In honor of his 35th year as an elected official, Cook County clerk David Orr did what he does best: he irritated the hell out of a powerful mayor. To understand the context of Orr’s latest TIF proposal, you have to go back to 1979, when the clerk began his political career. Apparently, Hartigan wanted to prove that the machine had eggheads too. Orr won by 700 votes. Take a bow, Rogers Park....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, February 17, 2017. Former Obama adviser turned Uber executive fined for illegally lobbying Rahm Former Obama campaign manager turned Uber senior executive David Plouffe was fined $90,000 by the Chicago Board of Ethics for “illegally lobbying Mayor Rahm Emanuel” on Uber’s behalf, according to the Tribune. The ethics board unanimously voted that Plouffe “violated city ethics rules by failing to register as a lobbyist after contacting Emanuel to help the company on regulations for picking up travelers at Chicago’s two airports,” the newspaper reported....
Girls Rock! Chicago and LivingRoom Gallery host a benefit poster show and sale on Saturday, November 7, celebrating women and transgender musicians. Local artists including Jessica Caponigro, Dan Grzeca, Alana Bailey, Ethan D’Ercole, Erin Page, and Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff have printed posters of greats such as Patti Smith, Sade, Kathleen Hanna, and Beyonce. The organizers have shared several online (bit.ly/gr_lrg), and the images of Nina Simone and FKA Twigs are phenomenal! A portion of proceeds from print sales benefits GR!...
It’s been just a year since Gossip Wolf mentioned that Bruce Finkelman (the Empty Bottle) and Craig Golden (SPACE) planned to renovate Pilsen’s Thalia Hall, and already they’ve opened the kitchen at a new place: Hyde Park restaurant and music venue the Promontory at 5311 S. Lake Park Avenue West. The upstairs venue debuts Sat 8/16 with a set from Tom Tom Washington’s South Side Big Band. Washington has produced and arranged for the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire, Tyrone Davis, and Gene Chandler, and his smooth 22-piece orchestra mixes analog-era jazz and R&B....
They are the Polaroid snapshots of members of Chicago’s film and video community, captured at work and in repose, during the last decades of the 20th century. Some of the subjects are well-known—there’s Kartemquin founder Gordon Quinn in one photo with noted video editor Eve Saxon, smiling at some long-ago party. And there’s noted anchorman and documentarian Bill Kurtis in another, with companion Donna LaPietra, also mugging in a festive atmosphere....
The Chef: Tony Mantuano (Spiaggia, Terzo Piano, Bar Toma, the new River Roast)The Challenger:John Coletta (Quartino)The Ingredient: Salt cod Instead of trying yet again to re-create Grandma Mantuano’s recipe, the chef made a dish that involved poaching the salt cod in olive oil. First, though, he had to soak it: the preserved cod is so dry and salty that it’s “completely inedible,” he says, and requires a day or two of soaking (and changing the water frequently) before it can be cooked....
If you haven’t yet dropped in on the Chicago History Museum’s “Making Mainbocher: The First American Couturier,” you’ve got ten days (the last day to catch it is August 20) to see this exhibit about the John Marshall High School baseball-team water boy who grew up to be one of the world’s top fashion designers—back when that really meant something. Mainbocher had beaten out Schiaparelli and Chanel to win the assignment; as noted the last time CHM had a bunch of Mainbocher on exhibit, nobody was better at turning a great lay into a great lady (not that they were ever mutually exclusive)....
Kevin Tanaka/For Sun-Times Media Just when you thought Mayor Rahm had done all the damage he could do to our schools, CPS starts pulling kids out of Drummond’s classrooms to rat on their teachers. When I got word yesterday that central office inspectors were hauling in kids from the classroom to interrogate them about their teachers, I said—no way! Then it turned out—it’s true! Central office inspectors really were interrogating kids without parent notification at Drummond elementary school about their teachers and the ISAT....
Michael Gebert Meatballs, sausage, and neck-bone gravy About the time three of us were munching on the house-made braunschweiger (pork liver) at Tete Charcuterie, we were talking about Formento’s, the upcoming Italian-American throwback/tribute place coming in December from the team behind the Bristol, which also partners (with the Boka Group) in Balena. For some guys who’ve been fairly cutting-edge, throwback Italian-American seems a funny move, but sitting on Randolph Street, the logic of it gets pretty clear....
