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The Owl The Owl is more than just another 4 AM bar filled with already-drunks pining to extend the night further into the wee hours. While the Logan Square hideaway has several features that pair well with fun mistakes—dim lighting, mirrored walls, a decadent waterfall flowing behind the long, curved bar—it also books obscure acts in its claustrophobia-­inducing back room, courtesy of talent buyer Aaron Dexter. Notable out-of-towners who’ve played the Owl include harsh-noise artist Pharmakon, experimental guitarist Tashi Dorji, blown-out scuzz rockers Obnox, and electronic-psych legends Silver Apples; Chicago-­based powerhouses such as Disappears and Pelican have crammed their equipment into the space too....

Pretty soon you’re going to have to confront cheese tea. Seems like a reasonable pairing that might work in more than a few neighborhoods around town and certain suburbs. But last month when they opened their second location on Argyle Street, they had something else in mind: Malaysian food. Still, these dishes are almost afterthoughts to Bingo’s tea menu, which spans fruit teas (dragon, yuzu lemon honey, black grape), milk teas (buckwheat matcha, caramel black), and more subdued honey drinks....

It’s another year. Which promises to be not that much different from the shit show that was last year. But the publishing industry continues to churn, which is good news for those of us whose favorite form of escapism is books. Here’s a list of the upcoming titles that have gotten us most excited—including but not limited to a guide to Swedish death cleaning and a thriller about a missing president cowritten by Bill Clinton....

Toni Preckwinkle is the front-runner in the race for mayor of Chicago, sort of. According to a Sun-Times poll conducted by We Ask America, Preckwinkle and Daley are “nominal” front-runners with Preckwinkle at 12.7 percent and Daley at 12.1. The We Ask America poll also found that in hypothetical runoffs, Preckwinkle would lose—though not by much—to both Mendoza and Daley. Bowen—who worked as deputy campaign manager for Rahm Emanuel in 2011, has managed City Council and Senate campaigns, and worked on Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign—said that running for mayor of Chicago is more like a presidential campaign, with TV and radio stations and major newspapers putting a microscope to candidates....

In mid-January, YouTube star Ingrid Nilsen broached the subject of tampons with President Obama. The ordinance, introduced by aldermen Ed Burke and Leslie Hairston, would exempt feminine hygiene products from taxes in Chicago, reclassifying them as “medical appliances.” The aldermen also proposed lowering the tax to 1 percent throughout Illinois, the tax rate currently imposed on drugs, food, and medical appliances. But some critics contend that the widespread ire against the “tampon tax” is misplaced....

With the Black Lives Matter movement taking center focus in Chicago and outside our city walls, the community is teeming with active engagement and empowerment. We see this with protests, public art, music, and even Columbus statues coming down: racial justice activism is uniquely alive after months of pandemic hibernation. A new multigenerational coloring book called #BlackArtMatters seeks to contribute to the cause by highlighting Black artists, representing the breadth of Blackness and the importance of racial and gender equality....

ARTIST: John Garrison SHOW: Against Me!, Tim Barry, and Fea at Metro on Sun 6/19 MORE INFO: johngarrisonart.com

Forest Bathing (LM Duplication) is the first album by Hawk and a Hacksaw, the Albuquerque duo of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, in five years. Since releasing 2013’s You Have Already Gone to the Other World—a project inspired by Soviet-era director Sergei Paradjanov’s 1964 film Shadows for Forgotten Ancestors—they’ve become more efficient in adapting the eastern-European and particularly Roma sounds that have provided their key influences for more than a decade....

Rogers Park Social Victor Bar Finalists: Travelle at the Langham, SX Sky Bar

Tour De Fat

Bushra Amiwala represents a growing trend of 20-something college students running for public office. When she put in her ballot to run for the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2017, she was only 19 years old running against a 16 year incumbent. After coming in second in that three-person race, she pushed forward with another campaign. This time, a successful run for a position on District 73.5 Board of Education, where she currently serves as the youngest on a seven-member board....

Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein raised the bar for New York City underground boom-bap back in 2001. On that album, rappers Vast Aire and Vordul Mega rapped in short bars and slow flows over a dizzying, asymmetrical, gelatinous sci-fi-hip-hop soundscape provided by producer El-P. Whereas most underground hip-hop releases of the time relied on jazz samples laced over straightforward drum loops and rappers forcing similes and punch lines, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega often spoke in metaphor over off-kilter beats, depicting New York City as a bleak, anxiety-ridden metropolis full of vermin and metal, and somehow locating the axis between pre-Giuliani and post-9/11 Manhattan in the process....

Amour There’s something beguiling about this quirky 2002 musical, in which a nobody Parisian civil servant becomes a somebody when he suddenly gains the ability to pass through walls. Maybe it’s the offbeat score, by French composer Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, among many others); maybe it’s the literate, playful, sung-through libretto, translated from the French by Jeremy Sams (who also wrote the English book). But in this production, a Chicago premiere from Black Button Eyes, the show’s charm is muted by a rough, uneven cast—some overplay the show’s comic moments, while others lack the pipes to bring out the best in Legrand’s ear-pleasing tunes....

Ben Fasman didn’t have to look far for the subject of his art-book imprint’s first release. The answer was literally written on his arm, thigh, and buttocks, all of which have been tattooed by the artist Robert Ryan. Fasman first began tinkering with the idea of starting an imprint several years ago, as he was winding down as a freelance writer for outlets such as the Economist, Juxtapoz, and Stop Smiling....

There’s something wonderfully firsthand about this brilliant new work from playwright Beth Hyland and the Sound, directed by Rebecca Willingham. To begin with, it’s a small theater in Chicago performing a play about small theater in Chicago. Red Bowl Ensemble, a fictional company, have netted several Non-Equity Jeff Award nominations this year for their production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and here they are at the Jeffs, in jumpsuits, jackets, and a very memorable cape, ready to face the music and disparage the competition....

On February 28, Chris Rock hosts the 88th Academy Awards ceremony—the “White BET Awards,” he tweeted last month, when for the second year in a row there were no black nominees in prominent categories and #OscarsSoWhite was taking off again. Woodson started Negro History Week to address the subject’s absence from American history, especially as taught in public schools. According to a paper on the origins and purpose of Black History Month by black conservative think-tanker Stacy Swimp, Woodson believed that “if white Americans knew the true history of blacks in America and in Africa, it would help overcome negative stereotyping....

We’re now in the eighth month of the COVID-19 pandemic, and millions are struggling to maintain their incomes and housing. But even before the pandemic started, one Chicago nonprofit, the Urban Growers Collective, was working to address residents’ struggles to access another basic necessity—fresh, healthy food—and the current crisis has only emboldened that work. “It’s really an issue of apartheid and where we value putting a diverse kind of selection of options,” Allen says....

Twenty years ago, Anthony Rapp played the role of Mark Cohen in the off-Broadway debut of the musical Rent, a cultural watershed that made the AIDS crisis resonate with a wider audience and, for many straight and queer people, offered the first glimpse at a loving, homosexual relationship. Rapp, now 44, has helped to sustain Rent‘s legacy, and not just by reprising his role onstage and onscreen in the 2005 film version—he’s performed numerous nuanced portrayals of homosexual characters throughout his career....

It’s back to the world of livestreams for this week’s featured gig poster. Cape Town-based illustrator and graphic designer Simon Berndt specializes in sometimes trippy but always informative concert merch for psych and heavy-rock shows and festivals, and he made this art for a virtual Dead Meadow show on Saturday, February 20. Berndt has created posters for the past few editions of the Levitation music festival (formerly Austin Psych Fest), and he usually does so in collaboration with Austinite and Levitation founder Rob Fitzpatrick—who assisted on this doozy as well....