Cantina de la Granja Ceviche from a Cantina de la Granja preview Mark Robertson co-owns the GLBT sports bar Crew Bar & Grill in Uptown, and SoFo Tap in Andersonville. But he grew up on a farm, and dreamed of having a place in the city that better reflected where food really comes from in the midwest. Chef Diana Davida was part of a restaurant group in D.C. that included a hipster taqueria, but despite her Mexican-American heritage, she mainly made American and continental food....

The six-way intersection of Grace, Bernard, and Elston in the Irving Park community is a tricky junction. Located just west of the Abbey Pub, it’s a relatively wide roadway where the two residential streets meet up with a busy northwest-southeast thoroughfare. Observing her afternoon shift last week, I was impressed by Ana’s grit as she marched into the street with her handheld stop sign, taking no guff from drivers who failed to halt....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, June 20, 2017. Report: Less than a quarter of Chicago teens attend their neighborhood high schools Less than a quarter of Chicago students attend their neighborhood public high school, according to a report by DNAinfo Chicago. In 2007, almost 45 percent of Chicago teens went to their neighborhood Chicago Public Schools high school. The numbers show a dramatic shift toward selective enrollment Chicago Public Schools and private schools....

Growing up in the church is a common backstory for black R&B and soul musicians. The choir director is often their first vocal coach, and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” is often the one of the first songs they learn, second only to the ABCs. For Chicago soul artist Christian JaLon, the church is a house of worship, a springboard into musicianship, and something greater than both—it’s the home of love....

Yesterday Drake released “Back to Back Freestyle,” the latest chapter in his burgeoning feud with Meek Mill. That Philadelphia rapper lit the fire on Twitter last week when he alleged that Drake’s guest verse on his latest album, June’s Dreams Worth More Than Money, was ghostwritten. To some, Meek included, that’s a pox on “authenticity,” a slippery measurement of hip-hop greatness that, as the Beck-versus-Beyonce moment touched off by Kanye at this year’s Grammies showed us, remains a tool some music fans and even musicians themselves are eager to employ in an argument....

This year Chicagoans have the rare opportunity to discover lost or suppressed works by a number of major filmmakers. In May the Gene Siskel Film Center presented the local premieres of Philippe Garrel’s L’Enfant Secret (1979) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s TV series Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (1972-’73); in July the Music Box hosted an ultrarare screening of Jean Grémillon’s silent masterpiece The Lighthouse Keepers (1929); and next month the Chicago International Film Festival will screen The Other Side of the Wind, an Orson Welles feature that was begun in the early 1970s and completed only recently....

It seems slightly unbelievable now, but the scientists who developed the nuclear bomb didn’t want it to be used in an actual war. After the first test bomb exploded in New Mexico in July, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Los Alamos lab, said he was reminded of a quote from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Later that month, 70 scientists who’d worked on the Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the bomb, signed a petition begging President Truman not to use it against the Japanese....

Hanna Schygulla and Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Katzelmacher I wonder how many conscious references there are to the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Richard Linklater’s films. Linklater cites the German actor-playwright-filmmaker as one of his chief creative influences (which is why I couldn’t resist bringing him up when I spoke to Linklater last month with the programmers from Northwest Chicago Film Society), even though the two would seem to have little in common....

Eviction hearings in Cook County courtrooms happen in the blink of an eye. According to legal observers and court-watching reports, tenants frequently show up to their first court date unaware that the fate of their housing may be decided immediately. And though the circuit court doesn’t publicly report statistics on the some 30,000 eviction cases filed countywide each year, legal advocates have long observed that tenants almost never have lawyers....

Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2011, then went on hiatus for a year as festival director Brenda Webb and her staff pondered “how the festival might expand or evolve to better address the changing needs of LGBT filmmakers.” When Reeling returned last year it had adopted a new, more inclusive subtitle—The Chicago LGBT International Film Festival—and Webb had handed over programming duties to Richard Knight Jr....

Shortly after I took over as the Reader‘s music editor in April 2004, I started working with Plastic Crimewave—aka Chicago musician, label head, promoter, illustrator, and zine author Steve Krakow—to debut the Secret History of Chicago Music, a hand-drawn and hand-lettered single-frame comic devoted to “pivotal Chicago musicians that somehow have not gotten their just dues,” in the words of Krakow’s tagline. Tonight at the Empty Bottle, Krakow will sign copies of My Kind of Sound at a release party that also features a full lineup of music: glam-pop weirdo Bobby Conn presenting a multimedia show called “My Chicago,” long-running avant-garde collective Ono, 70s psychedelic proto-power pop group Athanor, and early-80s synth collective VCSR....

