Long before Chicago gangs took to social media to stoke violent feuds, the street crews of the 1970s and ’80s—from Thee Almighty Gaylords to the Insane Spanish Cobras—gilded their reputations and recruited new members in the customary manner of the professional class: by handing out business cards, known more commonly as “compliment cards,” that displayed cryptic symbols of pride, lists of members’ nicknames, clues about controlled turf, and no shortage of emblems of disrespect to enemies....

ARTIST: Ryan Duggan SHOWS: Trouble in Paradise at the Empty Bottle from Thu 9/13 through Sat 9/15 MORE INFO: ryanduggan.com

Julia Thiel Pineapple margarita (left) and the Turning Point (right) Motivated by the fact that I had a pineapple that was about to go bad, I started looking for cocktail recipes using fresh pineapple earlier this week. In the process, I unexpectedly discovered a vodka cocktail that I actually enjoyed. While I don’t like vodka, I don’t really mind it in cocktails since it doesn’t taste like much of anything....

COURTESY CHICAGO IMPROV COMEDY CLUB Charlie Murphy Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Jim Newberry Fletcher Weatherspoon (left) in spring 2012, shaking hands with his son Ron I just heard from Jake Austen (of Roctober and Chic-a-Go-Go fame) that Fletcher Weatherspoon, the subject of his 2012 Reader story “Spoon’s last dance,” died this morning. Born in 1932, Weatherspoon was a beloved keystone of Chicago’s thriving African-American social-club scene for six decades; in 1973 he founded entertainment and promotions company Dove Productions. Austen heard the news of his passing from one of Weatherspoon’s four sons, ElWarren, who continues to run Dove with his brothers....

Chicago’s restaurant landscape is packed with spots that serve up painstakingly refined food with a particular punk-rock insouciance. The origins of that now familiar mix can be traced, in part, to a shabby-looking storefront wedged into an unremarkable stretch of Ashland Avenue in Wicker Park. Inside, the walls of the small, stark dining room are spray-painted black from the ground up to about the seven-foot mark—a look that suggests a pose of youthful rebellion somewhere between underground nightclub and shallow grave....

The first ten minutes of The Face of Love function as what might be called a statement of purposelessness, announcing exactly how and why the movie will be bad. A middle-aged woman (Annette Bening) sits in her nicely furnished home making distraught faces while flashbacks reveal a trip she took with her husband (Ed Harris) on their 30th wedding anniversary. He drowned during this trip, which must be the reason she looks so unhappy....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, July 5, 2017. New York Daily News responds to Rahm op-ed with “dumb track mind” and “murder capital mayor” cover Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s New York Times op-ed praising CTA trains and slamming New York City’s subway stem didn’t go over well. The New York Daily News slammed Emanuel on its cover Tuesday with the headlines “DUMB TRACK MIND,” “MURDER CAPITAL MAYOR HITS SUBWAY,” and “Rahm touts Chicago trains but, AT LEAST our riders don’t get SHOT on the way home!...

Just hours after the city of Chicago stunned many onlookers by agreeing to release video of the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy, the brother of another black Chicagoan shot and killed by police donned a familiar uniform of all-black clothing to attend a Chicago Police Board meeting, which he’s done every month for about half a year. The Independent Police Review Authority, the agency charged with investigating police misconduct and officer-involved shootings in Chicago, recommended Servin be fired in September, making him the second Chicago officer recommended for firing in an police-involved shooting since IPRA began in 2007....

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

It seems churlish to complain about the lack of ramen on the far north side when we’ve got so much pho and also a fair amount of matzo ball soup, but I can’t help feeling a twinge of envy when I read about all the exciting new ramen joints opening in Logan Square and Wicker Park. Is there some reason why those of us who live on the upper reaches of the Red Line don’t get to slurp our dinners, too?...

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, March 9, 2017. Journalist Jamie Kalven sues police for failure to release Laquan McDonald records Independent journalist Jamie Kalven is suing the Chicago Police Department for allegedly violating the Freedom of Information Act by not releasing records about the police’s alleged cover-up of the death of Laquan McDonald. Kalven requested the records from the Office of the Inspector General of Chicago’s investigation into police misconduct in the handling of McDonald’s fatal shooting but was denied on the grounds that Illinois’s FOIA law exempts inspector general investigations....

Getty Images Spring Swap Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Leor Galil Single Mothers Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

AP Photo/Seth Perlman The press makes way too much of something little—Jim Oberweis’s vacation in Florida. It’s tricky for political writers to frame a campaign story just before an election. Whether the story’s about a big deal or small potatoes will probably depend on the framing. Oberweis’s days in Florida were fair game for his opponent, who said they showed Oberweis’s lack of commitment to the Senate race and called him a “timid snowbird....

In this week’s issue Ben Sachs looks at Yona, a biopic of poet Yona Wallach that screens as part of the Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema. And we’ve got new reviews of: The Amazing Nina Simone, a documentary about the trailblazing singer and composer; Experimenter, starring Peter Sarsgaard as the controversial psychologist Stanley Milgram; Modern Metropolis: Mid-Century Chicago on Film, a program of architecturally relevant shorts from the vaults of the Chicago Film Archives; Rock the Kasbah, with Bill Murray as a washed-up music manager who goes to Afghanistan and shepherds a Pashtun teenager onto the reality show Afghan Star; and Room, the latest from director Lenny Abrahamson (Frank), about a woman and her young son held captive for years....

It’s part cabaret, part variety event, and part burlesque. Its overarching themes are body positivity, self-love, and acceptance: “Everybody, no matter what your body” is its mantra. Its cast is made up of a rotating assembly of professional and nonprofessional performers, dancers, and singers. And since its debut in 2009, The Fly Honey Show has moved from an intimate loft space to, as of this summer, the 150-seat Den Theatre. This year’s run is the production’s most ambitious season yet....

Click the “all shows” link at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe site and you get 3,556 results. By comparison I count 46 for the Chicago Fringe Festival, excluding special features like the No Shame Open Mic and the Misfits Carnivale—a differential of about 77 to one. To be fair, the Edinburgh event has run every summer since 1947, lasts 25 days, and originated the very concept of a fringe, whereas ours is in its sixth year and lasts two weekends....

From Resnais’s sci-fi romance Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1968) I’ve read that André Breton and his surrealist compatriots would sometimes spend the evening going from one movie theater to another. They’d show up to a film after it had started, stay until they could figure out the plot, then leave so they could repeat the process with another film. This game was consistent with the surrealists’ mission of locating the nonsensical within the everyday and divining a hidden logic within the nonsensical....

Dan Steinberg/AP Photos George Lucas’s namesake museum gets an architect. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced today that the hot, young Chinese firm MAD Architects will design the building the museum is proposing to erect on two contested lakefront parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place. The selection of MAD may not be a game changer—it doesn’t negate questions about the site, the mission, and the collection—but at least it promises a building that’s a galaxy or two removed from the klutzy Spanish revival box Lucas had proposed for the location he originally wanted in San Francisco’s Presidio Park....