Ten years ago a friend came down with cholera after eating a malevolent oyster at Katsu. It happens. Despite this unfortunate event, the unassuming sushi bar on an unfashionable far-north-side street—which closes it doors at the end of the month after nearly 30 years in the business—remained in regular rotation among my pal’s favorite restaurants. That’s because Katsu was the best in the city—and I’ll fight anyone who says any different....
This weekend concludes the 2016 Chicago Auto Show, the country’s biggest and longest-running car show. Sponsored by Motor Age magazine, Chicago’s first official auto show opened on March 23, 1901 at the Chicago Coliseum. Exhibiting just 100 cars, the second annual show charged visitors $0.50—an amount, when adjusted for inflation, slightly higher than the price of the ticket to the 2016 Chicago Auto Show. A total of 332 exhibits were crammed into the Coliseum and the First Regiment Armory, both of which were festooned with bronze-colored papier-mâché and stucco ornamentation....
How did you find out about iO closing? The moment I read the shared post I sent a DM to Charna: “say it ain’t so, Charna this makes me sad if its true.” “The community is really hurting right now,” Plummer continues, adding that she created a GoFundMe campaign “to help staff members of iO who are struggling. Help them get through a few more months if their unemployment benefits end....
Last Flag Flying, now entering its second week in Chicago theaters, reminds me of Neil Young’s 1990 album Ragged Glory. It’s a rough, but casual, meditation on American themes, made with relaxed, subtle mastery. If the film feels a bit underwhelming on first encounter, I suspect it will gain from repeat viewings—it’s full of subtle characterizations and charming grace notes, and these things can become more resonant once they’re more familiar....
Nikko Washington looks like any other student coming in to Café Logan on the University of Chicago campus to grab a bite between classes. But the 25-year-old finished his studies at the School of the Art Institute three years ago. And there’s another difference: the oil paintings on the wall are all by Washington, together comprising an exhibit called 53 ’til Infinity, on display through March 31. These are his most recent works, mostly portraits, all characterized by bold colors and the serious but joyous expressions on the subjects’ faces....
On a bare stage, a sea of spandex roils, shining with that 1970s luster. A director calls out counts and steps and the group moves in rough coordination—a dropped step here, a stumble there, pirouettes, jazz hands, pelvic thrusts. He refers to them individually by number, collectively as “the kids.” It’s an audition, and everyone is dancing for permission to dance, and their thoughts, like the steps, are mostly the same: “God, I hope I get it,” “God, I really blew it,” “I really need this job....
Back by popular demand: The Back Room Deal features radio personality and longtime Reader political writer Ben Joravsky arguing local Chicago politics with Reader senior writer Maya Dukmasova. With sharp wit and stinging analysis, Joravsky and Dukmasova cut through the smokey haze of the elections to offer you a glimpse of the 2020 Chicago-area Illinois primary races—local and Cook County-level and, of course, U.S. presidential. Will these historic elections be determined in back-room deals, like so many in Chicago’s past?...
The Loop and lakefront show all the signs of a city that’s booming. Yet Chicago, and more broadly the midwest, is the epicenter of a little-understood reverse Great Migration. Economists and policy wonks also say Chicago’s economy isn’t as strong or dynamic as New York’s or those of the Bay Area or metropolitan D.C. They also cite Chicago’s high taxes as a factor in pushing some residents out. And they’d be partly right....
Gossip Wolf has always assumed that water and stringed instruments don’t mix, but Katinka Kleijn (who plays in the CSO and the International Contemporary Ensemble) and Lia Kohl (who’s in Mocrep and CabinFever) point out that their cellos are made of the same stuff as many canoes and sailboats! At 7 PM on Saturday, March 16, the duo performs “Water on the Bridge” at Eckhart Park’s natatorium. “We will improvise with cello and water sounds, field recordings, and live electronics by Daniel DeHaan,” says Kleijn, “as well as moving, floating, and swimming with 30 cellos in the pool....
Thinkstock Love, Rahm With a few weeks and counting to the epic mayoral showdown, Mick Dumke and I thought we’d apply a little truth serum to the campaign, as part of our February 3 talk show extravaganza at the Hideout. Lesson for mayoral challengers Fioretti, Garcia, Walls, and Wilson: if you want to raise more money, it helps to take about $17 million from our dead-broke public schools and give it to a bunch of wealthy bankers....
