In the summer of 1986, a young photographer shot hundreds of rolls of film documenting the pulsing rhythm of male bodies in the heat of the California sun. Moments of intimacy—a hand resting on a chest, bodies clasped in an embrace, lips parted for a kiss—reveal the sensuous pleasure of queer culture over a quarter century ago. AL 13 by Doug Ischar Rejecting the role of objective observer, Ischar allowed his photography to be driven by desire....

At first glance, the conspicuous white ceiling hovering over the stage in Liz Gerring’s Horizon is reminiscent of a giant fluorescent light bulb, flattened out over several feet and suspended in the air like a cloud. Not many dances have ceilings, which is why you get the sense that what you’re looking at is the focal point of a muted, abstract design. “A lot of my work, it’s the same way you would view something in an art museum,” Gerring says....

Q I am an 18-year-old pansexual girl. I’m currently in a relationship with a guy. He is a bit younger, though mature for his age. We get along great, our friends like us together, yada yada yada. He wants to do the waiting until marriage thing for sex. I’m cool with that, less pressure in the relationship. He wants to do this for religious reasons, which I mostly agree with. We met in youth group, after all....

Electronic producer and songwriter Tiga helped build Montreal’s techno scene, though he’s not one to confine his own music to that genre’s rigid pulse. On his third full-length, last year’s No Fantasy Required (Counter), Tiga delights in skin-crawling electroclash synths (“Bugatti”), sumptuous disco flair (“Tell Me a Secret”), and hiccupping acid (“Planet E”). He’s chameleonic in his pop sensibilities when he smoothes out his percussion’s hard edges, sets instrumentals at their quietest, and sings in contemplative, hushed tones....

This year you could buy bulk Halloween candy and pumpkin spice lattes before Riot Fest announced its entire lineup. Just seven days before fans would start queuing up outside Douglas Park, organizers finally announced the event’s daily rosters, began selling single-day tickets, and indicated who’d be headlining each night. Over the years Chicago’s many music festivals have established pretty regular schedules for their lineup announcements, such that you can usually tell when this year’s will drop by looking up the date on last year’s....

With Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Bruce Rauner hugging it out like a couple of long-lost frat brothers at an August 31 school-funding-bill ceremony, I suppose we can officially declare their little feud over. The legislation includes a generous tax credit for gazillionaires who donate money to private and parochial schools. A tax handout for wealthy campaign donors? Man, all is well in the Rahm-Rauner universe! I’m surprised those two didn’t break out one of the expensive bottles of wine they used to share back in their good ol’ bromantic days, when they partied together at Rauner’s Montana ranch....

Some people seem destined to be filmmakers, even if they didn’t always envision it. Painters, writers, photographers, and other artists who’ve spent years observing and interpreting life can one day make an intuitive leap and refine and extend their skills by taking up a movie camera. That’s what happened to visual sociologist David Schalliol, 41, who more than a decade ago began working as an architectural still photographer before progressing to moving images....

I once casually mentioned my therapist to a friend who flinched, shocked that I was so open about being in—hushed tone—therapy. Listen, I’ve been through some shit in my life, and I’ll shout from the rooftops that my amazing therapist is the only reason I’m not shouting from the rooftops. If you’re new to or returning to therapy, the rule of thumb I’ve heard is to interview at least three providers before you commit to one, and it’s definitely worth a trip to Womencare to see if one of their folks is a good fit for you....

What’s really mysterious about Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love and Sex is her rendering of the word mystery itself, in the title: singular rather than plural, as if there were only one. As if anybody who’s reached the age of interest (i.e., most living humans) can’t easily think of 10,000 riddles, enigmas, conundrums, and secrets relating to love and sex and the interactions thereof. Sure, we all spend our lives asking a single question when it comes to those subjects—a bewildered “Hunh?...

On February 10 at around 9 PM, Richard Pallardy was walking home to his apartment near Fullerton and Sacramento from a swim at Logan Square’s Kosciuszko Park. Strolling south on Kimball, the 33-year-old freelance writer began crossing Wrightwood in the crosswalk, with a walk signal. As he did so, a northbound driver made a sudden left turn on Wrightwood and struck him. As I noted a year ago, when 34-year-old mechanic Christopher Sanchez was killed in Avondale, 40 percent of Chicago pedestrian fatalities between 2005 and 2014 involved drivers who fled, according to Chicago Department of Transportation data....

