Michael Gebert Norridge United Church of Christ Where did the Hungarians go? They were part of the Eastern European (or central European, as it was called before the Cold War) population of Chicago in the early 20th century, etymologically half of the catch-all phrase “Bohunk” for laborers from that part of the world, and at least one Hungarian ranks among the most consequential Chicagoans of all time, even if he was only here for a couple of years before moving west with the rest of the Manhattan Project....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, February 9, 2017. Chris Kennedy announces he’s running for governor in 2018 Chris Kennedy, a member of the Kennedy political dynasty, has announced that he will run in the Democratic primary for governor in 2018. Kennedy, the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy, called Governor Bruce Rauner “heartless” in an interview with the Sun-Times....

Julia Thiel Jasper’s Jamaican Planter’s Punch with lemon ice cubes Since receiving a copy of Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails as a gift a few years ago, I’ve leafed through it several times, always getting drawn into Ted Haigh’s detailed explanations of the old-fashioned cocktails. They feature exotic, often long-forgotten ingredients like Kola Tonic, crème de violette, the dark purple Parfait Amour, and the Scandinavian liqueur Swedish Punsch—and that’s exactly what’s kept me from ever attempting to actually make any of the recipes....

The band name of aggressive and exciting Chicago outfit No Men refers to the opposite of “yes men” rather than throwing down a “misandrist” gauntlet—though their abundantly queer and confrontational approach suggests they’re totally fine with weeding out the MRA-type “Red Pillers” and wearers of red hats. After relocating here from Austin in 2014, singer-percussionist Pursley and guitarist DB joined forces with drummer Eric Hofmeister and got down to the business of building a fierce sound through constant gigging....

Sandra Cisneros has spent her whole life searching for a place to call home, documenting her journey in essays, poems, and novels, the most famous of which is The House on Mango Street, her semifictionalized account of growing up in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. In her new memoir out October 6, A House of My Own (Knopf), the 60-year-old author recounts more than 30 years’ worth of personal stories about the places she’s lived and the writing they inspired....

Saxophonist Miguel Zenon opens his new quartet album Típico (Miel Music) with the hyperactive original “Academia,” which was inspired by his experiences teaching jazz at the New England Conservatory. He built the tune from exercises he developed for students, and between the tune’s breakneck pace and its harmonic jujitsu he seems keen on challenging not only his pupils but also his bandmates—pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig, and drummer Henry Cole—who chew up the changes and tempo shifts like a berserk Pac-Man....

Swiss-Congolese producer Soraya Lutangu, who records and performs as Bonaventure, makes music that sounds like a late-night Internet-surfing session fueled by sugar and adrenaline. “I really don’t have any agenda or strategy when it comes to composing music. I definitely get inspired by my surrounding, not even in the glamorous sense of the term—literally the everyday life,” she told the site Pan African Music in November. “Most of the time, I find another idea while I am trying to remember the initial idea so it is really like constantly surprising myself....

Donald Trump’s failure to repeal and replace Obamacare last week represented the first major defeat for his fledgling administration. But obviously there are still many future battles to be fought. First, let’s survey the potential damage. Trump’s budget calls for eliminating the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investments Program, which includes Core Capacity grants to accommodate more ridership on “legacy” transit systems and the so-called New Starts funding for newer transit lines....

Paul Slattery/Wikimedia Commons Last night and tonight are the first two nights of Passover, and while I’d love to post a cover of “Dayenu” or something like that, my mind always zeroes in on Joy Division‘s “Passover” whenever I think of this holiday. Despite its title, “Passover” doesn’t really sound like the Jewish holiday of the same name—at least it doesn’t sound like a dozen people loudly singing off-key and in broken Hebrew, or like my mom complaining that no one is helping her serve food or clear the table fast enough....

A visit to the Devon Avenue business strip is a kaleidoscopic experience. There’s a swirl of flashy storefronts, iridescent saris, booming bhangra music, and aromas of cumin and kebabs in the South Asian part of the district, concentrated between Leavitt and California. Farther west you see a mix of Balkan, Jewish, and eastern European establishments, including the Croatian Cultural Center, a kosher fish market, and the city’s only Georgian bakery. It’s a first-class feast for the senses....

