If you were a Bloomie’s Chicago customer at the River North store, you won’t be hugely surprised when you walk into Bally’s new pop-up casino in the 111-year-old Medinah Temple. Bloomingdale’s saved this massive Moorish Revival architectural fantasy (at 600 N. Wabash) from demolition when it opened a store there in 2003, restoring the dome-topped […]
Posted inArts & Culture
‘We don’t want to get bigger. We want to get deeper.’
This week, we’re kicking off a new occasional series, Stages of Survival, spotlighting theater companies that are, despite the pervasive gloom-and-doom narratives about the performing arts, still producing. The plan is to eventually encompass a broad range of companies: Equity and non-Equity, those that are itinerant and those that have their own spaces, and companies […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Setting the stage for queer stories
One of Chicago’s greatest treasures for its LGBTQ+ community and its allies is the city’s queer theater scene. As the 2023–24 season kicks in, there will be no shortage of queer stories playing out on Chicago’s stages. Uptown-based LGBTQ+ theater stalwart PrideArts got an early start, kicking off its fall season back in August with […]
Posted inPress releases
[PRESS RELEASE] GRAMMY Award winner Peter CottonTale headlines Chicago Reader’s Annual UnGala Celebration
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CHICAGO, September 20, 2023 – Chicago Reader announced today that multi-platinum recording artist and producer Peter CottonTale, who has collaborated with Chance the Rapper, SZA, and others, will be headlining its second annual Reader UnGala Celebration on October 18, 2023. Held at Epiphany Center for the Arts, the evening will begin at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
‘125 is feeling very good’
Because Chicago is so well known for its “Magnificent Mile” retail district—North Michigan Avenue between Oak Street and the Chicago River—it’s all too easy to overlook, or take for granted, the importance of what can be called the city’s cultural corridor: Michigan Avenue stretching south from the river to Roosevelt Road. What an extraordinary array […]
Sponsored
Help end Alzheimer’s with your purchase of a Wild Tripler Win ticket from the Illinois Lottery
Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) impact people of every walk of life. In 2020, Illinois Lottery launched a new specialty Instant Lottery ticket called The End of Alzheimer’s Begins With Me, designating 100 percent of its profits to the Alzheimer’s Association, Illinois Chapter. To date, the Illinois Lottery has raised more than $3 million […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Biennial as experimentation
In 2017, a barge drifted along the Chicago River. It wasn’t carrying the usual Ozinga concrete or gravel; instead it floated a museum. Produced by the Floating Museum, an interdisciplinary collective comprised of architect Andrew Schachman, artists Faheem Majeed and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, and poet avery r. young, the museum barge showcased artwork from dozens of […]
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Dive Bistro creates a Waffle House à la campagne at the next Monday Night Foodball
At La Maison de la Gaufre in the tiny French village of Pourriture, they serve boudin noir Big Macs with pork blood Special Sauce until the sun comes up. It was a life-changing, late-night hangover helper at this mythical oasis that inspired chefs Kevin Ealey, Joy Kirkland, and John Dahlstrom to unite under the banner […]
Posted inMusic
The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2023
In July, I attended a community meeting at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater about the city’s plan to turn the Park District facility into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers. A group of protesters, angry that much of the armory’s programming would be relocated or otherwise disrupted, carried bright yellow signs reading “Don’t Displace Us.” […]
Posted inMusic
Melody Angel brings tough-minded, celebratory blues to Chicago Live! on Navy Pier
This concert is something of a homecoming for Chicago blues guitarist and singer Melody Angel, who’s wrapping up the first major tour of her career in support of her latest self-released album, Indie Blues Girl, which came out in June. By Angel’s own account, the album represents an affirmation of identity and a celebration of […]
Posted inIssues
The Reader’s Guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2023
Chicago Reader Volume 52, Number 20. July 13, 2023
Posted inGossip Wolf
Hammered dulcimer player Joel Styzens celebrates a lushly orchestrated new solo album
Gossip Wolf first became acquainted with multi-instrumentalist Joel Styzens via his remarkable hammered dulcimer playing on the Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble album III, which Reader writer Bill Meyer praised in May for its attempts at “musical transcendence.” As you might expect from that record’s shimmering acoustic textures and accessible melodies, Styzens’s own compositions play out across […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Gratuity included
Editor’s note: On September 20, the Workforce Development Committee voted 9–3 to advance the ordinance ending Chicago’s subminimum wage to the full city council. A proposed ordinance moving through the complicated world of city council committees would require businesses to pay their tipped employees—like bartenders, bussers, and servers—at the statewide $15.80-per-hour minimum wage instead of […]
Posted inMusic
Cold Waves XI presents four days of dark music to support mental health
The Cold Waves festival was founded in Chicago in 2012 as a memorial for local sound engineer and musician Jamie Duffy, who’d played in industrial groups Acumen Nation and DJ? Acucrack. It began as a one-day concert packed with the darkwave and industrial music that Duffy loved, and it raised money for his family and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The sacred and profound in Stephen Burks’s ‘Spirit Houses’
“Each morning I make my way to the large east-facing windows overlooking the Harlem River. Sage, photos of my Beloveds, candles, water and items too sacred to name adorn my makeshift altar—an antique wooden liquor stand turned ‘spirit house.’ . . . Imbued with the stories it holds and lives it has lived, my altar […]