Some plays seem tailor-made for small spaces. Such is the case with Mark St. Germain’s powerful four-hander, adapted from Osha Gray Davidson’s 1996 book The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South (also the source for a 2019 film), about the real but unlikely friendship that developed between Ann Atwater, a fiery civil rights activist, and C.P. Ellis, an equally fiery “exalted cyclops” of the Knights of the Klu Klux Klan, in Durham, North Carolina, in the early 1970s....
On Monday, two days after Rhymefest was held up at gunpoint at 43rd and Cottage Grove, the rapper released “Cops N Robbers,” which details his experience—not just staring down the barrel of a gun, but also struggling to get Chicago police to hear his grievances. Rhymefest enlisted a team of collaborators for the track, including rapper John the Author and four producers—S1, Epikh Pro, Damon Ranger, and Xzibit—who are collectively responsible for its serrated synths, spindly percussion, and warm, slightly nervy piano melody....
Sun Ra may have told everyone he was from Saturn, but the Afrofuturistic avant-gardist spent the 1950s in Chicago. While he was here, he recorded “El Is a Sound of Joy,” jazz’s greatest tribute to the city’s public transport system. No one in improvising trio Icepick—bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and drummer Chris Corsano—now lives in Chicago (Håker Flaten spent a few years here in the aughts), but in 2018 the group came to town to play a benefit for Experimental Sound Studio’s Option Series, a weekly concert and salon launched in 2015 that served as a beacon for improvisers around the world until COVID-19 closed everything down....
Q: I’m a 36-year-old straight guy, happily married for more than ten years, and a longtime reader. My wife and I are monogamous. We’re good communicators, well matched in terms of libido, and slightly kinky (light bondage, Dom/sub play in the bedroom). For the last few months, I’ve been thinking about trying prostate play, and I have a couple of questions. A lot of bloggers and other writers in the sex-advice complex tout the health benefits of regular prostate massage, but I haven’t found any academic research to back up some of the lofty claims that are being made....
Ivan Otis Tanya Tagaq I spent the past weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee, attending the Big Ears Festival, an unabashedly eclectic three-day extravaganza focused on the intersection of contemporary classical, improvisation, experimental rock, and international music that’s unlike any other music fest in the U.S. I took in quite a bit of music, including a killer set by Chicago’s own Ryley Walker (who plays a record-release show tonight at the Chopin), Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and a crushingly loud and visceral multimedia blitz by Holly Herndon (who makes her Chicago debut Tuesday at the Empty Bottle)....
The first triumph of Morrissey‘s headlining set at Riot Fest was that he showed up to perform it—over the past two decades, he’s established a track record of postponing or canceling tour dates due to pneumonia, respiratory infections, mystery illnesses, and other complications. Fans whose patience has been tested by an artist who seems to have little regard for them often repay that neglect with hostility, but Saturday night’s crowd instead welcomed Morrissey with a collective sigh of relief when he showed up a mere 33 minutes late....
Phish at Wrigley Field, June 24-25, 2016
Syleena Johnson became a force in mainstream R&B in the early 2000s, landing several chart hits and working alongside such figures as Busta Rhymes, Kanye West, and R. Kelly. But in many ways the singer, daughter of Chicago soul/R&B/blues legend Syl Johnson, has always sounded like a roots woman: her voice is supple and resonant, yet toughened with grainy texture, and it highlights her deep-soul inheritance. Her songs are distinguished by a courageous willingness to express vulnerability—emotional and otherwise—in a genre where postmodernist ironic detachment and blunt aggression often seem to dominate....
Finding a new tattoo artist is a lot like dating. You don’t want to hop in the chair with just anyone, and a lot of social media stalking is involved to see past relationships—or clients. Potentially, with a little bit of luck and some research, you could find a staple tattooer who matches your style and consistently executes clean tattoos. Ah, relationship goals. Another major shift for GLT is pivoting from accepting walk-ins to operating as appointment only through the shop’s website....
