On the evening of July 19, anyone hoping to take a quiet stroll, jog, or bike ride on the west end of the 606 was out of luck. At California Avenue, young Latinx activists formed a human wall across the elevated path, demonstrating against the real estate feeding frenzy that they say is displacing lower-income and working-class residents along the popular greenway. The demonstration, organized by the LSNA and LUCHA, began with a rally in front of Humboldt Park United Methodist Church, located a few blocks north of the 606....

Even the name George Bernard Shaw sounds ho-hum to most people. It’s got the intrinsic fustiness of barrel staves and buggy whips behind it in a way that that of his fellow Dubliner, Oscar Wilde, born two years earlier than Shaw, does not. Still, it’s always been my experience that the indefatigable genius behind Heartbreak House and Saint Joan holds up remarkably well. He does better than hold up in this production....

Chris Lemmon does a great job of embodying his father, the late actor Jack Lemmon. He’s not only got the stuttery speech, fluttery hand gestures, and manic little laugh down pat but makes engaging use of them as Jack tells the story of his life—wealthy Bostonian birth to Hollywood stardom as a result of films like Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Chris’s Jack talks about movie shoots and legends....

JD McPherson originally busted out on the roots-rock scene in 2010 with his single “North Side Gal.” The lead track of his debut album, Signs & Signifiers, which was produced in Chicago by bassist-guitarist Jimmy Sutton, the single features strutting rhythms and slangy lyrics that made it a mild radio staple and a must-have for any DJ working a rockabilly night or retro festival. But while the rest of that album, plus its 2015 follow-up, Let the Good Times Roll, showed McPherson to be a great songwriter capable of writing up-tempo songs in a 1950s R&B style (almost like a less intense Nick Curran), his influence soon spread far beyond rockabilly circles....

Walk out of the withered city and into the Lincoln Park Conservatory, where the lush greenery first hits your sore, swabbed nose and then feeds your sun-starved eyes. Right at the door is a sausage tree, where curious fruits hang pendulous, comic, and perplexing. Wend your way through ferns and moss, orchids, grass, weeds wide enough to wrap a fairy in—all shadowed in the mystery of night—and arrive at a glass house decked with twinkling lights....

In next week’s paper I have a preview for the super Ukrainian group Dakhabrakha, who made their local debut at last year’s World Music Festival: Chicago, and return to the city for some performances at Mayne Stage on Sunday. I’d like to think Dakhabrakha and members of the Russian group Volga don’t share any of the current political and racial animosity roiling the border regions of those two nations (and their respective administrations), because they both share an appreciation for their own folklore—traditions that don’t ultimately sound too far apart....

The Romanian New Wave—encompassing such minimalist, socially rigorous dramas as The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005); 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007); and Police, Adjective (2009)—has put Romanian cinema on the map. But as this three-day interdisciplinary festival suggests, that’s not all the country has to offer cinephiles. Presented by Facets Cinematheque and the nonprofit Romanian Cultural Exchange, the marathon includes four recent Romanian features, as well as a cocktail party, various talks, two theater performances in Romanian, and a program of short videos by local artists....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, July 24, 2017. Chris Kennedy discusses Kennedy family history with gun violence Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Kennedy opened up about his family’s history with gun violence while introducing policy proposals Saturday. Kennedy is the son of former U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who were both tragically assassinated by gunmen in the 1960s. One of the Kennedy’s proposals is to add 2,000 new Chicago police officers, and he says the increased safety is worth a tax increase....

There’s still time to catch “The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold: Art, Identity & Politics” at Columbia College’s Museum of Contemporary Photography. But not a lot of time: the show of seldom-seen work by this black gay artist and educator whose collages captured the social upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s closes December 21. Unfinished Collage, in the first of the two galleries the exhibit occupies, is unmissable, in part because it’s a suspended triptych....

Marisol Opened 9/8 Wouldn’t it be a rich reward to cook at the Museum of Contemporary Art? That’s what’s happening to chef Jason Hammel, who’s been rewarding his guests at Logan Square pioneer Lula Cafe since 1999. The new space will be designed by Chris Ofili, an artist best known for painting with elephant poo; whatever he does to it, Marisol will be an intellectually exercising place to eat. Hammel’s food will “incorporate vibrant vegetables and handmade pastas, alongside meticulously sourced meat and seafood,” according to an anonymous source on the restaurant’s landing page....

