Since 2011, Chicago graffiti artist and hip-hop documentarian Flash ABC has overseen Project Logan, a four-sided permission wall that encircles a 3,300-square-foot plot of land between Fullerton and Medill Avenues just west of Milwaukee Avenue. Over the past five years, Flash has helped hundreds of artists showcase their graffiti skills and provided Logan Square with a flood of public artwork. Project Logan’s walls have paid tribute to fallen hip-hop heroes, from Steff Skills’s mural honoring Tribe Called Quest MC Phife Dawg to Dream and Werm One’s recent homage to local underground rapper Mic One....

The first and with any luck only virtual Lollapalooza is under way. From Thursday through Sunday, the festival’s YouTube channel is presenting a mix of streaming sets and rebroadcasts of performances from Lollas past. But as with most things in 2020, it’s not without controversy. Twitter user @riellayes posted in response to a statement DCASE gave the Tribune following the incident. “DCASE says these showcases are ‘not intended to provide a platform for public discourse and debate’ and asked Sen to ‘remove personal viewpoints from the concert,’” they wrote....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, October 8, 2016. Investigating the Chicago police’s controversial “code of silence” Journalist and Invisible Institute founder Jamie Kalven has done groundbreaking work on police brutality, including the Laquan McDonald case, for years. His latest investigation focuses on the Chicago Police Department’s “code of silence.” The four-part investigation offers a fascinating and rare glimpse into the inner workings of the police. [The Intercept]

Director Penelope Spheeris began filming The Decline of Western Civilization, a documentary about LA’s raucous punk community, in 1979. That film, released in 1981, spawned a trilogy connected by name, location, and music, but the songs that play in each film don’t exactly mesh. The first follow-up, 1988’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, focuses on the glam-metal scene that turned the Sunset Strip into a magnet for gaudy hairballs; the final chapter, 1998’s The Decline of Western Civilization III, lightly touches upon politically conscious hardcore bands, but mainly focuses on the lives of a gaggle of teenage crust punks as they panhandle and get wasted....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. International Contemporary Ensemble, On the Nature of Thingness: Music by Phyllis Chen and Nathan Davis Keyboardist Phyllis Chen and percussionist Nathan Davis are terrific composers and key members of New York’s International Contemporary Ensemble. This 2016 release collects ICE commissions from both, including toy-­piano works by Chen (such as “Chimers”) and Davis’s four-­movement title piece, a tour de force for soprano Tony Arnold and a large ensemble....

Like so much else in the Trump era, declaring bankruptcy has come to seem like business as usual. After all, Trump’s companies have done it numerous times. So a tiff over Web design brings elephant and flea jokes to mind. According to the bankruptcy documents, Lillstreet contracted in 2015 with Trilogy Interactive, a national firm with a Ravenswood office, to redevelop its website. The cost was to be no more than $137,050 and work was to be completed by September 5, 2015....

As the Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once cautioned, there’s danger in a single story. Those words of wisdom could be readily applied to black women and their voting motivations in this election cycle. For black women in Chicago on Tuesday night, their reasons for voting—and who they voted for—spanned the spectrum. On the south side, black women voters at precincts in Ashburn and Hyde Park were as much motivated by voting for a woman president as they were by mobilizing against a Trump presidency....

UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. In 2013, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum wrote an article for Wired magazine titled “The Imperfect Myth of the Female Poisoner” that dispelled the persistent cultural assumption that, as far as murder methods go, homicides-by-poisoning are inherently ladylike. “It’s not, you see, that poison is a woman’s weapon,” says Blum. “It’s that it is an evil one....

Live music has helped keep the silent cinema alive, and Chicago is such a rich music town that revivals of silent features often rank among the more promising events on the fall arts calendar. On October 2 the University of Chicago Film Studies Center will welcome the inventive Alloy Orchestra to Logan Center for the Arts to premiere its score for Varieté (1925), a German melodrama starring Emil Jannings as a middle-aged carnival barker who falls for a beautiful young trapeze artist....

From the editorial page of the New York Times: “Last week an openly gay man, Eric Fanning, became secretary of the Army. Read that sentence again and contemplate what it reveals about how much and how quickly American society has changed.” From Times op-ed columnist David Brooks: “We expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough.” Read that sentence again and contemplate what it reveals about how much and how quickly American society hasn’t changed....

Sally Hawkins may be winning accolades for her performance in The Shape of Water, though I imagine her work in Paddington 2 (which is also currently playing in wide release) was no less challenging. In both films, Hawkins is called upon to convey an intimate, loving relationship with a nonhuman character and sustain the illusion that an imaginary creation exists in the real world. It’s even possible that the challenge of acting in Paddington 2 was greater than that of acting in Water: whereas the Amphibian Man of the later film was played by an actor in a costume—thereby giving Hawkins someone to act with and react to on set—the title character of Paddington 2 was created largely in post-production with digital effects....

ARTIST: Stacey ChapmanSHOW: Darling, Valaska, and Love Raid at Schubas on Wed 4/15MORE INFO: jealous-type.com

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. The story is long. But so is the basketball championship season. Joravsky thoughtfully organized the whole thing in short sections that read like diary entries. Draw it out. Savor it. I wanted Terrell to sink those shots because in 23 years of coaching Manny Weincord had never won a basketball title....

Not only is 2020 the Year of Chicago Music, it’s also the 35th year for the nonprofit Arts & Business Council of Chicago (A&BC), which supports creatives and their organizations citywide with business expertise and training. To celebrate, the A&BC has launched the #ChiMusic35 campaign at ChiMusic35.com, which includes a public poll to determine the consensus 35 greatest moments in Chicago music history as well as a raffle to benefit the A&BC’s work supporting creative communities struggling with the impact of COVID-19 in the city’s disinvested neighborhoods....

Dutch outfit Clan of Xymox swirled and swept their dramatic, electronics-saturated way onto the international stage in the early 80s as part of the stable of artists on 4AD—the label that helped set the era’s standard for quality postpunk. Originally a four-piece led by a trio of songwriters—Ronny Moorings, Anka Wolbert, and Pieter Nooten—the band rapidly became a bit of a soap opera, with various parties wrestling for control. By the early 90s, Moorings was the last original member standing, and he’s been steering the ship ever since, touring as Xymox for a few years before reverting to the full name in 1997....

In the before times, Saturdays were filled with cocktails, sequins, queer DJs, and performances. My Saturdays look a lot different nowadays and my Sundays are a little less hungover. Before, I would be plotting, planning, and scheduling days to dance and surround myself with other dancing bodies. Since 2017, the lifestyle and event brand Peach has celebrated LGBTQ women and nonbinary folks with music, drinks, food, and dancing. The parties Peach threw at Market Days and Bad Hunter created a safe space for femme folks to join a community of anywhere from 70 to 400 people....