I confess: I was not excited about the opening of the Malibu Barbie Cafe Chicago. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Barbie. I feel like Mattel has done a great job of expanding the Barbie line to include a wide variety of ridiculously stylish characters (yes, their outfits are fabulous). I was delighted […]
Tag: Vol. 52 No. 20
Issue of July 13, 2023
On the cover: “Claes Oldenburg’s Chicago: A pop art luminary and his hometown”
David Isaacson takes stock of the career of a distinctly Chicago artist.
Photo Credit by Kirk Williamson for Chicago Reader
Find a print copy of the Reader.
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Posted inFeature
‘Just trying to help him stay alive’
Sheila Haennicke was woken up around 2 AM on November 16, 2021, by an Oak Park policeman who informed her and her husband that their 29-year-old son was found unresponsive and his body was at Ascension Resurrection Hospital. In the hours before, Sheila Haennicke’s son, David Haennicke, died of an accidental overdose on the CTA […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago percussionist and composer Sam Scranton merges introspection and jittery energy on Body Pillow
On his new solo album, Body Pillow, Chicago percussionist, composer, and improviser Sam Scranton presents a menagerie of immersive, bubbly electronics. I’d become familiar with Scranton through his work with local new-music ensemble Honestly Same, so I expected this record to be an electroacoustic sound pastiche—along the lines of The Ceiling Reposes, a stunning album […]
Posted inMusic Review
Sleep Sinatra and Televangel give listeners a taste of Nebraska hip-hop on Incorruptible Saints
Midwest hip-hop is alive and well in . . . Lincoln, Nebraska? The richness of Lincoln’s hip-hop scene may go largely unnoticed by mainstream fans, but that doesn’t negate the subterranean greatness of local stalwarts such as Adrian Madlock, who makes music as Sleep Sinatra. Sleep’s discography is bountiful and aggressively independent; his Bandcamp page […]
Posted inOn Politics
The Delmarie plan for the Bears’s new stadium
In a case of perfect timing, the MAGA six handed down their decision annihilating affirmative action in the name of “meritocracy” as another local municipality offered the Bears a handout they, the Bears, didn’t need, deserve, or earn. Proving, again, that meritocracy doesn’t exist in the real world—only in the fantasies of MAGA Supreme Court […]
Posted inMusic
Footwork pioneer RP Boo mines mundane details for dance-floor thrills
Like basically anyone who works or plays in a developed country, I’m familiar with the frustrations of technology that stops working properly—it bothers me irrationally that I have to really lean on my laptop’s “R” key to get the letter to appear. Sometimes I repeatedly hammer on the errant key, which produces spelling errors rather […]
Posted inMusic
Veruca Salt’s Louise Post comes home with her debut solo record, Sleepwalker
UPDATE Wed 7/19: This show is canceled. Louise Post has postponed the entire remainder of this tour due to illness. New dates will be announced soon, and refunds are available at point of purchase. It’s been nearly a decade since Louise Post played at Lincoln Hall. At that time the guitarist and singer was in […]
Posted inMusic
Ariel Zetina brings an inspiring queer community to Pitchfork
In just over a week, Ariel Zetina debuts a live performance of her brazen 2022 album, Cyclorama, at the Pitchfork Music Festival. When it dropped, Zetina described the album as “an imagined theatrical production,” and this week that production takes its next step: onto the Green Stage in Union Park early next Sunday afternoon. Building […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Claes Oldenburg’s Chicago
At the corner of Madison and Jefferson in Chicago stands a 100-foot-high baseball bat, constructed in a lattice pattern from 20 tons of steel. It is the largest sculpture created by the artist Claes Oldenburg, a man from whose mind sprang any number of super-sized objects: a 45-foot tall clothespin in Philadelphia, a 29-foot-long spoon […]
Posted inMusic
Algeria’s Imarhan celebrate resilience and tradition through globally informed desert rock
Imarhan emerged from southern Algeria’s close-knit Tuareg community in 2006. Fans of Tuareg rock greats Tinariwen will already be familiar with the quintet; Imarhan front man Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane (aka Sadam) is a cousin of Tinariwen bassist Eyadou Ag Leche, and he’s toured with the band to fill in for members who couldn’t go […]
Posted inFilm
A local industry renaissance
Film and television production in Chicago still lacks the resources, glamour, and consistency of opportunity found on the coasts—but you can’t build Chicago’s community and authenticity in a Hollywood hangar.
Posted inMusic
The Magic Number convenes six veteran improvisers for an unprecedented celebration of creative uncertainty
The Magic Number is three. It’s the number of musicians that gallerist, record label proprietor, and music scholar John Corbett deems to be ideal for an improvisational encounter. And since he’s organizing this event—which coincides with his observation of a significant birthday that’s divisible by three—he gets to pick the terms of engagement under which […]
Posted inTheater Review
Spongeworthy
The SpongeBob Musical had its pre-Broadway run here in 2016. I missed that, but I can’t imagine it was any more delightful than what Kokandy Productions has concocted in the basement at the Chopin. Stephen Hillenburg’s Nickelodeon series about the plucky and absorbent title character inspired this toe-tapping, whimsical explosion featuring songs by a murderers’ […]
Posted inTheater Review
Shakespearean shaggy dog
For Midsommer Flight’s tenth annual production of free Shakespeare in Chicago’s parks, the company has chosen as shaggy a dog story as the Bard had in his quiver. In ancient Britain, Princess Imogen secretly weds Posthumus to get out of marrying her stepmother’s odious son, Cloten. What follows includes (but is not limited to) alleged […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Anatomy of an intervention
Incidents like this happen, or almost happen, on the CTA every day, so why am I telling you about this one?