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Would you say your art is about being a black American?No. Well, I guess it just depends on my mood.—Afro-Futurist artist Hebru Brantley, responding to a question in a 2011 Reader interview As Dery points out in the introduction to his 1993 interview collection Black to the Future, Afro-Futurism is a logical means of expression because “African Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements: official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies (branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee experiment, and tasers come readily to mind)....

Sometimes I’m a shitty beer writer. It might sound like I’m being too hard on myself, especially if you’re a fan (I must have a couple, right?). But how else can you explain that this is my first column on 5 Rabbit? Today the core team at 5 Rabbit is cofounder Andres Araya, minority partner Randy Mosher, and head brewer John J. Hall, who was hired away from Goose Island in September 2012....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

J.B. Pritzker’s recent attack ad slamming state senator Daniel Biss for proposing pension cuts brought me back in time to when Mayor Rahm would unexpectedly drop by firehouses to tell firefighters to go fuck themselves—in so many words. As always, Mayor Rahm was backed by a bodyguard—or two or three. Guess it’s not so scary to talk trash to firefighters when you bring a posse. In fairness to Biss, Pritzker wasn’t an elected official or candidate in those pension-cutting days, so he didn’t have to take a stand on that tough issues....

Nearly 40 years after it was first released, John Carpenter’s Escape From New York (1981) is no longer a warning of a coming dystopian future. Instead, it’s a vision of a bombed-out dystopian past that has become our present. But while Escape is off in some details, its overall vision is disquietingly on point. Anticipating 9/11, the story is built around a plane crash in New York that precipitates a global crisis....

Comrade Cycles Runner-Up: The Bike Lane

Band of Bohemia 4710 N. Ravenswood 773-271-4710 bandofbohemia.com Runner-Up: Revolution

This story was originally published by City Bureau on May 11, 2021, and is part of the How a Community Heals series. Rooted in the same sense of community and belonging, at Casa Al-Fatiha immigrants find free community housing and support where they can process, rest, and heal from their experiences in immigration detention centers. Martinez, the first of three asylum seekers to have stayed at Casa Al-Fatiha, left Honduras after being threatened as a student activist for his advocacy and journalism against narcotics trafficking and killings....

ARTIST: Bill Connors SHOW: Oozing Wound, Platinum Boys, Hitter, and Dim at the Empty Bottle on 3/16 MORE INFO: instagram.com/billconnors

Dressed in a GlitterGuts T-shirt under a Hideout sweatshirt, sipping from an Empty Bottle mug, staring at my Reader tote bag (plug!), I can hardly remember a time before I was surrounded by merch from my favorite cultural institutions. But it’s a strangely recent phenomenon, one that was in part sparked by Barrel Maker Printing’s early-in-the-pandemic push to support small businesses with a limited run of T-shirts, $10 of each sale going directly to the business sported on the tee....

Attorney Corri Fetman, 54, doesn’t have the typical resumé of someone running for judge. Fetman says she expected a tough race against Billy Goat Tavern co-owner and Illinois Securities Department enforcement division chief Tom Sianis. But that didn’t prepare her for a Facebook video calling her a “poser” and featuring images from her past presented in a mocking manner by a group tied to a Sianis campaign consultant. It’s an attack ad she sees as being in direct violation of Illinois’s judicial campaign rules....

Simon’s Tavern 5210 N. Clark 773-878-0894 Runner-Up: The G-Man Tavern

Richmond-based heavy quartet Book of Wyrms released their second full-length, Remythologizer, in August, following up their accurately if unimaginatively titled 2017 LP, Sci-Fi/Fantasy. The new album immediately establishes a welcome atmosphere: dark, doomy, and highly comforting to anyone raised on a diet of D&D, 70s heavy rock, and ditchweed. Front woman Sarah Moore-Lindsey chants and wails, leading the way through a weird world of hallucinatory images and retrofuturism, while bassist Jay Lindsey (married to Sarah) churns the cauldron and guitarists Kyle Lewis and Ben Coudriet reap the whirlwind....

Q: I’m a gay male in my 40s and I’ve been married to my husband for nine years. There was some mild infidelity on his part (exchanging photos and flirting via text with another guy) early in our relationship. I confronted him at the time, and he lied to me. I decided to let it go, as it was early in the relationship. Fast forward a few years and he gets crabs and gives them to me....

I’ve lived in Chicago for almost ten years, have been active within queer communities, and have been identifying as a lesbian, but I had very little exposure to the history and the impact Black lesbians have had on Chicago’s south-side communities and beyond. Kiersten “Kee” Parks + Dominique “Dumoo” Johnson “I’m just proud to be who I am. I love who I am. And I also love Black women! Black women are everything....

Based on Daniel Wallace’s 1998 novel and Tim Burton’s 2003 screen adaptation (screenplay by John August), Big Fish is a beguiling if paradoxical musical (book by August, songs by Andrew Lippa), at once larger than life and smaller, the kind of show that features a protagonist who loves to talk big, embellishing his autobiography with tales of giants and witches and werewolves, but still finds time to move us with quieter drama of everyday life....

Cumin 1414 N. Milwaukee 773-342-1414cumin-chicago.com

Please Make This Being Earnest Finalists: Hysteria 51, Blurry Photos