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. Old newspapers are really fun. No writer in Reader history understood this better than Cliff Doerksen. Trained as a cultural historian, Doerksen was highly skilled in combing through archives in search of really good stuff. In his ongoing blog series Bad News From the Past, Doerksen would conduct a search for a random term....
As we inch closer, closer, closer to the November 3 existential, world-in-balance presidential showdown, I realize that some of the best minds of my generation are howling mad. Sorry, more Allen Ginsberg. As for Trump, Monroe says he’ll lose so bad, he may even lose Alabama. They have many disadvantages when it comes to dealing with an adversary like Trump. When the crowd screams “hell yeah,” Austin pulls a trigger....
Chicago-based, Taiwan-born bedroom-pop auteur Layton Wu blurs boogie, yacht rock, and sun-kissed 60s pop into a calming sound that helps dial back my anxiety when every scrap of news cranks it to “high.” He released the luxuriant Summertime Mixtape (Sunset Music) four days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and since I first listened to it, I’ve absolutely needed to keep listening to it. Wu sings in a soft-edged but outgoing coo that’s both sultry and endearing, accompanied by tight funk bass, nimble percussion, and soothing keys that float in the background or gleam like sunlight off a window....
If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’m a fan of avant-garde Ugandan labels Nyege Nyege Tapes and Hakuna Kalala. And now and then I’ve written in the Reader about current African artists, among them Nihiloxica, Kirani Ayat, and Muthoni Drummer Queen. But I’ve long listened to older sounds from the continent—soukous, juju, mbalax, highlife, mbaqanga, apala, benga, fuji—and I don’t often have a timely reason to post about them in Chicago....
Anna Hovet annahovet.com Runner-Up: Bridget McDermott
The Fly Honey Show Ariel Zetina Finalists: Dani Deahl, DJ Skoli
Millennium Park Concert Series Brown Skin Lady Show Finalists: Let My People Glow, Neobeat
Out of the Past outofthepastrecords.com Record collectors like to dig, but few shops in town really give you the sense you might actually unearth something quite like this West Garfield Park spot. At Out of the Past, you’ll want to set aside a few hours, roll up your sleeves, and prepare to get dust on your hands wading through the collection. It’s easy to get lost in the piles of LPs and seven-inches....
Jerry’s various locationsjerryssandwiches.com Runner-Up: Bari
Auditorium Theatre Harris Theater Finalists: The Den, The Newport Theater
“Which cereal mascot would be the best kisser?” It’s a question that either elicits a gut-reaction response (for me it’s Count Chocula, no question) or can be the gateway to a long, healthy debate of the merits of Tony the Tiger vs Toucan Sam, or maybe a discussion about gender parity in the cereal mascot industry (women can be captains, too, Mr. Crunch). No matter what path you go down, it’s a question meant to help us sharpen a skill that may have significantly dulled over the last year: conversation....
Some people probably think of me as the Perimeter King of Chicago. Along with many other trips involving cycling the outer edge of places—Illinois, Lake Michigan, three-quarters of the continental U.S.—for the better part of a decade I led the annual Chicago Perimeter Ride. That event typically drew about 100 people for a leisurely all-day-and-evening pedal around the city. Rolling west on Touhy, I pass the Leaning Tower of Niles, a half-size replica of the Pisa landmark....
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. Once she was elected, Pappas put her people skills—and her skills in handwriting analysis—to work, quickly earning a reputation for clashing with then-Cook County Board president Richard J. Phelan. The first time she saw all the commissioners’ signatures she made some conclusions: “We are looking at a situation where being elected means having the money to buy television time....
“We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.” —Jimmy Gator, in Magnolia There are several tangled common men in All My Sons—none of them really happy on their best days, and at least one suffering from what we’d now call trauma. The most tangled of all, though, is Joe Keller, a 60-ish factory owner who went to prison briefly during the war for allowing 120 cracked engine heads to be shipped from his factory and installed in Curtiss P-40s, those single-engine planes that became iconic for the shark eyes and teeth often painted on their noses....
Ah, Saint Patrick’s Day—Chicago’s annual excuse to dye the river from a sick shade of sewage olive to a sick shade of kelly green. The March 17 holiday falls on a Thursday this year, but most of the big happenings, like the parades and the aforementioned river staining, go down this weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend to pair with your daytime drinking. Gaelic Storm The Celtic-rock giants play a pair of shows....
Pauline Etienne and Félix de Givry as Louise and Paul in Eden Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, which opens today at the Music Box, is easily one of the best movies to premiere in Chicago this year. At once intimate and epic, the film mines universal observations about aging and the loss of innocence from a seemingly arcane subject—the two-decade rise and fall of a subgenre of French electronic music known as garage....
I first found out about the Skate Kitchen collective in 2018 from a series of events at the House of Vans encouraging women to pick up skateboarding. The women of the Skate Kitchen exude a near-impossible balance of extreme confidence and radical encouragement—just watching them in their element will make you want to pick up a board and give it a try Betty’s strongest assets are its characters. Every member of the eclectic crew is fully developed in a way that could not have happened in the 90-minute film, and not one member feels more important than another....
Somehow over the last four years I slept on Lakeview’s postage stamp-sized Cafe Tola. Maybe I just blinked and missed the tiny, 400-square-foot empanada emporium on the Southport corridor. Or maybe it’s because the neighborhood isn’t one normally associated with credible Mexican food. But the little place turns out some 700 of the savory stuffed pastries every day, co-owner Victoria Salamanca told DNAInfo in July. And when Salamanca and her husband, Gerardo, branched out onto hot dog holy ground—the Avondale space formerly occupied by Hot Doug’s—it was time to reckon with the couple’s nascent empanada empire....
Cam’s lyrics cut to the core of interpersonal relationships like a breakthrough in a therapy session, perhaps because the California singer-songwriter studied psychology and worked as a researcher before pursuing her country-pop dreams. On her 2017 single “Diane,” she gives a voice to the auburn-haired strumpet of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” responding to the original tune’s anguished wife: “I promise I didn’t know he was your man / Diane, I would have noticed a gold wedding band....
