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Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric on immigration during the campaign—calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “criminals” and calling for a wall to be built along the U.S.-Mexico border—won over white supremacists and angered and alienated Latinos and their allies. Reader director of photography Danielle A. Scruggs visited several polling places in majority-Latino neighborhoods Pilsen and Little Village Tuesday afternoon to hear how voters there were feeling. 

August Pullman, the ten-year-old boy at the center of Stephen Chbosky’s Wonder, is severely deformed: the bridge of his nose reaches to his forehead in a straight line, the corners of his eyes are pulled down in a perpetual sob, his cheeks are traced by scars, and withered ears peek out from under his long hair. One dreads to think what he might have looked like before the 27 plastic surgeries he mentions near the beginning of the film....

After the FCC opened up the nation’s airwaves to what the law calls “low power broadcast radio stations” in 2013, all sorts of groups jumped at the chance to apply—among them the folks behind Chicago’s Public Media Institute, who include Ed Marszewski, mastermind behind long-­running political freak rag Lumpen, the annual Version multimedia festival, Marz Community Brewing, and other groovy projects. Early in 2014, PMI received a permit to build an LPFM station in Bridgeport....

There’s no more perfect setting for Lyric Opera’s Hansel and Gretel in the Park than the North Park Village Nature Center, where—after two cancellations due to hideous weather—they were finally able to perform it this weekend. The leafy, 46-acre preserve is so ideal for this tale of two siblings lost in the woods, nobody in the small, still-masked and COVID-limited audience on Friday even bothered to complain about the 90-degree temperature....

Hillary Clinton’s latest outburst against Bernie Sanders gives me a chance to shatter one of my least favorite myths about Chicago politics—that popularity is linked to productivity or that only those who go along get things done. That’s even nastier than what she told Howard Stern a few weeks ago. You know, I’m no Sigmund Freud, but it sure looks like Hillary’s not about to get over that 2016 primary campaign anytime soon....

Courtesy of Nicole Ginelli God Vol. 1 Yesterday local synth musicians Nicole Ginelli (aka N.i.c.o.l.e.) and Laura Callier (aka Gel Set) released their first song as God Vol. 1, “Second House.” The shadowy electronic track ripples with a strong house vibe, which blends with the duo’s throwback R&B vision. Ginelli says “Second House” gravitates around “‘relations’ with a wealthy suitor,” and the minimal, sultry vocals echo the mysteriousness of the circumstances of the two characters involved....

After 90 homicides and more than 2,300 shootings made August the city’s most violent month in roughly 20 years, many Chicagoans are understandably shaken, saddened, and fearing for their safety. National Guard deployments have historically occurred during natural disasters or other emergencies. For instance, Rauner called upon the state’s National Guard in January to respond to flooding in downstate Marion. After one of Illinois’s biggest-ever blizzards, in 2011, then-governor Pat Quinn activated more than 500 members of the state’s guard to assist in response and recovery efforts....

Being a public driver has never been an easy way to make a living. But with the demise of the traditional taxi industry, the job has gotten even harder. Throw in systemic racism, classism, then top it off with COVID-19, and it’s a wonder there’s anyone left willing to risk driving strangers anywhere, anytime. Yet, this is precisely the setting of Reginald Edmund’s Ride Share, a solo play that grew out of Edmund’s own experiences driving....

The third installment of this annual event organized by saxophonist Dave Rempis, also the longtime programmer of the Thursday-evening improvised-music series at Elastic, shifts gears from its predecessors. In the first two iterations, a single musician (reedists Tony Malaby and Silke Eberhard, respectively) visited the city to engage in workshops and performances with local players. This year Rempis has invited six stylistically diverse musicians from the east coast and midwest, some of whom he worked with on his 2017 Lattice solo project, to participate in ad hoc groupings and workshops with Chicago players....

A lottery for those who want to live in the newly revamped Lathrop on the north side is now open for nearly 100 affordable housing units set to be unveiled starting this summer. Affordable housing units are intended for those making 80 percent of area median income or less. But there is also a floor to how little households can make to qualify. The federal government judges housing to be affordable if paying for it does not claim more than 30 percent of a family’s income....

Q: Perhaps you’re not the best person to ask, being a cis white man, but as a queer woman of color, the election had an extremely detrimental effect on my relationships with my white partners. I love and care for them, but looking at those results has me wondering why the fuck they didn’t do better in reaching out to their shitty relatives. I’m sick of living at the whim of white America....

Sarom Sieng did not want her daughter trapped in the church kitchen, cooking curry and egg rolls her whole life. That’s where they’ve launched Mona Bella Catering, a union of the Khmer cooking skills that the mother brought from Cambodia and the technical skills the daughter brought from the trenches of a major catering operation. Sieng made money sewing hospital gowns but eventually started cooking meals for other Cambodian families, and then later for baptisms, weddings, and other church events....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. The “round house,” as Frank calls it, was designed for the family by avant-garde architect Bruce Alonzo Goff and completed in 1955. “The Garvey house was a surreal oasis,” Frank recalls. “It was an incredible psychedelic environment....

Q: I’m a female in my late 20s. I broke up with a toxic ex about a year ago and I’ve been walking around (my house!) thinking I was over it. I never missed him and rarely thought about him. A brief backstory: In the final months of us living together, we started having more discussions about children and making a lifelong commitment. He told me he wanted both, yet at this exact time his moderate depression became more severe and he refused to get help....

June 14 marks a turning point in the history of Chicago’s LGBTQ rights movement—one worth remembering in the wake of Sunday’s mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando, the worst mass shooting in American history. According to historian John D’Emilio’s account of the protest, demonstrators carried signs that read “Anita is McCarthy in drag,”—a reference to Communist scaremonger Joseph McCarthy—and “God drinks wine, not orange juice.” Progress always provokes backlash....

Living out and proud in a coastal queer mecca full of historic gayborhoods, vocally supportive senators, and Hamburger Mary’s locations is one thing; learning to love yourself in rural America can be another. For writer and performer Scott Bradley, embracing himself and his upbringing after returning as an adult to his roots in Iowa (he attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop) meant reckoning with the ghosts and self-doubts from which he thought he’d long escaped....

In a Foreign Land The Peace on Earth Film Festival, four days of free screenings and discussions at Chicago Cultural Center, kicks off tonight with an evening of short documentaries, hosted by Jerome McDonnell of WBEZ’s Worldview. Our festival roundup is here. Also in this week’s issue, Ben Sachs has four stars for In a Foreign Land, a story of Spanish immigrants in Scotland, directed by Iciar Bollain (Take My Eyes), and measured praise for It Follows, a John Carpenter-style horror indie about teens menaced by a slow-moving, shape-shifting demon....

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....