California Avenue between North and Chicago Avenues is blossoming into a must-visit corridor of modest, tasteful shops and restaurants that has the potential to reach a saturation point when Brendan Sodikoff does whatever he plans on doing to the California Clipper. Hopefully it won’t drive up the price point at any of the highly affordable furniture shops that’ve popped up—especially not at Humboldt House, my personal favorite. Proprietor Claire Tibbs has excellent taste in midcentury-modern furniture, specifically sofa chairs, tables, and lamps....

Michael Schmidt/Sun-Times Media Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says she’ll challenge Mayor Rahm Emanuel if no one else will. I was driving home down Western Avenue, listening to the NBA draft, when the call came in from my man, Mick Dumke. Still, I haven’t felt so good about a breaking political story in this town since the International Olympic Committee gave Chicago the heave-ho in its bid for the 2016 Olympics....

When future historians view the wreckage Mayor Emanuel has made of public education in Chicago, I’m sure the conversion of Ames Middle School into a military academy will not top the list. I’m not sure what exactly inspired the alderman, and he didn’t return my call to explain. “This is a community school—it’s open to everybody,” says Emma Segura, a member of the Ames local school council. “My children love it....

Something strange happened to the idea of “the 80s” over the last decade. After years of mockery and pastiche, a new crop of artists like Carly Rae Jepsen, M83, and the 1975, along with producers such as Ariel Rechtshaid and Jack Antonoff, have started using glistening synths and gated reverb to signify something completely divorced from excess and cocaine—inside the transcendent, ahistorical sonic bubble of a bygone era of pop, they construct a cloistered space in which to reflect....

Tonight at 7 PM Northwest Chicago Film Society kicks off its first repertory series in more than a year at The Auditorium at Northeastern Illinois University (3701 West Bryn Mawr Avenue). The main attraction this evening is Follow Thru, a lesser-known musical from 1930 that’s screening from a recently restored 35-millimeter print. Likely one of the few musicals ever made about golf (and also one of the raciest—it’s a pre-Code production in the best sense), Follow Thru also has the distinction of being among the first feature films produced in Technicolor....

A Girl at My Door, screening as part of the Chicago International Film Festival There’s only one place for cinephiles to be this weekend—the Music Box of Horrors. Wait, did I say that? I meant the Chicago International Film Festival. We’ve got reviews of 20 features screening this week, and we’ll be adding some more today, so check back later as well. Ben Sachs and I review a half century of CIFF on this cool timeline, which I have been told, but refuse to accept, is spelled time line....

The action films of Hong Kong director Ringo Lam are gritty, cynical, and full of moments of brutality more punishing than most anything to come out of Hollywood. No wonder Quentin Tarantino—whose Reservoir Dogs borrows themes and imagery from Lam’s breakthrough film, City on Fire (1987)—is a fan. Lam isn’t as well known as his fellow Hong Kong New Wave directors John Woo (A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head) and Tsui Hark (Peking Opera Blues, Once Upon a Time in China), but he nonetheless directed a couple of major hits that helped redefine the national action cinema: City and its immediate follow-up Prison on Fire (1987)....

T Bone Burnett is the award-winning overseer of the morose and murky soundtrack of HBO’s True Detective, and for season two he brought on Lera Lynn, a relative unknown who plays the weary singer-guitarist serenading Colin Farrell’s hard-drinking Ray Velcoro from the stage of a dive bar. Lynn also wrote many songs that play throughout the show in a collaboration with Burnett and Roseanne Cash. From her home in Nashville, Lynn spoke with me over the phone about her journey from the suburbs of Atlanta to the studios of Los Angeles....

“I like to describe myself as a creative rather than a photographer,” says Christopher “ThoughtPoet” Brown. “Sometimes I feel like the label is limiting. I write, I act, and I try to do more with my photos than just capture moments.” Though his time at Little Black Pearl put him in the shoes of an artist, in high school Brown was more likely to be found interviewing artists than making art....

Julia Thiel Pisco sour (sort of) Last weekend I had friends over for dinner and decided to make sorbet for dessert, finally using an ice cream maker gifted to me last fall by a friend who was moving away. I read through dozens of recipes—so many possibilities!—for strawberry, lemon, lime, basil, pepper, and a plethora of other sorbets. I was hoping that Stanley’s would still have Meyer lemons in stock since they seemed to be popular for making sorbet, but no such luck....