This used to be [part of] a barn near Springfield,” says George Schaefer, one half of the duo behind Norman Leigh Design, pointing at a piece of wood. “Look at this nail,” he says, reaching into a box. “You can’t find this anymore.” The bulk of their work comes from custom projects, but for those on a tighter budget they have products such as plant stands, serving trays, and wall art ranging from $20 to $300....
The Secret Lives of Teachers, published anonymously by the University of Chicago Press, isn’t easily characterized. It’s part memoir, part sociological study, part exposé. But that doesn’t stop it from being an occasionally funny, occasionally insightful read. Advance press releases proclaimed some of the book’s anecdotes “scandalous,” but there’s nothing here that’s truly surprising or scintillating. The author’s mental checkout during a catty parent-teacher conference isn’t a scandal. That’s just someone being human....
When this fall the Tribune endorsed Governor Rauner for reelection, it was being true to itself. It’s a Republican paper. Over the years, as the Trib endorsed Republicans I had no intention of voting for (and a few I did), I came to understand how it saw its duty: it would make the best case it could make for the GOP candidate for high office—a case usually better than the candidate made for him—or herself—and readers could take it or leave it....
Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians turned 50 in 2015, and celebrations of this influential collective have been popping off worldwide all year—here in town, exhibits honoring the AACM’s impact have opened at the DuSable Museum of African American History and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The 37th annual Chicago Jazz Festival marks this auspicious anniverary with performances by four AACM-related groups: Douglas Ewart & Inventions, the Jeff Parker Trio, Steve & Iqua Colson, and Muhal Richard Abrams’s Experimental Band....
YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images Elena Poniatowska Ask an American to name the most tumultuous events of 1968 and we’ll recall the King and Kennedy assassinations and the rioting at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Ask about international upheaval and we’ll add the Soviet invasion of Prague and the student uprising in Paris. Prod us further—what about Mexico City?—and most of us will come up with the moment when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists to protest racism in America as they were awarded Olympic medals....
Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.
AP Photo/FX, Craig Blankenhorn Noah Emmerich as FBI agent Stan Beeman in a scene from the first season of The Americans “Fast-paced drama,” Alessandra Stanley, New York Times. Here’s Stanley describing it this week in the Times. There have been rocky patches. Last season Elizabeth threw Philip out of the house for philandering—though that had nothing to do with his romance with Martha, which was strictly tradecraft. Martha had a nicely placed job in Stan’s office, so Philip, wearing a funny wig and calling himself “Clark,” wooed and won her, and at the end of season one, they actually married, Elizabeth attending the wedding as Clark’s sister “Jennifer....
It’s never difficult to see live blues in Chicago, and during the Blues Festival it’s even easier—the city’s blues clubs pull out the stops all weekend, and even venues that don’t specialize in the blues get in on the action. Two veterans who haven’t gigged Chicago for a while return during the festival: Eddy “the Chief” Clearwater, an early Chuck Berry fan who was among the first bluesmen of his generation to graft rock ’n’ roll onto the postwar Chicago style, plays at Buddy Guy’s Legends on Friday....
When I take a day trip outside the city limits, I often drive—but I prefer to fly and take the train at the same time. After all, an $8 weekend pass on the Metra is only a fraction of the price of a tank of gas, and I get to be up high . . . well, not in the sky, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got to flying cars....
Update Mon 7/16: Earl Sweatshirt has canceled, and Tierra Whack has been added. The schedule and stage lineups for Friday have changed slightly as a result.
Things in Washington, D.C., are nuttier than ever in the wake of the multiple Trump-related felony convictions earlier this month, but at least some reason prevailed this year in regards to federal transit policy. That’s not to say that there weren’t some low points. Drivers had fatally struck six people on bikes on Chicago streets as of mid- December. In August cyclists were particularly shaken by the death of Angela Park, 39, a spin instructor and triathlon coach who was run over by a truck driver in Greektown during the morning rush....
As the Reader has already reported, the future of beloved Bucktown bar Danny’s looks bleak thanks to a dispute with the building owner and landlord. This week two of the regular DJ events hosted by Danny’s have tolled their own death knells, entreating their fans to come out one last time: Clark Street Jams and Sheer Magic. Courtland Green and Scott Craig founded the latter in 1997, and back then the monthly shindig was simply called “soul night....
Sun-Times Rashad Harden, better known as DJ Rashad, died yesterday at the age of 35. Calumet City footwork master Rashad Harden, better known as DJ Rashad, died Saturday at the age of 35. Harden had been one of the biggest names in footwork, a fast-paced style of dance music that evolved out of ghetto house in the 90s. Along with frequent collaborator Morris Harper (aka DJ Spinn) and the rest of their footwork collective, Teklife, Harden helped bring this unique local sound to the rest of the world....
The two young tenor saxophonists leading the newish quartet Black Diamond don’t indulge in the bravado and flash that so many green jazz musicians exhibit when they set out to make a recording. Artie Black and Hunter Diamond sound much wiser than their years—they’re 28 and 27, respectively—on their impressive debut album, Mandala (Shifting Paradigm). They embrace a buoyancy and airiness that most contemporary saxophonists avoid in favor of something heavier and more fiery; together they evoke Lennie Tristano acolytes Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz—in their timbre, in their elegant unison lines, and in the way they solo together, braiding improvised patterns that effortlessly shimmer and float....
Mike Sula Plantain sandwich, aka jibarito, Maracas Sometime in the last year, a restaurant of fairly historic importance closed its doors and—at least as far as the food media were concerned—nobody noticed. Borinquen,* in Humboldt Park, was the alleged home of the jibarito, a notoriously messy meat-lettuce-cheese-tomato-mayo structure held together by flattened, fried green plantains. There are some questions about the claim that owner Juan C. Figueroa actually invented the jibarito, as he’s admitted reading about a similar sandwich back on the island, but there’s no doubt its glory and fame spread far and wide from California Avenue, leading to copycats across the city and country as well as interesting interpretations like the very local gyro jibarito and, apocryphally, the heebarito—a Reuben built between two schmaltz-fried latkes....
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Christopher Schulz The Operature Chicago writer and academic Samuel Steward was so obsessed with cataloging his sexual experiences that he kept a file of 746 cards, systematically cross-referenced, detailing hundreds of erotic encounters with men. He eventually became a professional tattoo artist in an effort to quell his sex drive though painstaking asexual attention to the body, but even though many of his flowery designs alluded to his friend Gertrude Stein’s aphorism “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” a tattoo was always more than a tattoo for him....
“Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.” —The Wizard of Oz Actually, the secret of Josh’s appeal isn’t at all mysterious: Despite his pudgy, messy looks, his bad ‘stache, single pair of pants, and job as the tech equivalent of a burger flipper, despite his love of Applebee’s and the oeuvre of Billy Joel, he has—like Eliza’s coded Watson—an off-the-charts empathy quotient. Josh can read Eliza the way Yo Yo Ma reads Bach....
Entering the squat building at 1948 W. North, longtime home to the dental practice of Dr. Luis Casals, patients step into a relic from a bygone era of Wicker Park’s ever-shifting history. When Casals opened the office for business a half century ago, long before the arrival of nightclubs and artisan doughnut shops, the neighborhood was a largely working-class Hispanic enclave. The waiting room, visible from the sidewalk, is as pristinely preserved as the stuffed and mounted fish, ducks, and pheasants that the outdoorsman and taxidermy hobbyist displays on the wood-paneled walls....