Courtesy of Paul Cherry’s Facebook page Paul Cherry Local label-slash-collective FeelTrip is gearing up to release a handful of albums leading up to the end of the year, and today it offered up the debut single from Chicago pop-rock wiz Paul Cherry, “Everybody’s Burning Out.” Visual artist Weston Getto Allen put together a bizarre, lo-fi, slightly NSFW video for Cherry’s irresistible, buoyant number, which shows a day in the life of a freewheeling, drug-addled musician as he stumbles through LA; the whole video is made up of point-of-view shots so you can see the dude send texts, pop pills, and get beat up from his perspective....

When Chicago powerviolence band Weekend Nachos started playing in 2004, “We honestly had no serious goals,” says front man John Hoffman. “We just wanted to sound like Kungfu Rick, a Chicago grindcore band we all grew up listening to, and we wanted to have chaotic live shows like they did. I definitely feel we accomplished that and so much more.” Coming To An End by KUNGFU RICK Considering what Weekend Nachos have done since then, “so much more” is an understatement....

A handful of Chicagoans will go to the polls on March 18 and do something remarkable: they will ask for a Republican ballot. Macklin hopes to help change this inclination. Since 2012 he’s been the GOP committeeman of the 6th Ward, an office he won by amassing 62 votes, crushing his main opponent, Jackie Robinson, who got 29. “My true affinity has always been with the Republicans,” Macklin says. “I’ve been thinking like one all my life....

For nearly a decade a monument to dog waste has been prominently displayed at the corner of Wolcott and Augusta as a reminder to residents to pick up after their pooches. Polish-American artist Jerzy Kenar, whose work has graced Saint Constance Church and the Holy Trinity Polish Mission, had too many instances of stepping out of his house to find dog shit in his front garden. These fecal misfortunes inspired him to create Shit Fountain, a dookie-shaped coil of bronze atop a cement column....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. “Why do we need permission to get dressed up?” asks real estate broker and mother of three Terri Franklin. “Sometimes after women hit a certain age they start to melt into this submission of ‘I don’t need to get dressed up anymore.’ Moms who used to feel conscious about their style just seem to play everything down....

Dwayne Appling was sentenced to more than 27 years in federal prison for overseeing an operation that moved heroin from Chicago to Iowa. The movement for reduced drug sentences didn’t help Dwayne Appling. It’s happened despite more than four decades of ever-tougher drug policies that have sent hundreds of thousands of offenders into state and federal prisons. Prosecutors portrayed Appling as one of the dealers who encouraged and then capitalized on heroin habits....

Last summer, when I first heard Vukari‘s debut full-length, Matriarch, the “band” was a studio project led by front man, guitarist, and composer Marek Cimochowicz. Originally he had no intention of playing in public—a common choice in extreme metal, in part because it’s difficult to find like-minded musicians with the chops to get through such demanding songs onstage, where they can’t piece together a perfect take digitally. But during the nine months he spent recruiting studio players and recording, he changed his mind—and at an Arkona show in November, Vukari made their onstage debut, leaping into the world fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus....

Fred Zwicky Republican Bruce Rauner wants your vote for governor—or else. You’ve probably heard about Dave McKinney, the well-respected political reporter who resigned from the Sun-Times because he didn’t feel the paper’s owners went far enough in defending him against an assault on his integrity by Bruce Rauner, the Republican candidate for governor. The answer is that Rauner has made quite a showing. Here’s a list of our top ten bullies from recent times:...

Oriez/Wikimedia Commons A complex ecosystem I wasn’t paying much attention to the car radio until I heard this: I imagine Sisyphus happy. I imagine Chicago journalists so happy they kiss the ground Ryan and Blagojevich and Vrdolyak and Medrano (I’m leaving out a few names, maybe hundreds) walk on. If in the 40-some years I’ve been a journalist in Chicago journalism hasn’t made a dent in our city’s political corruption, neither has corruption made a dent in our journalism....