Sorting through some old papers of mine, I came across a column I’d written for the Reader in March of 1994—close to a quarter century ago. I like to revisit old columns; they remind me of matters that seemed important at the time though I’ve long since forgotten them. And they send a poignant message to the present. The message is, You’re no big deal. We thought we were special too....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, November 28, 2017. Cook County Board president Preckwinkle vows to play hardball against challengers Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle filed election paperwork with the Illinois State Board of Elections Monday and vowed to play hardball against challengers, who could include former board president Todd Stroger and former alderman Bob Fioretti, according to the Tribune. “I have a strong record and I’m going to run on it,” Preckwinkle said before filing petitions....
The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. This year marks the 50th anniversary of many landmark cultural events (the original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Broadway debut of Hair, the release of the Beatles’ White Album, etc.)—including the premiere of Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking gay-themed drama The Boys in the Band, which opened on April 15, 1968, at the off-Broadway venue Theatre Four, produced by the visionary Richard Barr, whose other producing credits included Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and The American Dream and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape and Happy Days....
In practice, slow fashion is, well, just plain slow. “I’m making it here with my own two hands,” Quinton says. “It’s gonna take a while.”
Revolution Brewing Company Runner-Up: Half Acre Beer Company
Koval Distillery Chicago Distilling Company Finalist: Rhine Hall Distillery
Blue Jay Way 2489 N. Milwaukee 773-329-0901 Runner-Up: Uncle Art
In Willy Russell‘s 1980 play Educating Rita, the title character (a working-class hairdresser taking Open University literature courses in London) responds to the question “Suggest how you might resolve the staging difficulties inherent in a production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt” with “Do it on the radio.” It’s hard to say with certainty what kind of digital theatrical work will survive post-pandemic, though nearly every practitioner and producer I’ve spoken to in recent months promises that digital content will always be part of their programming going forward....
Nominated for an Oscar this year, Laura Checkoway’s short documentary Edith+Eddie tells the story of two nonagenarians in Alexandria, Virginia—Edith Hill, a black woman, and Eddie Harrison, a white man—who married in June 2014 after ten years of companionship. The happy couple resided in Edith’s home of 44 years with her daughter Rebecca Wright but, as the film records, had to be forcibly separated after a court-appointed attorney ruled that Edith should be moved to Florida to live with her other daughter....
Lao Sze Chuan various locationschicagolaoszechuan.com Runner-Up: Duck Duck Goat
Joffrey Ballet Matter Dance Company Finalists: Crescent Moon Nerdlesque, Giordano Dance Chicago, Crescent Moon Burlesque
I regularly search Bandcamp for Chicago releases, and this past August I found the album Bless the Mad. At that point it was still a month from release, with only a few tracks streaming, and the information on the Bandcamp page didn’t enlighten me much—just the identities of the core members of the group behind the music, also called Bless the Mad, plus a little backstory and a detailed breakdown of the guest players on each track....
This year brought a resurgence of putting Black pride onstage and a national recognition of Juneteenth—and it was also the first in many years that the Bronzeville Children’s Museum did not have its annual celebration. Today, four months after Illinois museums closed their doors for safety, there’s no clear end in sight for the pandemic still upending daily life in the U.S. Some museums have reopened, but many that have interactive exhibits and are classified as “high touch”—like children’s museums—have not....
On July 5, Alton Sterling was selling CDs in front of the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when he was tackled to the ground and fatally shot by police. A chorus of prominent voices have eulogized the 37-year-old father of five, who many believe died because he was black—among them Chicago rapper and Save Money cofounder Vic Mensa. Within days of the killing, Mensa posted an Instagram photo of Sterling, his face lit up by an open-mouthed smile....
According to Billboard magazine, singer-songwriter Kevin Junior—who spent his most prolific and fruitful years in Chicago—has died at age 46. The story says “the cause of death is not clear,” but as Gossip Wolf reported in 2011, he’d suffered from the life-threatening heart disease endocarditis, which required open-heart surgery. He moved back to his native Akron, Ohio, a couple years ago, putting together a new version of his band Chamber Strings....
Chicago hardcore five-piece Porcupine use society’s fetid underbelly like a renewable energy source—they must know they’ll never run out of cruelty to drive their outrage. Their new album, The Sibyl (New Morality Zine), opens with “Pederasty,” sung from the point of view of an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse who’s still haunted by trauma; its nonstop barrage of vicious drumming and guttural riffs sharpens the plainspoken anger and grief in the desperate lyrics....
Garfield Park is a neighborhood filled with elevated train tracks, ornate residential facades, vacant lots, broken windows, and storefront churches, all of which sit adjacent to 170 acres of parkland. To some people, this underserved section of the city speaks to decades of civic and economic disinvestment. A more opportunistic and less altruistic observer might see neglected real estate assets that could bring new wealth to the area, albeit at the expense of its current residents....
Quick question . . . Which vice is more destructive: gambling or reefer? I’ve been posing this question for weeks, ever since our state legislators expanded one and legalized the other. So congratulations one and all. Here’s a sampling . . . But why are we so cautious about the consequences of one vice and so cavalier about the other? But gambling? Well, there’s never really been a war on that....
For years now, one of the great mysteries in covering the film beat has been why so many viewers feel that an opening title “based on a true story” (or “inspired by real events”) somehow validates a movie, makes it worth the increasingly expensive price of admission, and/or distinguishes it from mere “fiction” (even if the work in question is an openly imaginary take on actual events or personages). Maybe a sizable segment of our population trusts creative vision only when it serves pragmatic goals, preferring “just the facts” (however “facts” are defined) to anything that even suggests art, as if art were the same thing as artifice, or, God forbid, requires a little heavy lifting....
Legacy! Legacy! by Jamila Woods For Now by Girl K Finalists: Dragonfly by Ajani Jones, Douse by Lever
