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If recreational marijuana finally becomes legal in Illinois, driving to a cannabis dispensary will be as commonplace as swinging by the liquor store. But are Illinois police officers ready to keep the streets safe from a potential influx of stoned drivers? And can police even tell when a driver is stoned? The screening process can also include a toxicology exam involving a blood or urine test. A urine test is problematic, because the screening doesn’t return definitive results saying whether the person tested was under the influence of a specific drug at the time the test was taken, experts said....

Since 1990, local percussionists Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang have held annual sunrise concerts on the morning of the winter solstice. Over time the series has expanded to include performances on adjacent mornings as well as evening concerts that bring in the duo’s past and present collaborators. This year the final evening show promises to be something quite special. It will honor an association of Drake’s that began even earlier than the solstice series....

Jason Bourne has daddy issues, and he’ll stop at nothing to work them out. The fifth installment in the popular spy-thriller franchise about an amnesiac CIA assassin, Jason Bourne supposedly deals with such topical issues as cybersecurity and civil unrest, but the characters’ motivations for inflicting damage to people and property seem entirely personal. As the film opens, our hero (Matt Damon) is off the grid somewhere in Greece, making his living as a bare-knuckle brawler....

It all started with a fax. DeRogatis’s book Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly explores why it took so long to bring Kelly down. DeRogatis and then fellow reporter Abdon Pallasch published a detailed case against Kelly in the Chicago Sun-Times in late December 2000, but the claims seemed to slide right off the singer’s smooth persona. Barnes said along with the willful ignorance of Chicago fans, another obstacle to action was and remains the “pathological apathy” toward sexual violence in the Black community....

Eddie Palmieri will turn 81 in December, but the pianist and bandleader hardly seems ready for retirement. As one of the most revolutionary and paradigm-shifting figures in the history of Latin music, he’s certainly earned the right to take it easy, and while he’s definitely quieted down on the recording front, this year’s Sabiduría/Wisdom (Ropeadope)—his first new studio album in a dozen years—makes it clear his work isn’t finished. Working with a fiery new band of virtuosos including jazz heavies such as bassist Luques Curtis and drummer Obed Calvaire, Palmieri dives into a batch of originals from some of the angles he’s utilized over decades of musical innovation, melding soul, funk, and jazz with heavy salsa forms....

Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, newly elected alderman of the 33rd Ward, squeezed into the corner of a City Hall elevator, grinning and clutching a Starbucks cup. Others piled in only to disembark a few seconds later on the second floor, where dozens lined up to enter council chambers for the first meeting of Chicago’s legislature presided over by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. By 9:45 the aldermen streamed in. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, freshman alderman from the 25th Ward, explained to reelected 37th Ward alderman Emma Mitts how to pronounce “Sigcho....

No one in his right mind would accuse a filmmaker of having too much imagination, but French filmmaker Michel Gondry has so much that his flights of fancy can overwhelm his movies. When I think of Gondry, I often remember that dream sequence in The Science of Sleep (2006) in which Gael García Bernal gropes around with giant papier-mache hands—the director has an enormous hunger for ideas, but sometimes he can’t pick anything up....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, August 30, 2016. August isn’t over, but it’s already the most violent month in 20 years There is still another full day left of August, but it’s already the most violent month in Chicago in 20 years. There have been 84 homicides so far, the most in one month since October 1996, according to the Tribune. The city could still surpass the 85 homicides that occurred in October 1996 and the 90 that happened in June 1996....

If you’ve spent much time on the University of Chicago campus, you’ve heard the chiming bells of the Rockefeller Chapel carillon carrying across the grounds. I’d been hearing them for years before I learned how impressive the instrument actually is—the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon, installed in 1932 following a two-year casting process, includes 72 bells totaling 100 tons of bronze, controlled by an array of keys and pedals. Its low C bell is the third largest tuned bell in the world....

