Posts

Uptown Recording Electrical Audio Finalists: Soundscape Studios, Jamdek

Tank Noodle Runner-Up: Nhu Lan

Logan Square’s Illinois Centennial Monument, the eagle-topped column ringed by a hectic multilane traffic circle, is an icon of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The pillar’s surrounding green space, Logan Square proper, is a popular site for relaxing on benches, sunbathing, and skateboarding. But in a community whose Latino population fell by about 36 percent between 2000 and 2014, according to the U.S. Census, while the number of whites grew by roughly 48 percent, the meaning of the monument depends on who you ask....

Every May, independent chocolatiers, mom-and-pop confectioners, aspiring millennial sweetmakers, grizzled jerky manufacturers, plucky fudge entrepreneurs, industrialized candy companies, and health-conscious snack producers fill two massive halls in McCormick Place for the annual Sweets & Snacks Expo. If you daydream about candy, chips, and small edibles best consumed between meals, this three-day event can be heaven. It’s an opportunity for those in the industry (and a few that report on it) to learn about what trends will dominate the snack world for the next year and who has come up with an ingenious new twist on, say, pretzels....

COVID-19 has already provided the rationale for some previously unimaginable social changes, but here’s a new one: union busting. In a statement released by the 140-member union, FAC chair Angelo Bonadonna says the faculty are facing “disenfranchisement” and “the complete degradation of our mission and values.” That was 2013, but the legal battle that Duquesne was waging at the time to keep its miserably paid adjuncts from unionizing is still making its way through the federal courts....

ARTIST: Scott WilliamsSHOW: Soul Summit DJs with Chairman Mao and Nydia Ines at Double Door on Sat 4/18MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

From Brianna Wellen’s introduction, “Losses and gains: Best of Chicago 2020”: Some business to get out of the way: the reader poll results were determined by you, the readers! If you’re angry about the results, you only have yourselves to blame! Let this be a reminder to keep a close eye on when voting begins next year so you can campaign for your favorites to get the top spot. Or better yet, share your own losses and gains on social media and tag us @Chicago_Reader with the hashtags #bestofchi and #BoC2020....

Foxie la Fleur Carisa Barreca Finalists: Joshua Fletcher, Lee Na-Moo, Jean Wildest, Breon Arzell

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind 5153 N. Ashland 773-878-4557 neofuturists.org Runner-Up: Blue Man Group

Rehab Institute of Chicago Haymarket Center Finalists: Andersonville Cryotherapy, Eating Recovery Center of Illinois, Gateway Foundation, Revive Med Spa, Sangamon House, L&A Healing Studio

In a January interview with GQ, ASAP Ferg talked about hip-hop’s emergence as pop’s lingua franca and the genre’s musical plateau. “All you hear on radio right now is trap music,” he said. “It’s starting to sound like one big reggaeton song to me. All the songs sound the same. We’re not pushing the culture forward with new sonics.” The collective Ferg belongs to, ASAP Mob, is as guilty of contributing to the homogeneity as any other mainstream rap act—their worst material is instantly forgotten amid the Soundcloud playlists swelling with new rap tracks....

“I don’t want to be myself / Around anybody else,” Matthew Lee Cothran mutters mournfully as he strums his guitar. Behind him and keyboardist Delaney Mills, his bandmate in North Carolina duo Elvis Depressedly, a bank of washing machines looks on bleakly. They’re playing their lo-fi, depressive indie pop in the low-budget, depressive setting of a Laundromat, and the combination works. Far Out videos grew more elaborate over the course of 2017, but the basic concept remains the same: record a band in an unexpected spot that nonetheless complements its music perfectly....

Courtesy of Vocalo The logo for Vocalo and Young Chicago Authors’ Block Party On Saturday the Portage Theater hosts a jam-packed show called “Midwest Legends,” which features a Chicago hip-hop trifecta—Crucial Conflict, Twista, and Do or Die—and Cleveland rap kingpins Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. The show is sold out, but if you didn’t snap up a ticket you might be able to take comfort in the fact that you could be avoiding a scheduling snafu....

For those who frequent the spaces where Chicago’s hip-hop, indie-pop, and dance scenes converge, the title of Victor Internet’s latest release, last month’s EP Victor’s Debut, will seem like a misnomer. Known to his family as Victor Cervantes, he launched his grassroots music career a little more than two years ago, uploading romantic bedroom-pop songs to Soundcloud. In early 2017, when he was just 17, he sold out of the first run of a self-released CD-only EP called Glitter98....

The mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando June 12 sent shockwaves of horror and grief through gay communities across the country. The suffering has been particularly acute for queer Latinx communities; the shooting took place on Pulse’s Latin night, and nearly half the people killed were of Puerto Rican descent. It was early Sunday morning. I was still in bed. My partner, Bryan, shook me, woke me up, and told me that there had been a shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando....

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Third Coast Percussion Finalists: Flesh Vortex, D-Composed

Symphony Center Civic Opera House (Lyric Opera) Finalist: Constellation

Store Brand Soda storebrandsoda.com Runners-Up (tie): Fake Shore Drive Local Loop Chicago

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, October 5, 2017. Emanuel: Services like Lyft and Uber cost taxpayers $40 million in lost revenue Ride-sharing services including Uber and Lyft have cost Chicago taxpayers more than $40 million in lost revenue, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “This shortfall includes tax, license and permit revenue losses from other public vehicles, decreased payment in parking garage tax, motor vehicle lessor tax and lease tax, reduced ridership on the CTA and reductions in the MPEA airport departure surcharge,” Office of Budget and Management spokeswoman Molly Poppe said in a statement....