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CHIRP chirpradio.org Runner-Up: What About Chicago?

Malort jeppsonsmalort.com Runner-Up: Letherbee Gin

Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar Simon’s Finalists: Sleeping Village, Gman Tavern

Whether you want to hit the books or avoid them entirely, the Reader has you covered. Here are our top recommendations for things to do this weekend: Sat 3/24: Actor, stand-up, and jaunty hat wearer Cedric the Entertainer, known for The Steve Harvey Show and Barbershop, brings his act to the Chicago Theatre (175 N. State). 8 PM, $63.50-$93.50

It’s a pity that Rudolph F. Michaelis never got his due as an artist during his time in Chicago. Born in Marion County, Missouri, in 1869 to German immigrants, Michaelis came to Chicago in the early 1890s. He worked for J.P. Sullivan & Co., a south-side interior design shop. In 1905, he relocated to Berkeley, California, where he set out as a self-employed house painter.

Marshan Allen emerged from prison in clothes unfit for the midwestern winter: a standard-issue gray hoodie and sweatpants, a pair of slippers. He boarded a van that drove him to the front parking lot of Stateville Correctional Center. It was December 2016, and 40 miles northeast rose the orange glow of Chicago. The van slowed to a stop. The door opened. From the huddled welcome party of family and friends and lawyers came a shout: “Hallelujah Jesus!...

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Barb Jonesi, 75 going on 35. “I really hate the term ‘bucket list.’ All of those books, like 1,000 Places to See Before You Die—oh, God, they just infuriate me for some reason. But I would love, love, love to see Italy. I do not foresee that happening. I am a widow living on a fixed income, although I certainly don’t see myself that way....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. During his decade with Hooker, Odom cut a single in 1966, billed to Andre Odom, for small Chicago label Nation Records. In 1969, as Andrew “Voice” Odom, he recorded his debut LP, Farther on Down the Road, which featured Hooker and pianist Johnny “Big Moose” Walker....

Lost Lake Runner-Up: Analogue

Red Square redsquarechicago.com On a Sunday afternoon not long after Mayor Rahm Emanuel was forced into a runoff in his bid for a second term, Jesse Jackson sauntered through the men’s locker room of the Wicker Park sauna Red Square wearing nothing more than a towel and flip-flops. The reverend’s six-foot-three-inch frame entered my line of sight while, beer in hand, I rested on a chaise lounge in front of a bank of TVs aflicker with sports....

Liturgy has been a punching bag for metal’s genre police at least since the 2009 release of its first full-length, Renihilation. Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, front man of this New York-based band, had been releasing solo demos as Liturgy since 2005, but in ’09 he made the fateful decision to publish the philosophical manifesto Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism as a sort of companion piece to Renihilation. It described transcendental black metal as, among other things, “the reanimation of the form of black metal with a new soul, a soul full of chaos, frenzy and ecstasy,” and its heady tone and lofty criticisms of traditional “hyperborean” black metal couldn’t have been better engineered to infuriate the reactionary gatekeepers of the metal tribe....

Since 2019 Buenört Collective have been using their platform to create welcoming spaces to explore multiculturalism—specifically, the fantastic variety of Afro-Latinx music. This Chicago-based group of multidisciplinary artists and DJs describe themselves as a record label, a booking agency, and a party incubator, and their latest project is Las Flores del Ahora, the long-awaited fourth album by avant-garde flamenco group El Sombrero del Abuelo. The idea for the collective, whose name is a Spanish-language pun on “Malört,” arose in 2018, when a group of four friends—Hayes, Buhler, McNulty, and Bello—realized they had similar philosophies about music, art, and nightlife....

QMy partner is 31 years older than I am. I know the math: he’ll be 60 when I’m 29. But that isn’t the problem. The issue is he’s been a lifelong bachelor and never been monogamous. He’s fucked hundreds of women and is close friends with a lot of his former fuck buddies. Because of our four-year friendship before we hooked up, I know a lot about his sex life. The problem isn’t jealousy—and it isn’t knowing he’s fucked every woman he’s friends with or that he fucked someone else after declaring his love for me....

At the start of 2018, Tumblr user swordlesbianopinions posted, “Petition to give Carly Rae Jepsen a sword. I like her and think she should have one.” From this, the Canadian pop star’s fans launched a social-media campaign that culminated at Lollapalooza last summer, when someone hurled an inflatable sword onstage during Jepsen’s performance of “Cut to the Feeling.” She brandished the weapon, and Twitter exploded in rapture. Jepsen is no stranger to viral fame; in 2011, she was propelled from relative obscurity to the front pages of international pop culture when Justin Bieber tweeted about the catchiness of her breakout single (and biggest hit to date), “Call Me Maybe....

How does the Reader cover the coronavirus? It’s a question we started asking ourselves late last week as the city and state stepped up their responses—and the cancellation, postponement, and closure notices started pouring in from the entities we love most. What would signature Reader coverage of a global pandemic look like? And what role could we play in ensuring the survival of the businesses, organizations, and nonprofits that make Chicago second to none?...

Suzanne Tennant Jimm Dispensa (pictured here in 2007) has been scooped up by Patrick Daley Thompson. Eternal values are at risk . . . “We’re excited for his move, and he’s excited to help the neighborhood he grew up in and to work for an old friend.”

Chance the Rapper chanceraps.com Runner-Up: Kanye West

If you’re a fan of “The Yellow Wallpaper”—and by the light of All the Queens of Horror, there is no better time than right now to re/acquaint yourself with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 proto-feminist classic—you will find yourself positively geeking out with seasonally malevolent glee at the first act of Books of Blood. Perhaps it is coincidence, but director Brannon Braga’s choice in both bedroom décor color palette and mentally disturbed (according to other people) heroine is enough to send shivers of joy up the spines of English majors of a certain era....