Jessica Risker has learned to enjoy playing music onstage, but it’s mostly a means to an end for her. “Being in a band is a necessity for what I actually enjoy most, which is writing songs and recording,” she says. She’s loved listening to and making music for her whole life—she took piano lessons as a child, learned flute and saxophone in school band programs, and taught herself guitar in high school in the late 90s—but it wasn’t till February 2007, when she was 28, that she finally finished a recording of her songs....

Moniker Records co-owner Jordan Reyes tells Gossip Wolf that he’s long planned to move back to Chicago from Minneapolis, and this month he became a local yokel again. Welcome back! As usual, Reyes has plenty on his plate, including a new tape label called American Damage with two releases on Friday, January 19. Autumn Casey of east-coast noise-rock duo Snakehole makes her solo debut with This Is No Dream, which Reyes describes as “a creepy piano/musique concréte type thing....

Back in 2016 when she was still practicing law in Chicago, Loy Webb spent four hours every other Saturday mentoring teen girls. It wasn’t potential lawyers crowding unused rehearsal rooms at the Goodman, eager to talk with Webb. The young women wanted to know about theater criticism, from analyzing sound design to cleaning up dangling participles. Webb spent a year with the Young Critics program, helping a team of nonmale critics usher in the coming generation....

Chicago has distinctive and well-manicured parks to be sure, but for a stroll off the beaten path on a nice day, local mentalist and magician Neil Tobin urges folks to explore the city’s cemeteries, the north side’s Rosehill in particular. “Most people completely overlook [them],” says Tobin, “because we’ve become a culture that tries really hard to ignore death. We happen to have a place in the middle of our city that occupies 350 acres right next to Andersonville....

Scott Olson/Getty Images You know campaign season is on when Mayor Rahm’s canvassers are out and about. I was walking down my block on a lovely Saturday afternoon—talking to the colorful political operative Frank Coconate on my cell phone—when I saw two canvassers for Mayor Rahm going door-to-door. “Fuck off,” the older guy said. With all this feuding, I may have to resort to some marijuana gummy bears—just to chill me out....

Many of this year’s hit movies have been sequels or remakes, though as Kyle Westphal of the Chicago Film Society likes to note, Hollywood has been recycling popular intellectual properties for generations. So for this week’s Movie Tuesday post, I thought I’d spotlight five remakes and sequels in American cinema that actually improve upon their predecessors. These are rare feats, considering that the film-based-on-another-film subgenre has got to be one of the hardest in which to produce an outright masterpiece....

Noisy Chicago indie-rock trio Geronimo! announced last year that they’d be calling it quits in early 2015, and to Gossip Wolf’s dismay, they’re staying true to their word. It looks like they’re taking their last live leap on Sat 3/28, playing a show at Beat Kitchen with Meat Wave, Foul Tip, Vaya, and Velocicopter. Next week Geronimo! will release a farewell EP, Buzz Yr Girlfriend: Vol. 4—Why Did You Leave Me?...

In Adam “Amine” Daniel’s breakout video for “Caroline,” the Portland rapper goofs around with pals in the parking lot of a classic drive-in burger joint, in a car—and on top of said car while it’s in motion. He also drops a skit into the middle of the video (which has amassed more than 200 million YouTube views since 2016), an absurd bit in which he asks about the bananas scattered behind him in the car that, according to the driver, are for “decoration....

Q: My little dick has always held me back. I didn’t date in high school because I couldn’t stand the thought of girls discussing my tiny manhood. That said, I’ve adapted fairly well and become skilled with my tongue and hands. The biggest problem is that my dick is just small enough that the head pokes straight forward and can be seen through my pants. I never tuck in a shirt because of it....

It’s not hard to tell the difference between New Orleans and Chicago: open a window in the wintertime, or take back-to-back bites of gumbo and a hot dog. Each city has its own proud and particular musical traditions, including distinctive past and present approaches to jazz. Just like a meal of gumbo and a hot dog makes more sense after you’ve eaten both, there’s a lot to be gained by putting artists from both cities together....