greatest. Elsewhere, Costello treats his readers to countless anecdotes about the many famous musicians with whom he’s crossed paths....
For a time it looked like Bernie Sanders might not make it through his stump speech in Chicago on Monday. The white-haired 73-year old Vermont senator had endured a sweaty appearance on a sunny soapbox stage at the Iowa State Fair the day before, and it showed. He sauntered over to the podium under the purple glow of lights at the Park West and almost immediately hunched over the wooden stand for support, his loose-fitting suit nearly swallowing him whole....
Now in its second year, the Chicago International Latino Theater Festival continues this weekend with the midwest premiere of An American Odyssey by the California-based performance trio Culture Clash. This program of character monologues is written and performed by Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Sigüenza, who founded Culture Clash in San Francisco’s Mission district on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo), 1984. The three men started the group “out of need,” says Sigüenza....
Prints by Josh Davis of Chicago’s Dead Meat Design turn up frequently in the Reader‘s Gig Poster of the Week—and almost every time Gossip Wolf steals a cool show flyer from a light pole or the wall of a record store, it has Davis’s name on it! (But seriously, if you absolutely have to take a poster home with you, don’t rip it down till after the show has happened. Otherwise, that’s a flyer felony!...
Earlier this month I wrote about the House of Angostura’s cocktail competition at Lost Lake—which Chicago newcomer Elizabeth Mickiewicz of Drumbar won, competing against bartenders from Nevada, Wyoming, and Washington. That advanced her to the U.S. finals in New Orleans (which, sadly, I did not attend). She won there too, which means she’ll go to Trinidad next year to represent the U.S. at Angostura’s Global Cocktail Challenge—plus she gets $5,000 cash....
Listening to 1983’s Come Away With ESG—while never forgetting the cut-and-paste album art—it’s almost as though the Scroggins sisters (Renee, Valerie, Deborah, Marie) didn’t realize that their raw Bronx blend of funk, postpunk, and disco would go on to breed and influence a flourishing dance-punk scene in early-2000s NYC. No way, they were having much too hot a time in the now. You can hear that in tracks like “Dance” and “You Make No Sense,” stripped down to low-in-the-mix bass lines, perhaps a few repeated lyrics—often presented as simple directives—and simple and stark rhythms consisting of drums, tambourine, and, if we’re lucky, cowbell....
Don’t you hate it when this happens? You hear great things about a new place, but you know it takes time for restaurants to get in the groove, working out the kinks in the kitchen and front of the house. So you wait awhile to give it time to come into its own. Then you go and it either meets, exceeds, or disappoints expectations, but one way or another you’re inspired enough to want to tell people about it....
Lifetime Samantha Plasencia and Tim Gunn on Project Runway With 12 seasons under their belts, the folks at Project Runway have turned what was once a statement piece—a reality-competition show based on discernible talent—into a cable TV staple (once on Bravo, now on Lifetime). I’ve been a fan of the show since season four, and was pleased by the enhanced role for Tim Gunn last season. The latest season promises more of the same, which means sartorial disasters, lots of running with scissors, and deconstructing looks—and contestants....
Dustin Park Nandini Khaund’s Reign in Blood It’s been more than six months since Nandini Khaund, one of the founders of the app Craft Cocktail and blog craftcocktailrules.com, made a cocktail with pig’s blood for the Reader‘s Cocktail Challenge. After the Huffington Post picked up the story, it went viral—and now pig’s blood has showed up in a cocktail at a London bar, as the tabloid the London Evening Standard reports....
“Welcome to the Jungle,” reads a hand-painted sign on the front of the host stand at the Radler. It matches the pieces of plywood that adorn the walls, painted with fierce-looking images of a bear, a wolf, a chicken, and a boxing glove (artists from Galerie F, located next door to the restaurant, painted the wood when it was covering the outside of the building during renovations). That slightly expensive pretzel, shiny with a liberal coating of oil, is accompanied not by mustard but barley-malt butter and blackberry jam....
As hard as it may be to never mind the glut of music festivals this weekend (West Fest, Ruido Fest, Square Roots Festival, etc), there are still shows happening with three-band bills. And one of them is headlined by local indie-pop fivesome Varsity, who just this last March dropped a self-titled full-length on Indianapolis’s Jurassic Pop, the followup to 2014’s Thanks for Nothing. The first track from that album to get passed around was also its most immediately catchy....
24hrs is waiting to receive plaudits like those collected by R&B-rap crossover acts Ty Dolla $ign—a frequent collaborator—and the also anonymously named Dvsn, if only because he’s as yet nowhere near as lyrically acute as the former or as spiritual as the latter. The Artist Formerly Known as Royce Rizzy is Atlanta to the bone, and his addiction to slick hooks and arrhythmic stutters no doubt shows off his firm reliance on the sonic tropes of the ATL (not to mention his mixtape partner, MadeInTYO, is also his brother)....
Jason Nocito Liturgy Brooklyn’s Liturgy was the most controversial band around when their second LP Aesthethica came out in 2011. The band’s epic and dramatic combination of screamo and black metal—propelled by the mind-bending blast beats of drummer Greg Fox—immediately polarized metal fans. A huge amount of disdain was directed at Liturgy for appropriating black metal—this was music made by Norwegian satanists, not New York City trust funders—and front man Hunter Hunt-Hendrix even went as far as to pen a manifesto outlining his personal philosophies on the genre....
Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders told an invite-only group of Latino activists and politicians Wednesday night that he plans to use executive orders as a means of bypassing Congress to guarantee a path to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants. Sanders then proposed to use executive orders to broaden President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). Sanders said he believes this plan to be within the scope of presidential powers....
International pop-up party Boiler Room has enlisted some of the best producers and DJs to play RSVP-only parties in intimate spaces; the performances are then broadcast around the world. If you haven’t made it out to one of Boiler Room’s shows just yet you can get a sneak peek of the hubbub and easily lose several hours by scrolling through archival footage of past performances from heavy hitters such as Frankie Knuckles and Teklife masters DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn, RP Boo, and Manny....
As city officials call for better enforcement of Chicago’s vacation rental ordinance, renting out rooms could get more complicated for hosts. Aldermen Michele Smith (43rd Ward), Brian Hopkins (Second), and Brendan Reilly (42nd) have called for a crackdown on violations of the city’s existing vacation rental ordinance. Though Smith said doing so could bring in an estimated $2 million annually, it’s not clear if the city can effectively enforce the ordinance....
Mika Horibuchi’s paintings trick the mind into seeing what is not quite there. At first glance they’re nothing more than romanticized watercolors of landscapes or still lifes of fruit and flowers. The subject, however, isn’t where the trick lies: It’s in the materials she uses in their rendering. The paintings aren’t formed from light splashes of watercolor, but rather smears of oil paint. Despite their everyday subject matter, the paintings are part of Horibuchi’s most recent and most personal series: they are copies of her grandmother’s own hobbyist watercolors....
