New York City Archives - Chicago Reader

The City of Chicago Commits to Advertising Equity in Local Media

by Chicago Reader October 26, 2022October 26, 2022

Today, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot signed an Executive Order designating that City of Chicago departments allocate at least 50 percent of their annual advertising spending to community media outlets. More than 153 languages are spoken in households citywide, in addition to other diversity factors.

Arts & Culture

‘The way these people talk about themselves, you would think they were actually countries, not just actors’

by Donald Liebenson April 11, 2022April 11, 2022

Fran Lebowitz is coming to Chicago, which she considers to be one of two “real” American cities—the other, of course, is New York City, where she has lived since 1970 (a transplanted Jersey girl). She will be onstage April 15 at 7:30 PM at the Auditorium Theatre, where she will be engaged in conversation with […]

Wiki (two men standing on a rooftop) in a fishbowl style photo)

Music

Wiki and Navy Blue conjure their hometown New York through hypnotic hip-hop

by Tara C. Mahadevan December 8, 2021December 7, 2021

New York is an ever-present character on Wiki’s latest full-length, Half God. The rapper’s third studio album offers rich vignettes from his life set against the backdrop of his hometown and its narrative: snapshots of the nascent stages of a new romance, scenes from his Lower East Side neighborhood, observations of the gentrifiers who threaten […]

Pride is a celebration, but it also has its roots in a riot.

Columns & Opinion

No Pride in a police state

by Adam M. Rhodes June 3, 2021October 10, 2023

Do uniformed police belong at Pride parades?

Music

The Fire Still Burns as veteran jazz saxophonist Alan Braufman builds on his comeback

by Brad Cohan August 28, 2020August 18, 2021

One of the headiest of all avant-garde jazz heads is Alan Braufman. The veteran saxophonist, flutist, and composer has been wielding his polymathic wizardry since the early 1970s, when he helped put New York City’s loft-jazz movement on the map. But most younger listeners didn’t get their first chance to immerse themselves in his towering, […]

Music

Imperial Triumphant’s Alphaville soundtracks our civilizational suicide by capitalism

by Philip Montoro August 18, 2020September 14, 2022

The overlap between extreme metal and avant-garde improvised music is admittedly slight, but that tiny patch of ground produces some extravagantly bizarre fruits—among them New York City trio Imperial Triumphant. Drummer Kenny Grohowski frequently collaborates with downtown-scene daddy John Zorn, most notably performing his music in Simulacrum with guitarist Matt Hollenberg of Cleric and organist […]

Music

Buscabulla’s tropical soul vignettes distill the mixed blessings of returning home

by Catalina Maria Johnson May 15, 2020August 18, 2021

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, at least 130,000 people left Puerto Rico to live elsewhere. Yet in February 2018, Puerto Rican musicians Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo del Valle, aka experimental dream-pop duo Buscabulla (“Troublemaker” in English), returned to the island after nearly a decade in New York City. During those years, they’d become […]

Music

The most colorful parties in the city are Noire

by Matt Harvey July 25, 2019August 18, 2021

Nick Alder and Rae Chardonnay Taylor of Party Noire get to fun by going through respect, safety, community, and empowerment.

Blogs

Rahm & Rauner help Amazon play New York City and Virginia like a bunch of saps

by Ben Joravsky November 20, 2018August 18, 2021

Bringing Amazon HQ2 to Chicago was the dream of only Mayor Rahm and his faithful sidekick Governor Rauner—both of whom will be leaving office shortly, thank you very much.