Q: I’ve been enjoying consensual nonmonogamy for the past two years, in part thanks to your column and podcast. I have a delightful young lover, and our connection has evolved into a kind of master-slave relationship. I “allow” her to fuck other men and women, and she delights in asking my permission and recounting the details of her other trysts to me. We are curious how much of this she needs to disclose to her other lovers....

Since Douglas McCombs’s long-running project Brokeback evolved from a solo endeavor into a quartet lineup seven years ago, he and his cohorts have engaged in an exquisitely patient act of retrenchment and refinement. The striking new Illinois River Valley Blues (Thrill Jockey) is the first record from the group in four years, during which Jim Elkington transferred from drums to the role of second guitarist and Areif Sless-Kitain (Eternals) took over the drum throne....

Katherine Desjardins Lee Hyla On Saturday morning my Facebook feed began filling with posts expressing shock and grief at the passing of Lee Hyla, a brilliant composer and a professor at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music since 2007. I was a huge fan of his music, and I honored his album My Life on the Plains (Tzadik) in last year’s Best of Chicago issue. But I never met Lee and didn’t know too much about him, aside from the fact that he came to Northwestern from the New England Conservatory of Music....

Alison Green The crowd during Gwar’s set Several faithful Reader staffers, deterred to varying degrees by chilly wind, persistent rain, and unavoidable mud, send fragmentary dispatches from day one of Riot Fest. By 7 PM I was staking out the Dark Matter booth, on a quest for some much needed warmth and caffeine. I was also hoping to get my hands on a cup of the Mastodon blend—if you haven’t read the description (which sounds incredible), I urge you to do so....

Roads? Where Rich Weissensel is going he doesn’t need roads—at least while behind the wheel of his custom DeLorean hovercraft. “You can fly it over just about anything,” the amateur mechanic says gleefully. “I’ve taken it on water, on the beach—the best surface is ice.” He Frankensteined the vehicle in 2002 using a hovercraft air cushion and the stainless steel body of Doc Brown’s preferred automobile. Next March, as union plumbers dye the Chicago River green for Saint Patrick’s Day, Weissensel intends to shoot down the waterway in the craft as part of a yearlong 30th-anniversary celebration of Back to the Future that’s being organized by his club, the DeLorean Midwest Connection....

Still Dance the Stars There’s one thoroughly decent moment in Jayme McGhan’s play, getting its world premiere now in a coproduction by Chicago Dramatists and the New Light Theater Project. That’s when Anne, a dance teacher and bereaved mother, performs a pas de deux with Hope, the embodied spirit of her stillborn baby. It works because it’s plain, clear, organic in the sense that dance is Anne’s natural mode of expression, and because Bethany Geraghty’s Anne and Ariana Sepúlveda put Ashlee Wassmund’s choreography over with such easy grace....

Appropriately, Mayor Emanuel’s name isn’t mentioned in the 43-page indictment on bribery charges handed down today by the feds against Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was hired by the mayor to run the Chicago Public Schools. For almost a year before Mayor Emanuel hired her as CEO—I did mention that she was hired by Rahm, right?—Byrd-Bennett was a “paid consultant” for the Supes Academy. According to the feds, “Byrd-Bennett steered no-bid contracts worth more than $23 million” to Supes “in exchange for an expectation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks....

Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s staging of The Tempest was hotly anticipated on fall preview lists, everybody (including me) getting worked up over its various components. Songs by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Choreography by Matt Kent of Pilobolus. Local favorite Larry Yando in the lead role. And an intriguingly odd couple of directors: Aaron Posner, author of Stupid Fucking Bird, a metatheatrical update of Chekhov’s The Seagull that became a hit for Sideshow Theatre in 2014, and—most fertile for column inches—Teller, the famously silent half of Penn & Teller, who was expected to bring legit magical effects to Shakespeare’s play about an old sorcerer executing his last great trick....

Ryan Lowry’s Two Years Gossip Wolf reported last month that Reader contributor and local punk stalwart Ryan Lowry (who currently plays in hardcore outfit Violent End) was putting the finishing touches on his first photo book, Two Years. Lowry’s an excellent photographer, but I do have a bias—I’ve been lucky enough to have his photos accompany several of my Reader stories. Still, I’d be remiss not to recommend folks seek out his work, and tonight’s an excellent opportunity to do just that....