During the last couple of years I’ve been increasingly impressed by the playing and writing of reedist Anna Webber, a British Columbia native based in Brooklyn. She has a knack for idea-rich, multipartite compositions that sound great in multiple contexts, whether in her nimble trio with pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer John Hollenbeck or a larger European group where her gift for contrapuntal arrangements shines; she’s also an impressive soloist. But none of that earlier stuff prepared me for what she’s doing in a newer trio called the Hero of Warchester with fellow reedist Nathaniel Morgan and synthesizer player Liz Kosack....
For Chicago sports fans who pay just a visit or two to Wrigley each season—usually thanks to the good fortune of free tickets—or swivel a bar stool away from a plate of nachos only after they hear a collective “Hurrah!” hurled at a wall of TVs, the two weeks from October 18 through October 31 are a welcome distraction from a slow descent into cold and darkness. They brim with camaraderie between fellow Chicagoans....
Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are three singer-songwriters who have each made an impact in the music world in just the past couple of years, particularly with their recent solo releases Turn Out the Lights, Stranger in the Alps, and Historian, respectively. While Baker’s instrumentals—usually sparse figures on a chordal instrument—are mellow and minimal, her voice is a powerful force that often transforms into a melodic yell. Bridgers’s music is similar in that it is also an ethereal assortment of mollified, simple layers, but her lyrics are typically more narrative than Baker’s....
QMy wife and I went through a long-distance period when we were still dating and she went away to school. I used porn as a masturbatory aid during that time. I did not tell her this, as she believes that porn use is equivalent to cheating. Well, fast-forward a couple years (and a marriage), and I let it slip that I had watched some porn during the times we were apart....
500 N. Lake Shore Dr. Chicago native Milton Lee Olive III died in Vietnam in 1965 when he threw himself on a hand grenade to protect four of his compatriots. He was 18 years old, and after being flown home and buried in Mississippi, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. The park that bears Olive’s name provides immense respite from my personal Chicago hell: Navy Pier. I’ve worked at the tourist trap every weekday for nearly five years, and when disappointed visitors ask me, “Is there, like, something we’re missing?...
Last year AACM chairman Ernest Dawkins, Funkadesi founder Rahul Sharma, and the Old Town School of Folk Music won a $50,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation to create an epic composition that journeys through 100 years in the musical history of Englewood. The piece was disseminated online to community groups that rehearsed it separately, and on Saturday, September 15, they’ll come together at the Lindblom Academy auditorium (6130 S. Walcott) for the premiere of Quantum Englewood, presented by the Old Town School’s Music Moves Chicago program and Dawkins’s Live the Spirit Residency....
With activists Tio Hardiman and other activists preparing to march on Lake Shore Drive toward Wrigley Field next Thursday, demanding more equity in city spending, I figure it’s as good a time as ever to make sure west- and south-siders are wise to a little scam called the tax increment financing program. Boiled down to the basics, it’s in effect a surcharge slapped on your property tax bills that generates well over $500 million a year....
Milwaukee native Juiceboxxx has spent the better part of his life rummaging through American music, constructing and hard-wiring a DIY career using sources of inspiration other artists would consider refuse: crusty Japanese punk comps, battered 80s-house 12-inches, high-powered rap-rock singles, barbaric noise-band discographies, jittery futuristic rap loosies stripped from Soundcloud, and Springsteen B sides (OK, that last one isn’t too far-fetched). Juiceboxxx, or JB if you will, has put rap first and foremost for more than a decade, weathering the kinds of ups and downs that not even folks who’ve become permanent fixtures in our nation’s basement circuit have experienced....
While on a recent overseas trip, President Donald Trump was pictured gripping a glowing orb in a shadowy room with Middle Eastern heads of state—for some the photo suggested the Legion of Doom summoning some dark force in a plot to destroy the world. The image spread quickly on social media in part because it served as a perfect visual metaphor for those who consider themselves part of the resistance to Trump: He’s not just a billionaire reality-TV host with bad ideas, he’s a supervillain whom they must defeat to save democracy....
Odd’s Bodkins’ production of the Shakespeare classic deletes the prologue and kicks off with a fight on the tight Cornservatory stage. Rapiers fly, punches are thrown, tongues are bitten. The ensuing mania is one of the few moments precisely choreographed and heavily controlled; the rest of the show leans on undefined acting choices, casual blocking, and a less-than-enthralling flat recitation of dialogue—problems that arise in the middling space between a traditional production or a fully unscripted show like the Improvised Shakespeare Company’s....
Q: I’m a gay medical student with a medical fetish, and I can’t even open up to my therapist about this. I think the fetish started when I was young; I was once in the hospital and given a suppository for a fever. Then one time I was given a Fleet enema. I don’t think the “butt stuff” turned me gay, but my fetish may stem from the aspect of being controlled....
