It’s time to perfect your margarita. According to bartender Rachel Miller, focusing on summery cocktails is one of the best ways to get through Chicago’s harsh winter months. Want to lean into the season? She suggests classic cocktails that are dark and spirit forward or maybe investing in a bottle of bénédictine, which she describes as an audacious spiced liqueur. And as one of the co-owners of Kit: A Bar Supply Store in Irving Park, she is more than ready to provide the tools to help you make whatever cocktail you please....

Jackie Taylor, the founder and leading light of the Black Ensemble Theatre, has spent her career penning and producing biographical musicals recounting the lives of prominent African-American musicians, most of whom are associated in some way with Chicago. These shows are always packed wall-to-wall with classic tunes, passionately sung by a cast of terrific singers and backed by an impressive band. The Black Ensemble’s current show, focusing on gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, follows this formula exactly....

Welcome to the Reader’s morning briefing for Monday, February 1, 2016. A new low for Rahm A new poll shows that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has not recovered from the Laquan McDonald video crisis. A majority of Chicagoans—63 percent—disapprove of his job performance and a measly 27 percent approve. It’s also a big blow for the mayor that nearly 75 percent of Chicagoans don’t believe his account of how he learned of McDonald’s death....

Next Dave Beran: The Animated Adventures Are we getting a more whimsical Next this year? That’s certainly implied by the tone of the animated teaser for Next: Paris Bistro (not to be confused with Next Door Bistro in Skokie), which even includes cartoon versions of chefs Dave Beran and Grant Achatz. (I’m still waiting for the action figures we were promised years ago.) To Django Reinhardt’s version of “Chicago,” we see hints at classic bistro dishes like baked oysters Coquilles St....

Revisiting the two albums the Breeders made with drummer Jose Medeles and bassist Mando Lopez, 2002’s Title TK and 2008’s Mountain Battles, I realized I desperately wanted them to be better than they were—I hoped with futility that sisters Kim and Kelley Deal could reclaim the genius of their 1993 masterpiece, Last Splash, and its hit single “Cannonball.” A few years ago they repaired the schism with drummer Jim Macpherson and bassist Josephine Wiggs that ruptured the lineup responsible for that record, and in March the Breeders released a new album, All Nerve (4AD), which also falls short of Last Splash....

New York power-electronics duo Sibling was started by Jacob Winans and Lux Philips shortly after they met at a May 2017 show at Brooklyn DIY arts space/music venue Heck, where Philips was tattooing concertgoers in the basement (in an e-mail to me, he recalls giving Winans “a fucked up clown face on their abdomen”). Soon after, Philips was slated to play a solo set at another venue, but instead Winans joined him for an unpracticed, spur-of-the-moment collaboration....

My friend George is 11 and grew up on the south side of Chicago. He’s a CPS student just finishing off the sixth grade. I’ve been friends with George since his birth—his parents are two of my best friends. George is an avid online gamer so we chatted about his favorites (and to his credit, he did not roll his eyes at me while I told him my GenX stories about playing Ms....

Among the thousands, perhaps millions, of Zoom video-chat meetings that transpired across the locked-down country on March 26, one was convened for Chicago landlords. Some 150 participants tuned in throughout the session, including corporate property managers, mom-and-pop operators, and even former 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore. Two local groups representing landlords, the South Side Community Investors Association and the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance, called the meeting for south-side landlords in particular to discuss the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Lettuce restaurants is the platform that continues to elevated our food scene, providing an entryway into new cuisines. Plus, they can travel through time. Note Ed Debevic’s, a re-creation of a 1950’s diner, rude servers and all. The staff occasionally danced on the counter, too. Plus, people who didn’t understand the sassy server conceit got pretty offended, which is still pretty funny to watch....

Presented by Chicago Shakespeare Theater as part of Shakespeare 400 Chicago (a yearlong, citywide tribute to the Bard on the 400th anniversary of his shuffling off, mortal-coil-wise), this collaboration between Moscow’s Pushkin Theatre and London-based Cheek by Jowl puts a wobbly but exhilarating spin on an especially problematic problem play. Measure for Measure is notoriously creepy, only partly because it concerns a prim bureaucrat named Angelo who tries to coerce a novice nun into sleeping with him....