The Bow Moebius, the newest film from controversial South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, is currently screening at Facets Cinematheque, and J.R. Jones has a capsule review in this week’s paper. In his review, Jones writes “the content is audacious, to be sure, but so is the form; the entire story transpires without a single word of dialogue, and this strategy isolates and heightens the ugly physical urges at work. This is not for the faint of heart, but to Kim’s credit, it’s not for the faint of mind either....

Taking into account their overwrought, long-winded band name and knack for writing sweeping, emotional posthardcore epics, . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead were built to rule the moody, dyed-black-hair scene of the early aughts. And in their early Interscope phase, they did. This is mostly because of the revered Source Tags & Codes, the Austin band’s major-label debut, still acknowledged as its masterpiece—though they righted the ship with 2012’s Lost Songs, there were definitely a couple clunkers released between 2005 and 2011....

Certain restaurants and restaurant groups are known kitchen incubators. Trotter’s. Alinea and company. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. They’ve all nurtured legions of cooks and then let them spread out, like seeds cast into the wind, and grow into chefs. Still, the predominance of most of these starters underscores the truth in Bar Marta’s name: this is good drinking food, truly communal, with the exception of a handful of salads. It begins with a dish of olives and spicy-sour dill pickles, starkly different from the treacly preserved vegetable candy most restaurants traffic in these days....

Township will be remembered as a punk hub, but arguably the most important show the intimate Logan Square venue and restaurant hosted before it mysteriously shuttered last year was an all-ages rap blowout that took place in November 2015. The event was originally slated for the Abbey Pub, but when a mid-November fire forced the venue to close up and cancel all of its shows, rapper Saba moved the event to the much smaller club....

Late last week, Chicago ghetto-house wizard DJ Funk announced he’ll release a career-spanning collection called Gold: 20th Anniversary Greatest Hits Collection. The three-CD set will come out on a label calling itself Dance Mania Records—though it’s not the Dance Mania Records that helped birth ghetto house in the late 80s, folded in the early aughts, and was revived last year by original owner Ray Barney and Dance Mania producer Victor Parris Mitchell....

Local reissue masterminds Numero Group have always specialized in the obscure, specific, and expansive, but their latest project, Cities of Darkscorch, takes the cake. Back in March, Numero released Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles, a 16-track double-LP collection of whimsical, Tolkien-inspired, private-press hard-rock and proto-metal bands that arrived in the early-70s wake of Zeppelin and Sabbath. The combo of hazy, down-tuned riffage and budget studio fidelity provides the perfect soundtrack for either smoking a spliff under a yellowing light in your parents’ basement or for throwing around the 20-sided die (depending on which end of the Freaks & Geeks spectrum you fall on)....

After exploring her experimental side with the strong 2015 album Apocalypse, Girl, Norwegian singer Jenny Hval made another artistic turn with last year’s Blood Bitch (Sacred Bones), her prettiest and most accessible effort to date. But with Hval nothing is quite as it seems—her philosophical probing routinely undercuts song conventions. In interviews she’s spoken of Blood Bitch‘s twin motifs, menstrual blood and vampirism, but on the album itself she goes much deeper: in “Female Vampire,” for example, she protests her subjugation to male scrutiny (“I must justify my presence by losing it / Must not keep a steady gaze”), and as the album unfolds she embraces menstruation as a form of power....

On her major-label debut, CTRL (RCA), New Jersey singer SZA lays bare the complexities, insecurities, and contradictions that accompany sex and romance in the modern world—at least for folks in their 20s. The album title refers to a keyboard command, but the word it truncates is entirely ironic here: the tales SZA spins, in songs that straddle soul and contemporary pop, seem to describe an emotional life that’s utterly out of control....

Osteria Langhe, the Piemontese restaurant in Logan Square where David McCabe tends bar, has been serving snails in pastry shells with beurre blanc since it opened in 2014. Until recently, though, McCabe had little to do with the gastropods, leaving them to the restaurant’s chefs. But when Christopher Marty of Best Intentions challenged him to create a cocktail with escargot (or lumache, as they’re called in Italian), McCabe had some planning to do....

These days there seems to be a bottomless well of young guitarists exploring the paths blazed by American Primitive master John Fahey and his adherents, who included Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, and Peter Walker. Recent reissues of old private-press recordings suggest there were even more folks following Fahey’s lead in the 60s and 70s than listeners might’ve known, but I still think it’s safe to say we’re in the midst of a second golden era of fingerstyle guitar....