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—Legal scholar Guyora Binder On July 8, 2012, as the summer sun rose over the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, police hauled a distraught 19-year-old named Tevin Louis away from a murder scene. The victim was Louis’s best friend, Marquise Sampson. The shooter was a veteran police officer, Antonio Dicarlo. For the previous five years, Louis and Sampson had been inseparable, drawn together by rough childhoods marked by foster care and poverty....

Multidisciplinary artist Andrew CS moved to Chicago from Rockton, Illinois, in the mid-2010s to study interaction design at Columbia College, and then began booking intimate Sunday DIY shows—but long before either of those things happened, he’d developed an interest in field recordings by playing indie video games. “The first mode of creation that I got into was game development—specifically indie game development,” Andrew told Darwin Grosse in a 2019 interview for the podcast Art + Music + Technology....

Gossip Wolf is convinced that psychedelic Chicago six-piece Diagonal would’ve been stars in the UK if they’d been around in the mid-90s. Fans of the Verve and Spiritualized might want to dig through their back issues of NME and Melody Maker to make sure these folks aren’t time travelers! Their debut album, Tomorrow, combines hazy waterfalls of shoegaze guitar, serious pop hooks, and “guy howling in an empty cave” vocals. It drops Monday, July 2, on local label Midwest Action, and that night Diagonal play a free show at the Empty Bottle with Plastic Crimewave Syndicate (led by Reader regular Steve Krakow), Texas psych-rockers Lake of Fire, and local stoner-doom unit Black Road....

“The thing I love about this drink is how it changes over time,” Pollack says. “It goes from an earthy scent to a bitter taste to a sweet finish. When I initially make it, everything is cold and fresh, the absinthe is still the very prominent nose; but as you drink it, the hop starts hitting you and the absinthe dissipates, you start getting a little more bitterness, and you finally end with the honey....

The cocktails at Arbella, the new River North spot from the team behind Tanta, are all over the map—literally. The tagline for the bar is “drink the world,” and the menu is divided into five global regions. It’s heavy on the Americas, with Mexico, South America (and the Caribbean), and the U.S. constituting three sections; the other two are dedicated to Europe and Asia. The bar’s name comes from a ship that sailed from England to Salem in 1630, a six-week voyage on which the passengers and crew supposedly consumed nearly 10,000 gallons of wine....

It’s finally happening! High on Fire, the most beloved heavy-metal band of the modern era, are going on tour in support of their eighth studio album and best release yet, last year’s Electric Messiah. They’ve tried twice before, but both times they hit roadblocks. In January, the band canceled the second of two tours when singer and guitarist Matt Pike, who’s battling diabetes, had some of his toes surgically removed. A few weeks later, the group won the first Grammy of their two-decade career, and things seemed to be getting back on track....

Dear Cecil: Since each can cause microcephaly, is there any correlation between Zika (which everyone seems to fear) and toxoplasmosis (which most seem to have forgotten)? —Maja Ramirez Cecil replies: Are Zika and toxoplasmosis related? Biologically speaking, that one’s easy: no. In seeing them as similar, are you nonetheless onto something? Nice work, Maja—the medical world sees it the same way. READ THE FULL COLUMN AT STRAIGHTDOPE.COM

Amid the gloom and the doom of the pandemic, it’s nice to know it’s sunny skies and daffodils at Chicago Public Schools—at least according to Mayor Lightfoot and her aides at CPS. While we wait, allow me to share a story or two to give you an idea of why not all staffers are assured by what the mayor or CEO Janice Jackson have to say. We’ve all been there. Fill out a form wrong, and they drop you down the cyber rabbit hole never to be heard from anyone again....

Shaw’s Crab House Runner-Up: GT Fish & Oyster

Rootstock Runner-Up: Bascule

Chicago natives and lifelong hip-hop heads Ibrahem Hasan and Matthew Rivera met decades ago while crate digging at a flea market. Their new self-titled debut as Bless the Mad, released by their own Stay the Course label, exudes a collector’s care for music history and a producer’s ear for finding overlooked diamonds and giving them brilliant new settings. Even the album’s artwork contributes to the vibe, collaging together images steeped in the lore of Chicago architecture and music—it includes the logo for Phil Cohran’s jazz band the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, which looks like two Xes connected by a bold line, and a business card for infamous local music reseller Record Al....

UPDATE: The David Boykin concert has been rescheduled until Saturday, July 10, 2021 at 7 PM. Even though Chicago is feeling a little safer these days as more people get the COVID-19 vaccine, the city’s performance communities are still reeling from the loss of wages and tips during all those months we were staying at home. It’s not too late to do something to support the people who make nightlife happen: the Reader has compiled a list of fundraisers for out-of-work or underemployed venue staff....

Flying high and fearlessly in front of awestruck spectators is what circus is all about, right? So what happens when your show is grounded, so to speak, by COVID-19? On Saturday, two longtime Chicago circus arts training and performance centers show how they’ve adapted their art for the new normal, where we all feel like we’re working without a net. Sanctuary, a cross between a punk cabaret and circus, has been a staple showcase with Aloft for a while, so taking the show online made sense to Swanson....

On her new fifth album, Whole New Mess, Angel Olsen presents skeletal renditions of songs from her 2019 LP All Mirrors, filtering their themes of love, broken promises, and recovery through a stark, isolationist lens of a woman armed with only her guitars. While the record’s release date comes nearly a year after All Mirrors, the singer-songwriter actually recorded it first, in an October 2018 session at the Unknown, a church-turned-recording studio in Anacortes, Washington, a small seaside town on Fidalgo Island....

Rob Guevaraof Fox Bar at Soho House Chicago sohohouse.com Runners-Up (tie): Amee Binderof Uptown Underground Edgar Rogelof Coconutz Chicago

Brendan Kelly, @badsandwich Runners-Up:

Sultan’s Market Runner-Up: Taste of Lebanon

Pequod’s Pizza Lou Malnati’s Finalists: Spacca Napoli Pizzeria, Pizzeria Uno, Davanati Enoteca, Leor Galil

One day during my daily Green Line commute, I noticed a young brother with a little girl slumped in his arms wearing a “Daddy’s Girl” beanie. He removed her pacifier and placed her in a pink stroller. For what seemed like the rest of their ride he stared at the little girl as she slept. One could only imagine what he was thinking. Was he reflecting on his life? Thinking about his hopes and dreams for the baby girl lying in the stroller?...