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“We used to have a rhino on Ringling,” Jeff Jenkins says. This was back when he was a young clown in the Greatest Show on Earth. The rhino would charge fullspeed into its pen backstage the moment the show ended, sometimes dragging its handler on the floor behind it. It was terrifying. Today Jenkins is the ringmaster of Chicago’s Midnight Circus, which he cofounded in 1997. The circus employs a pit bull named Rosie....

Many rock ’n’ roll duos deal with economy of one sort or another. In the case of Philadelphia group Writhing Squares, it’s not a matter of compensating for thin arrangements: woodwind player Kevin Nickles and electric bassist and rhythm programmer Daniel Provenzano both sing and play synthesizers as well, and they can make so much noise on their own that there’s rarely room or need for other musicians. The overblown sax and ultracoarse fuzz of “Geisterwaltz,” from the new double album Chart for the Solution, sound as big and mean as the Funhouse-era Stooges might have if they’d been willing to tackle 3/4 time....

Recently, several articles appeared about the phenomenon of “Hygiene Theater”—the focus on largely ineffective COVID-19 safety measures like Clorox wipes and plexiglass dividers designed to give people a false sense of security indoors. Some in the theater industry are rapidly signing up for this new brand of drama, such as Broadway announcing that it will reopen at 100 percent capacity in September, eager to trade profits for the safety of its patrons and casts....

Q: I’m a 21-year-old woman, and I have an IUD. I’ve had sex with quite a few men, and one thing seems to be almost constant among them: trying to fuck without condoms. Many of the men I’ve been with seem to be perfectly fine and terribly eager to have sex without condoms. This has always angered me. They generally assume or make sure I’m on birth control, which they immediately take to mean condom-free sex is welcome....

Vic Mensa’s “U Mad” Ever since Vic Mensa crawled up next to Kanye West during the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special in February the young Save Money rapper has been making big moves to establish himself as an artist to watch, particularly for a pop audience that generally doesn’t pay attention to too many rappers not named Kanye West. So far this year Mensa has appeared on two of West’s new singles (“Wolves” and “All Day”), roped West to guest on a single of his own called “U Mad,” and signed to Jay Z’s Roc Nation in April....

Mother-daughter relationships in cinema rarely progress beyond adolescent displays of irritation, embarrassment, and angst. The antagonists may be an overbearing mother and her disobedient daughter (Pride & Prejudice, Titanic) or a cool mom and her selfish, narcissistic teen (Amy Poehler and Rachel McAdams, respectively, in Mean Girls). Jean-Marc Vallee’s Wild—adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s nonfiction book about her struggle with grief and addiction as she trekked across the Pacific Crest Trail—is something different, a multifaceted exposition of a mother-daughter connection so extraordinary and difficult it ranks with the ones in Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003)....

Time to plan the week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 2/16: Daytime markets are overrated; embrace the nocturnal lifestyle and shop for custom food items, art, and crafts at the Sauced Night Market at Emporium Arcade Bar (2363 N. Milwaukee). Tonight’s vendors include Barleywick, Happy Lobster, and Middle Brow Beer. 6-11 PM For more stuff to do this week—and every day—check out Agenda.

There’s little overlap in the Venn diagram that connects Drake and Fall Out Boy, but one definitive commonality is that they’ve both worked with Nigerian Afrobeat star Damini Ogulu, better known as Burna Boy; he contributes vocals to Fall Out Boy’s recent Mania and claims he wrote five tracks for Drake’s More Life, of which one was selected and largely reworked for the album (his lone contribution remains uncredited). Both Drake and Fall Out Boy have established track records of partnering with fast-rising acts or superstars—the former has been accused of being a culture vulture too many times to count—and it makes sense that they’d both find roads to Burna Boy, whose sense of pop is so universal it could move the entire world....

I made no secret of how much I love Mom’s, Kelly Ijichi and Randi Howri’s yoshoku tribute to Japanese comfort food in Politan Row. But I will admit suffering some disappointment when I first showed up and learned that their soba noodles were not freshly handmade, as advertised on their online menu. That’s OK—the Spam musubi, katsu sando, and fresh handmade udon more than made up for it. Later, after some pestering, HBFC chef Christine Cikowksi told me it’s inspired by a fresh soba noodle salad served at the late Soba Nippon in Manhattan (it’s survived by Nippon, on 52nd Street, which is still serving it)....

Buoyed by the interest and attention brought on by the Reader’s feature, Chicago criminal defense attorney Stuart V. Goldberg decided to finally release his autobiographical novel The Snake Charmer. But finding Goldberg proved difficult, since, as he explained to the Reader, he doesn’t use e-mail and almost never goes to his office. “It took me about a month of pestering him,” said Kight. “I left information for him at his office and even at his home....

Chicago (mostly) instrumental progressive-metal favorites Pelican produced full-lengths on a fairly regular schedule throughout the 00s, but that reliability began to break down when the decade flipped to the 10s. Four years passed between What We All Come to Need and Forever Becoming, the first album with Dallas Thomas of the Swan King stepping in for original guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec. It’s taken Pelican another six years to release their brand new Nighttime Stories, but listening to it and learning some of the history behind it provide perspective on the delay....

Joshua Lott/Getty Images Rahm Emanuel got lots of love from lakefront voters. Among the casualties in Tuesday’s runoff election—along with my short but brilliant career as a political prognosticator—was the concept of the lakefront liberal. Bolstered by youthful idealism, many of these young boomers rose up against the machine politics of Mayor Richard J. Daley. Who were sort of like the Scott Waguespacks and John Arenas of their day....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

It’s time once again for the Printers Row Lit Fest, which combines three of the greatest pleasures in life: walking, talking about books, and the serendipitous discovery of new books (sometimes at incredible prices). The fest goes on all weekend in the south Loop near the intersection of Dearborn and Polk with events inside Jones College Prep (700 S. State). Arlene Stein and Rebecca Makkai, noon Stein is a sociologist and professor and the author of Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity, which follows four strangers who meet in Florida while awaiting top surgery....

Thaddis “Kuk” Harrell is one of the music industry’s preeminent vocal producers, in charge of coaxing unforgettable studio performances out of top-tier stars. He compares his process to a therapy session—to capture distinctive, compelling performances, he has to connect with musicians and dig into their emotional cores. Harrell has a gift for doing this, to judge by his resumé—it reads like a who’s who of the Top 40. He’s worked with Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Mary J....

Alexander Dodge concocts a crafty set design for Chicago Shakespeare’s decidedly uncrafty Othello. A sterile, brutalist facade of identical institutional windows, looking for all the world like a maximum security DMV, represents Venice. Its impersonal menace deftly conveys the unreflexive militarism that permeates Shakespeare’s world, a place where the mercenary known as Othello the Moor, who boasts he’s known nothing but soldiering since the age of eight, achieves near mythic status as a war hero....

This story was originally published by City Bureau on September 2, 2020. The citywide primary turnout was 38 percent, according to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, a bit higher than the final turnout during the 2018 March primary at 32 percent. To prepare for an expected high turnout in November, election officials are now taking steps to secure safe voting locations with more space, promote mail-in voting, and push for the early recruitment of younger election judges to avoid another shortage....

On February 14, 2018, Katrina Jabbi and her husband Buba needed a distraction. Buba had a meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the next day. A few months earlier Buba received notice that ICE had bumped his appointment date up by six months, from June 2018 to December 2017. He had to work on the new date, so he contacted the agency to reschedule. They moved his appointment to February 2018....