Mike Sula Oyster shooter, Tsu Kiji FIsh Market A part of me feels it’s unfair to criticize a Japanese restaurant for broad and unfocused menus, especially since a place like Japonais by Morimoto executes one so well, and by early reports the new giant on the block Momotaro seems very promising. Usually that’s not the case. So with an open mind I skimmed through the menu at Tsu Kiji Fish Market, the newish West Town sushi joint named for Tokyo’s wholesale fish market, which is pretty much the Godzilla of seafood markets....

If you’re a fan of rap or R&B and have a thing for vinyl, chances are you got the gift of wax this holiday season. Did somebody surprise you with an LP copy of, say, Kendrick Lamar’s Section.80, Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, or Kanye West’s Yeezus? Well, whether you know it or not, you’re now the proud owner of a bootleg record. I first saw a real live bootleg in spring 2013 at the CHIRP Record Fair, at which point I’d already encountered online evidence of a bootleg vinyl version of Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange....

In July 2015, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro came to Chicago and announced the agency’s renewed commitment to “affirmatively furthering” fair housing. The requirement that its grantees not spend federal dollars on discriminatory housing practices, and indeed that its grant recipients work toward reversing the effects of federally-subsidized housing segregation, was spelled out in the 1968 Fair Housing Act. For decades after the law was passed, however, it was unclear what it meant, exactly, to “affirmatively further fair housing....

September is a magical time on the shores of Lake Michigan. The water has been warmed to perfection by the summer heat. On a sunny 75-degree day the conditions for swimming are perfect. More perfect still are the conditions for enjoying that swim, particularly due to the absence of fascistic lifeguards. No one who hasn’t spent a lifetime swimming in open water and knows herself to be a strong swimmer will understand why the best time at the beach is when the lifeguards are off duty....

McKay found he preferred the mace in savory preparations: for the Berkshire pork, he first rubbed it with ground mace and seared it, braised it, and then used the braising liquid to make a mace-infused aspic in which he set the spinach-mushroom roulade he made with the tenderloin. He also finished the boiled potatoes with curry, shallots, and blade mace, and used mace in the pickling liquid for the cucumbers....

Back in 2011 the Reader ran a feature titled “Grit & Glitter,” about Chicago’s underground ballroom scene: a gay, black subculture populated by “male-identified men, drag queens, transgender folks, and born women (whom ballroom participants call ‘allies’).” Though its social life revolves around late-night vogueing competitions, the scene’s real foundation is a network of “houses” (as in fashion houses) led by older members of the community, who are expected to mentor their younger peers....

Norm Van Lier is the second-greatest Bulls guard of all time, a player who gave maximum energy on both ends of the court. And while there are plenty of like-minded players from this year’s team—Joakim Noah, Jimmy Butler, Kirk Hinrich—I’m singling out Taj Gibson for his stifling defense, thunderous dunks, surprisingly good midrange jumper, and all-out hustle. (Not too bad for the 26th pick in the 2009 draft.) After Derrick Rose went down with another knee injury, fans and sportswriters expected the team to fall apart....

Yes, I know—you thought it was the mirror (and as a matter of fact, I am talking to you). But for the price of a drink you can do better than that: Club Lago, a great little Italian place at Superior and Orleans, was the location for the best scene in John McNaughton’s Mad Dog and Glory (1993), starring De Niro as a glum, introverted crime-scene investigator, Uma Thurman as the woman he falls in love with, and Bill Murray as the gangster who has her under his thumb....

Yes, Charlie Trotter’s legacy hangs over Chicago. But even if his restaurant were still around today, you might not want to spend that kind of scratch to find out what exactly that legacy is. The comparable places these days (Alinea, Grace) have transcended what Trotter set out to accomplish, and his proteges all seem to want out from under his high-end influence (see: Belly Q, Yusho). So where can you get a meal that explains that moment in dining when Chicago became important?...

Sleep The 36th annual Chicago Jazz Festival kicks off at noon, which means you still have time to read our guide to the free four-day fest. If you’re looking to check out some other performances throughout the weekend, you’ve got plenty of options. “In 1992 this San Jose band helped light a fire under the infant genre of stoner rock with their second LP, Sleep’s Holy Mountain, slowing their blues-based riffs to a muddy crawl and blasting them through a wall of planet-shaking amps—it sounds like Master of Reality creeping through a thick cloud of cannabis smoke,” writes Luca Cimarusti....

It’s hardly one of the city’s big events, but precisely because it’s modest and homey it’s one of my favorite celebrations of the changing of the seasons in Chicago—and if I don’t go, it at least inspires me to do a little bit of it at home. It’s Osteria Via Stato’s annual heirloom tomato dinner, at which Chef David DiGregorio prepares a whole feast around the summer fruit in its final moments of peak freshness....