Is there life after Cubs home World Series games and candy corn? We think yes—in fact, there’s plenty to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Mon 10/31: More than 2,000 costumed Chicagoans march through Boystown during the 20th anniversary edition of the Northalsted Halloween Parade (Belmont and Halsted). It’s preceded by the Ruby Red Relay, in which local business owners race in drag to raise money for the Legacy Project....

After two decades of performances at the Auditorium Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet will move its company to the Lyric Opera House at the conclusion of the 2019-2020 season, making this year the last holiday season during which Christopher’s Wheeldon’s version of The Nutcracker will grace the Auditorium Theatre’s stage. Ahead of this big step forward for the company, Gregg Benkovich, shoe manager for the Joffrey Ballet, helped crunch the numbers on the overwhelming numbers of slipper- and pointe-shoe-clad smaller steps (as well as assemblés, pirouettes, and arabesques) that will have preceded the move next season....

Inside the Parmer Activity Center of De La Salle Institute in Bronzeville on April 24, the low rumble of some 2,500 voices mixed with the frenetic howl of Guns N’ Roses. Then, out of the darkness, the noise of the crowd rose into a thunder as the two men in the center ring attacked. You could practically smell the testosterone in the murky mix of sweat and beer in the air....

Often, as I’ve strolled past the colorful storefronts of Chicago’s Chinatown, I’ve noticed many cheap department-store-type mountain bikes—Huffys, Murrays, and Magnas—cable-locked to racks, poles, and fences along Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue. I wondered if they belonged to recent immigrants to the neighborhood, toiling at blue-collar jobs in pursuit of the American dream. “Many residents, and especially workers in Chinatown’s core, use bicycles as their main form of transportation,” according to the vision plan....

Since the Chicago Blackhawks debuted the Fratellis’ “Chelsea Dagger” as its goal-celebration song in late 2008, the team has won the Stanley Cup three times. During every championship run, “Chelsea Dagger” has become as inescapable as “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” the day after Thanksgiving—and it remains just as irritating when you’re subjected to it over and over. In a 2013 Reader essay, Aimee Levitt calls it “one of the most annoying songs ever recorded,” part of a chorus of complaints about “Chelsea Dagger” that has mounted over the years—complaints I’d endure read aloud in their entirety rather than listen to the ploddingly delivered gibberish the Fratellis pass off as a hook....

Reflecting on the sexual misconduct allegations against Charlie Rose Tuesday morning on CBS, Gayle King voiced some thoughts that may be floating through many people’s minds these days: “I’m really struggling because how do you . . . what do you say when someone that you deeply care about has done something that is so horrible?” she asked. “How do you wrap your brain around that? I’m really grappling with that....

Pandemic home remodeling provides a productive way to cope with quarantining and isolation. From fresh coats of paint to reenvisioned bedrooms, Chicagoans are getting crafty to stay sane indoors. While many have big dreams of modeling their kitchen like Friends‘ Monica Geller (complete with a yellow frame around the peephole), many of us don’t have the budget to invest in the necessary power tools to get the job done. “Membership fees cover the entire year, and it can cost whatever they want,” Vierk explains....

Although I’ve tried often in the past, I’ve never been particularly moved by the music made by either Shearwater or former Chicagoans Cross Record, but there’s something about Loma, the new project from Jonathan Meiburg of the former and Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski of the latter that’s gripped me these last few weeks. The group’s self-titled Sub Pop debut is a slow dazzler, with Cross at her most smoky and soulful, as the group unfurls melodies at a crawl worthy of Low....

This comic has been created for the Reader to document the year-long, citywide event series Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots. Coordinated by the Newberry Library and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the initiative seeks to address difficult history through community conversations across the city. v

A couple years ago, Naperville native Eric Johnson retired his long-running pop band, the Fruit Bats, opting to release an album under the name EDJ. At the time I found his decision a little odd, because Fruit Bats’ lineup had been shifting constantly from the beginning, both in their original Chicago incarnation and later in Portland, Oregon—how can you break up a band that doesn’t really exist? Earlier this year, when Johnson announced that Fruit Bats were returning—they dropped a new album called Absolute Loser (Easy Sound) last month—I was likewise at a loss to explain why....

This past weekend the 13th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival brought 36 performances by local, national, and international artists to more than a dozen venues and stages in and around Hyde Park. Saturday’s programming included two new works commissioned from Chicago composers in partnership with the U. of C.’s Logan Center for the Arts: Angel Bat Dawid‘s Requiem for Jazz and Isaiah Collier’s The Story of 400 Years, both of which employed large mixed-discipline ensembles to address the history of jazz, the history of slavery, and the African American experience....

In June rapper Kembe X, raised in suburban South Holland but now based in Los Angeles, sent the hip-hop rumor mill into overdrive when he posted a photo of himself wearing a chain with the TDE logo. For the uninitiated, that stands for Top Dawg Entertainment, the label behind LA rappers Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul, the four of whom make up the Black Hippy Crew. TDE has expanded its roster slowly in the past few years, signing Tennessee MC Isaiah Rashad and New Jersey singer SZA in 2013....

A few years ago, when diminishing page space became an issue at every print periodical in America, the Reader decided to quit listing suburban multiplexes because typically they showed only the same movies one could see in town. In the past year, however, more and more indie films have been opening in the distant suburbs but never in Chicago; sometimes these theatrical engagements are just loss leaders, meant to anchor publicity campaigns for the more lucrative business of video on demand....

Journalist and playwright Paula Kamen first began researching Jane, the underground feminist collective founded in Hyde Park that helped people find safe abortions in the pre-Roe v. Wade years, back in the early 1990s. The play she eventually created from interviews with those involved with Jane has had several iterations over the years, including a star-studded reading in New York in September featuring Cynthia Nixon, Ana Gasteyer, and Kathy Najimy (among others) done as a benefit for the pro-choice theater organization A is For....

For decades Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore seemed like the model artist couple—incontrovertibly cool, multifariously creative, and fiercely independent—but that illusion shattered in fall 2011, when they announced they were separating. They subsequently divorced, taking their main shared endeavor, Sonic Youth, down with them. Gordon kept quiet about the circumstances of the split until 2013, and her new memoir, Girl in a Band (Harper Collins), lays it all out—though she refers to the woman who had an affair with Moore only with “she” and “her....

Chicago is a writer’s town, from top to bottom. We have an excellent public library system, many great independent booksellers, and enough Sturm und Drang in every corner of the city to inspire pens to paper. Fans and fellow writers alike can make their way to reading events for poetry, fiction, and slice-of-life storytelling year-round, and 2019 brought us consistently interesting and dynamic work from writers at a myriad of venues....

In these dark days, when counterculture heroes of the 60s and 70s are dropping at an alarming rate, it’s important to take a break from mourning and assess who’s still standing—and who’s still creating vital art. By all rights, singer-songwriter Marianne Faithfull could have left us long ago. She rose to fame as much for her music as for her association with the famously debaucherous Rolling Stones camp in the late 60s, and she struggled with drug addiction, eating disorders, and homelessness at various times in the 70s and 80s....