In the summer of 1940, six-year-old Beno Weiss’s family was awakened by pounding on the door of their home in Abbazia, then in northeast Italy. It was a year and a half after Benito Mussolini had bowed to the influence of Nazi Germany and passed the Italian Racial Laws, which stripped civil rights from Italian Jews. “Pandemonium broke out,” according to Beno’s widow, Susan. Both King’s and Reilly’s offices said the aldermen are still open to renaming the drive after a worthy Chicagoan....

Mick Jenkins Water represents knowledge and life force to south-side rapper Mick Jenkins. On his breakout 2014 mixtape, The Water[s], he glides through cerebral raps about the systemic oppression of black populations and the struggles that young people of color undergo to escape the traps society lays for them—even his knottiest, most complicated rhyming goes down easy, thanks to his magnetic personality, the resplendent soul-influenced instrumentals, and the concepts for water that flow through and unify it....

Tomorrow night local trio Facs celebrate the release of their stark debut album, Negative Houses (Trouble in Mind), with a headlining set at the Empty Bottle. As regular readers of Gossip Wolf already know, the band made their live debut in early 2017, emerging during a hiatus by Disappears, the long-running band fronted by Facs singer and guitarist Brian Case. (Disappears bassist Damon Carruesco had left, and at this point the hiatus looks to be permanent....

In a year of upheaval, perhaps no Chicago theater company has seen more of it than the Company Formerly Known as Pride Films and Plays. Rocked by social media allegations that founder David Zak (a pioneer of LGBTQ+ theater in Chicago) had either engaged in patterns of abuse and harassment toward actors and staff or ignored such incidents from others involved in the company (as well as wide-ranging complaints about the general safety and hygiene of the rehearsal and performance spaces), Zak announced he was stepping away on July 3 of last year....

For those of you who don’t know the lingo, let me explain. Listen instead to what Pritzker said in a conversation with another powerful white man that we weren’t supposed to hear. Crass, just to be clear, is an adjective that means “lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence.” They just got caught. We’re used to that brand of racism. The way Pritzker talks in code, though, stokes the greatest fears of black folk who navigate white spaces or welcome whites into theirs....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, July 29, 2016. Under Superintendent Garry McCarthy, stop and frisk was one of the Chicago Police Department’s main strategies for deterring criminals, according to WBEZ. The method is supposed to discourage people from carrying weapons or drugs. But during the first six months of 2016 (and without McCarthy), stops were down 84.1 percent from the first six months of 2015, according to data obtained by WBEZ through a Freedom of Information Act request....

The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with The TRiiBE that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Phor Robinson has the whole hood standing in the middle of 87th and University Avenue, like he’s about to shoot a music video. “Marynook, to be exact. This is where I grew up,” he says, before taking us on a walking tour. Phor actually has made a video in Marynook....

Tanya Lozano danced in the streets. It was election day and We Got Us, an arm of her organization Healthy Hood, was hosting a “Survival Day” on Chicago’s south side to encourage local residents to vote and look after their health. We Got Us offered hot meals, flu shots, HIV and COVID-19 testing, and boxes of fresh produce, free of charge to those who showed proof of having voted. The Lozano legacy, spearheaded by three generations of unapologetic women activists, has not lost its fire....

Saint Louis-born rapper-singer Smino taps two MCs from his Chicago-based Zero Fatigue collective, Bari and Jay2, for “Z4L,” the best song on his 2018 album, Noir. Jay2 appears at the end, caressing the track’s minimal, sexually suggestive instrumental with his firm flow and supple voice. He needs all of his well-earned self-assurance to handle the clusters of beats and unstable synths employed by Zero Fatigue producer Monte Booker, who also produced the majority of Jay2’s new EP, 4 Tha Wait (Zero Fatigue/Downtown/Interscope)....

AP Photo/Las Vegas News Bureau, Steve Spatafore, File Kris Bryant, after homering in March during a spring training game in Las Vegas. Twelve days ago, the Cubs opened their 2015 season with a 3-0 loss to the Cardinals at Wrigley. But the north-siders didn’t have their real third baseman. Kris Bryant was serving a sentence at Triple-A Iowa. Mike Olt played third, and went 0-4 with two strikeouts. Olt, 26, was a phenon himself a few years ago....