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ARTIST: Xavi Forne SHOW: Foxing, Tiny Moving Parts, Dowsing, and the Reptilian at Double Door on Fri 12/16 MORE ONLINE: error-design.com

In a recent survey published in the Singapore-based paper the Straits Times, “artist” was labeled the top nonessential job during the pandemic. Folks flocked to social media to push back and criticize the results—and rightfully so. Just because museums have been largely closed and art openings have been put on pause doesn’t mean art is absent from our everyday experience. The Hyde Park Art Center is commemorating the anniversary of the original “Artists Run Chicago” show in 2009....

Pride Parade Bud Billiken Parade Finalists: Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, South Side Irish Parade

Twin Peaks music.twinpeaksdudes.com Runner-Up: Athena

UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been postponed. Contact box office for more information. Perhaps I wouldn’t call this show a musical, but instead a combination history lecture, racial justice workshop, personal essay, and musical revue with lackluster choreography, using storytelling elements strangely reminiscent of John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch, although the tones could not be further apart. As a whole, The Healing feels like it’s in the early stages of being something great....

Hours after students across Chicago and the nation held a walkout to protest gun violence, officials at Northwestern University in Evanston advised students to stay away from campus after a report of a person with a gun. At William J. Bogan High School on the southwest side, students held signs and chanted, “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe.” Students faced the road screaming, “We are not animals,” while holding up signs that read, “Honk if you’re against gun violence....

I’m sure you’re expecting a takedown here, since at some point in the past two decades it apparently became unforgivable for a band to record a phoned-in cover of “I’m a Believer” for a family movie starring an animated green ogre. I don’t blame anyone who sees Smash Mouth as a joke, since they’ve squandered much of their early promise, but I do wish more people could remember the band’s ingenuity....

Last week, in the midst of news that wheelchair-bound nonagenarian George H.W. Bush pats women on the rear and tells dirty jokes and that Brandeis University is canceling a play about Lenny Bruce because it’s offensive, came the announcement that the Chicago Comedy Film Festival has pulled its November 11 showing of a documentary about comedian Andy Dick. Dick has denied the groping charge, but none of the many people interviewed in the documentary would be surprised by any of it; like the millions who’ve watched this pansexual free spirit with an admitted sobriety problem on television, film, and the Internet, they’ve been mostly laughing at it for years....

The music of Berlin-based violinist Biliana Voutchkova crosses styles and spans centuries. She plays Baroque classical and free improvisation with pianist Antonis Anissegos, she interacts with dancers and electronic musicians in Grapeshade, and she recently released the triple album Blurred Music (Elsewhere) with clarinetist Michael Thieke. The collection includes three complete concerts of freewheeling, microtonal chamber music, one of which was recorded at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Carr Chapel. In that performance, the two musicians blur the lines between composition and free improvisation by spontaneously interacting with their own prerecorded material....

Gordon Quinn kartemquin.com/about/gordon-quinn Runner-Up: Joe Swanberg

Just days before COVID-19 shut Chicago down, mourners crowded Trinity United Church of Christ to bid farewell to gospel singer Billie Barrett Greenbey. A member of the world-famous Barrett Sisters and among the last survivors of gospel music’s foundational generation, Billie died February 28 at age 91.

Ethan Lim’s family members were apprehensive about the Cambodian fried chicken sandwich. But the Cambodian fried chicken sandwich is among a trio of newer sandwiches for which Lim has drawn upon his family’s own home cooking. It made its debut in early August, just as the hysteria surrounding Popeyes spicy fried chicken sandwich set off, and featured a skin-on chicken thigh marinated in the foundational herbal spice paste known as kroeung—here, lemongrass, garlic, galangal, turmeric, and makrut lime leaf—along with fish sauce, soy sauce, and sugar....

When Chicagoan Laura Yee supplies brownies for a potluck, people wonder if she baked brownies, or brownies with a secret ingredient. “Everyone always asks, ‘Is there weed in that?’” she says. The publication itself is attractive, leading with plenty of food and weed porn. On page seven, right after the table of contents, is a full-page close-up photo of two fingers holding a bud. Its orange follicles and crystalline texture appear in sharp focus....

With Mayor Rahm and Governor Rauner both swinging wrecking balls, it’s hard to keep track of who’s done what damage to Chicago’s public schools over the past few days and weeks . . . and months and years. So much damage has already been done. Got you with that one—didn’t I? Without of course mentioning that his private equity firm made millions managing teachers’ pension funds. Emanuel doesn’t deny that he said it....

Francisco Bolanos wouldn’t tell me how he makes the smoky salsa brava he dresses his fried potatoes with. Over the phone he told me it’s a “family secret,” though I swear he used the words “jamon stock” when he served them to me a few mornings earlier at Little Madrid Tapas Cafe, a cash-only Andersonville hole-in-the-wall that resets the standard for patatas bravas in a city enamored with Spanish food....

The Duck Inn is easily the most likable, comfortable, douche-free restaurant ever from Rockit Ranch, the group responsible for Ay Chiwowa!, Sunda, and of course Rockit Bar & Grill. That’s partly because Billy Dec kept his hands off, allowing it to be an expression of someone else’s personality rather than his. And that’s also because it’s safely located miles away from the orgies of River North, on a quiet, half-deserted corner of Bridgeport that used to house the classic Gem-Bar....

The Rink

—Activist Jessica Disu Until that moment on Fox News, Jessica Disu hadn’t considered herself a police abolitionist. But on July 11, she was on national television, surrounded by 29 other people convened by Megyn Kelly to discuss the recent killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and several Dallas police officers. “I was under the impression that it would be a robust and productive conversation, even though it was Fox News,” says 27-year-old Disu, who identifies herself as a “humanitarian rap artist and peace activist” and is involved with various organizations serving youth on the south side....

This story was originally published in The Appeal. Missing from that list was one item that reform activists have long been waiting for—the installation of civilian oversight of the police department, a key issue Lightfoot campaigned on when she ran for mayor. A caller to WBEZ asked the mayor a week after her speech what she was doing about the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability ordinance that was supposed to establish this oversight and that’s been stuck in the City Council’s public safety committee for almost two years....