Refer to Chicago as “Chi-town” and you sound like a rube. (And for the record, something similar’s true in Atlanta—call it Hotlanta, get backhanded.) But slap a pound sign in front of a pun, suddenly the entirety of the Internet is on board. #Chiraq was big this year, but it was eclipsed by #Chiberia, the hottest hashtag about the freezing hellscape that was our city this past winter—the coldest four-month stretch since record keeping began in 1872, according to the National Weather Service....

Blood at the Root Dominique Morrisseau’s play inspired by the Jena Six case, in which six black teenagers were initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate after nooses were hung from a tree on campus in their small, mostly white Louisiana town, is given a furious and urgent staging by the Yard and Jackalope Theatre Company. From the moment the audience enters through a metal detector to take their seats before the classroom/football field/school hallway set, the tension is palpable, and it doesn’t let up until the show’s end....

Yesterday React Presents announced the lineup for Mamby on the Beach, its annual collision of electronic music, hip-hop, and indie pop; this year it takes over Oakwood Beach on June 24 and 25. The headliners don’t exactly scream “excitement” to me, with the exception of Flying Lotus—his comrades at the top of the bill include indie-pop has-beens MGMT and, um, Walk the Moon, the Cincinnati pop-rock group behind the irritating 2014 single “Shut Up and Dance....

Would the rust belt benefit from a journal of its own—a medium chronicling its resurrection or continued decay? I emailed Trubek some questions. “At the same time, it is indeed the differences that define each place as well—and also what we do at Belt. What is unique and worth recording, remembering, and reflecting upon in each city? In each neighborhood? Here again Chicago may gain back its asterisk, because one purpose of Belt is to write about (surprisingly) under-written about places....

Credit: Paul John Higgins Mark Swartz, director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, which provides free legal aid to tenants facing eviction, has kept his own ledger of eviction filing numbers since 2000, and has also noted a decline in Chicago filings in recent years. But he cautions against framing the drop as an improvement. Swartz thinks there may be “fewer low-income residents left in Chicago to evict,” and that the falling eviction filings confirm what he says he sees in court every day: “Low-income, cost-burdened renters are being priced out of the region....

Rick Kogan’s tribute to Mike Royko in the Sunday Tribune delivered the sad news that “there is no immortality for newspaper writers” and dusted off Ben Hecht’s immortal verse to that effect: We know each other’s daydreams And the hopes that come to grief For we write each other’s obits And they’re Godalmighty brief. And second, let’s acknowledge that Hecht’s evocative jingle isn’t true. We journalists do a wonderful job of burying our own....

Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood in Love With the Proper Stranger Over the past few months, I’ve been delving into the work of director Robert Mulligan, a veteran of early TV who went on to a respectable—though now largely neglected—career in feature films (I wrote about some of my discoveries here). Recently I watched his Love With the Proper Stranger in the same week I caught up with Inside Llewyn Davis, and I was surprised by how much the films had in common....

The Book of Henry, a peculiar drama directed by Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jurassic World) from a script by novelist Gregg Hurwitz, opened last weekend to generally negative reviews, with some critics proclaiming it a disaster. I don’t disagree that the film is confused and needlessly sentimental, yet I consider it a provocative failure—more interesting to think about than a predictable success like Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake (which is currently playing at the Music Box)....

JoJo Whilden/Netflix Laura Prepon and Taylor Schilling in Orange Is the New Black Dropping an entire season of an hour-long dramedy onto Netflix puts viewers in an interesting predicament. Fail to watch it all at once and you run the risk of spoilers (which were on Twitter almost instantly). But a binge session can monopolize an otherwise lovely weekend, not to mention that you run the risk of not being able to process the subtleties of each episode when you turn viewing into a cram session....

Jean Lachat/Sun-Times These two to continue to laugh last when it comes to pension reform. To read the self-congratulatory remarks uttered by many of our most prominent elected officials, you’d think they really did something courageous yesterday, when the General Assembly passed Mayor Emanuel’s pension bill. Our elected officials promised to make regular payments into the pension funds for cops, firefighters, teachers, etc. As for the leaders who actually made the mistakes—how are they being held accountable?...