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Logan Square Farmers Market Green City Market Finalist: Andersonville Farmers Market

Penny Lane Studios Sine Qua Non Salon Finalists: Rev Billy’s Chop Shop, a.salon

This story is part of the Marshall Project’s “We Are Witnesses: Chicago” series. In 15 direct-to-camera testimonies, this collection of videos gives voice to Chicagoans affected by the justice system. Watch the videos at themarshallproject.org/chicago. At age 12, Colón witnessed her mother’s boyfriend beat her so badly that she was left unconscious. The incident led Colón and her family to flee from Florida to Chicago, where her grandparents lived. But the six-unit apartment in South Chicago they moved into turned out to be a gang headquarters....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. While running errands on a cold Saturday afternoon, Tamara Capel-Wilson, 37, was sporting an outfit that managed to be elegant, comfortable, stylish, and warm all at the same time. “Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it’s not luxury,” she says, quoting her less-is-more muse Coco Chanel. “It’s all about my outerwear and shades....

Eve L. Ewing Tonika Johnson Finalists: Jahmal Cole, Charlene Carruthers

Wasabi 2115 N. Milwaukee 773-227-8180 wasabichicago.com Runner-Up: Furious Spoon

The harp has always been an oddity in jazz music. Its two most notable practitioners, Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, were most active decades ago; both musicians had roots in postbop forms and found fascinating ways to translate the cascading sounds associated with the classical instrument into rhythmically elastic settings—though each eventually embraced more contemporary modes rooted in soul, funk, and, for Coltrane, Indian music. Later recordings by both harpists became primo sample material in hip-hop culture, and it’s partly through those records that Brandee Younger (who studied classical music at the University of Hartford) discovered Ashby, whose work became one of her primary musical influences....

Ever since my last Reader column on Chicago’s mayoral election was published, I’ve been fielding a lot of complaints about lawbreaking bicyclists. I mentioned Toni Preckwinkle’s statement from a recent debate that many bike riders “don’t pay any attention to the traffic laws, which is not only infuriating, but also scary for drivers.” Technically illegal, but widespread and largely harmless, behavior. This includes slow, cautious cycling for short distances on sidewalks or against traffic on side streets....

Siobhan O’Loughlin is tired. As her “cast” of friends files into the bathroom of a third-floor walk-up in Rogers Park on November 1, the actress’s head rests heavily in the crook of her rainbow cast-clad arm. “You don’t see your friends for months and months, and then you’re like, ‘What’s going on?’ she said. “They’re giving me a bath and I’m telling them about what’s happened to me, and they’re telling me about what they’ve been through....

Cara, take off your bra,” Sarah Gonsiorowski bawls into a megaphone in the opening scene of RockCitizen. And as the other dancers look on, Cara Sabin wriggles out of her bra and tosses it onto the catwalk above the stage. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” the group chants as a swirl of black-and-white lights takes over the stage and the audience is invited to tune in, drop out, and spend the next hour reliving a tumultuous era filled with sex, drugs, and social protest....

Altered Boy Arguably, the eighth rite of the Catholic church is to make art about parting ways with the Catholic church. Louisiana-born comedian Garrett Allain chronicles his religious upbringing and sexual coming of age in this autobiographical one-man show in the form of a string of loosely related comedic sketches. Allain combines video segments that reimagine his school play performances, heartfelt monologues, family impersonations, and The Lonely Island-style music numbers about “GAMs” (grown-ass men) and Tinder to provide an impressionistic look at his life....

It’s 5 AM on Easter morning, and Wally’s World is dead. After three years and more than a hundred DIY shows, the rock ‘n’ roll speakeasy is calling it quits. In a few months, the building that’s been home to Wally’s World—at 2841 W. Belden, under the Blue Line tracks in Logan Square—will be demolished, as its new owner attempts to have the property rezoned for residential use. The shadow of gentrification hangs over all....

I suppose it would be difficult not to make a mechanical engine the central metaphor of any play about Ada Byron Lovelace. Daughter of the great Romantic poet Lord Byron, she so excelled in mathematics that she surpassed the era’s preeminent mathematician, Charles Babbage, by recognizing the potential his Analytical Engine (arguably the first modern computer) had beyond number crunching. Where Babbage saw numbers only as quantities, Lovelace saw them as units in any system of relational meanings—musical notes, for example—upon which the Engine could operate....

In an October interview with Lyrical Lemonade, Chicago rapper Kembe X (born Dikembe Caston) described a rocky patch in 2017 that brought him to a breaking point in his career. He’d been talking to R&B singer Kehlani, opening up about his lack of confidence and disinterest in his creative direction, and she asked him if he wanted to continue with music at all. The conversation gave Kembe a sense of clarity....

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. Selle put the Coffee Club up for sale with an ad in the Reader. Phil Tadros, then a 21-year-old Columbia College student, bought the place and in August 2000 opened the first coffee shop in what would become a much-maligned empire of food and beverage businesses....

Anna Ziegler’s 2016 play fictionalizes the case of David Reimer, born in 1965, who had the misfortune of becoming a living laboratory for theories about gender. Like Reimer, Ziegler’s Adam Turner lost his penis in infancy, the result of a botched circumcision. And, also like Reimer, Adam was put under the care of an eminent psychologist (Wendell Barnes here, John Money in real life), who believed that sexual identity was fungible: give a male-born tot a vagina, hormone therapy, the right cultural prompts, and no inkling of the truth, Barnes/Money thought, and he’ll grow up comfortably as a she....

When artists of all sorts pivoted to livestreaming, the results were mixed at best. The technical difficulties of a Zoom show, the learning curve of TikTok, the inevitable energy shift that comes with playing to a computer screen, it can all add up to a bad show. But once NoonChorus entered the scene, enjoying live performances from both sides seemed possible again. The Chicago-based streaming platform was designed with the artists in mind, whether that be musicians, comedians, podcasters, and more who have since found their shows a home on the site....

Julia Thiel The seemingly doomed space that was recently home to Marigold and then Bull Horns Taco Bar may have finally found its sweet spot. Well-executed Indian food didn’t take off there; neither did weird faux Mexican food. But there’s always a place for comfort food, especially when it’s done well—and that’s exactly what Summerdale is offering. An appetizer of buffalo wings is another solid classic; good-sized wings are served in a tangy, decently spicy sauce with blue cheese dip (a few more napkins would be welcome, though)....