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Whenever I talk to a chef for the first time (for whatever reason), I invariably work my way around to one particular question. I try not to take them off guard, but it’s something to the effect of: “Are you now cooking with, or have you ever cooked with, cannabis?” There are no cannabis restaurants (yet), but chef-driven, cannabis-infused cuisine is everywhere in both states where it’s legal and prohibited, usually taking the form of pop-ups, parties, or branded product lines....

Two days after the 2016 election, when I caught a package tour headlined by British-American grindcore pioneers Napalm Death, the night seemed to encompass the best and worst of the moment: After witnessing a presidential candidate openly lean into hate and emerge victorious, the sound of hundreds of people belting out “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” during the band’s brutal cover of the Dead Kennedys classic felt grounding and cathartic. That relief was eighty-sixed when I ran into an acquaintance who’d been subjected to race- and gender-based harassment in the pit....

Preservation Chicago’s 2019 list of the city’s most threatened historic buildings grew from its traditional seven sites to nine this year, with two holdovers from 2018: the James R. Thompson Center and Jackson Park (including the South Shore Cultural Center and part of the Midway Plaisance). The threat to the Thompson Center stems from the fact that Governor J.B. Pritzker—like Bruce Rauner before him—wants to sell the unique postmodern structure to a developer to help shore up the state’s finances, while plans for the Obama Presidential Center and a possible professional level golf course threaten Jackson Park, the Midway Plaisance, and the South Shore Cultural Center....

When you walk into Connect Gallery at Harper Court in Hyde Park, it doesn’t have that overly reverent hush you feel in some art galleries. People are laughing and talking – either meeting for the first time, introducing friends, or just catching up. A local artist might be finishing a painting. Kids might be doing homework at a long table. And then there’s the art. Commanding. Unapologetic. Relatable. True. Current....

Chicago’s el system, with its iconic train cars, relatively fast speeds, and occasionally breathtaking views, is the sexier side of the CTA. But the city’s grid of 130 bus routes is really the meat and potatoes of our transit network, with 274.3 million boardings in 2015 compared to the el’s 241.7 million trips. I started my bus excursion around 5:30 PM on a Tuesday at the 87th Street Red Line stop, which was renovated in 2013 as part of the Red Line South reconstruction....

I coined the term “live lit” over lunch with Keith Ecker in 2011. We were at Kopi Café in Andersonville, discussing a fix for the minor problem we shared: that the existing term “storytelling,” emphasizing as it did both “narrative” and “speech,” did not encompass what we were both attempting with the shows we’d founded. My show, Write Club, monthly at the Hideout, and his, Essay Fiesta, monthly at the Book Cellar, both emphasized writing at least as much as delivery, and featured essays, not stories....

On December 3, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner. It had hardly been a week since a grand jury in Missouri did the same for Darren Wilson, who’d killed Michael Brown. Garner’s cry for help while trapped by Pantaleo’s illegal chokehold—”I can’t breathe”—became a cry of protest all over the country, and few used it as effectively as Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins....

Leor Galil Bongripper, the burger On Sunday metal-themed burger joint Kuma’s Corner announced its burger of the month for March, a tribute to Chicago doom four-piece Bongripper. My B Side feature on the band had gone to bed before I heard, so like any curious journalist who consumes food roughly three times a day would do, I made my way to Avondale to try the Bongripper. Even for a Kuma’s burgers, this one is a doozy....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, this show has been postponed until a date to be determined. Tickets already purchased will be honored at that time, but contact point of purchase for refund information. On their third full-length, 2019’s Black Friday (Polyvinyl), Boston band Palehound offer candid meditations on love—its many forms and stages, and the vulnerability it brings—from the perspective of someone deep in the midst of it....

In the exhibit “Love for Sale: The Graphic Art of Valmor Products,” the Chicago Cultural Center highlights a remarkable chapter in the history of graphics in advertising. While the creativity of both imagery and copy are fascinating to take in, it is the social relevance of the Valmor Products graphics that makes the exhibit worth seeing. Courtesy the artist The Valmor Products Company operated on Chicago’s south side from 1926 to 1984....

Links Hall was originally Link’s Hall, named for John J. Link, the dentist who built it in 1914 and emblazoned his name in the plaster above the front door. Links Hall was an empty room above a hamburger joint next to a women’s health organization and a Japanese culture center in a seedy neighborhood where the Red Line rattled by every few minutes. Links Hall was a rehearsal space with shows at night: poetry readings, experimental music, performance art, dance....

Have no fear, Chicago. Even though they still haven’t notified the pregnant teacher I wrote about weeks ago whether she’s exempt for health reasons. If it was up to CPS, they’d make her have her baby under a classroom desk. Slick move, Madame Mayor. Somewhere Mayor Rahm’s going—Man, why didn’t I think of that with the Laquan McDonald video? And you wonder why teachers don’t trust the system to get things right....

Last week Riot Fest’s organizers announced a big coup—a headlining set by the Original Misfits—and this morning they released the rest of the lineup. High on the list is woebegone balladeer Morrissey, a notoriously finicky performer with a history of bailing on tours (if you want a list of the shows he’s canceled, a couple years ago Tumblr user Torr compiled a brief history). Morrissey nixed a gig in Iceland last year when he found out the venue served meat—in 2013 he got the Staples Center in LA to close its McDonald’s stands for his performance, so I’m curious whether the Riot Fest vendors hawking turkey legs will shut down for the day....

Gossip Wolf is a sucker for quality DJ nights and ridiculous puns. Add fancy cocktails, and you’ve got a sure-fire winner! On Thursday, June 9, self-described local “queer witches” Sophie Bee and Lorena Cupcake (cofounder of DIY blog Store Brand Soda and the Reader‘s “best new music blogger” in 2015) launch a new monthly party called Switches of Eastwick at Logan Square bar the Whistler. The party will feature a rotating menu of musical genres and play with themes of power, submission, and the occult; the inaugural installment includes DJ sets by Jarvi (from Chicago’s Naughty Bad Fun Collective) and Sold....

Three songs that I heard blasted through other people’s car speakers this week that you don’t think are about sex but they most certainly are: “Little Red Corvette” by Prince, “La Noche de Anoche” by Bad Bunny and Rosalía, and “I’m So Excited” by the Pointer Sisters. Discuss in the comments below. And that’s . . . as much as I’ve got to share this week (it’s been a long one)....

It’s Leo Sowerby’s summer. Had 2020 gone as planned, musicians across the city likely would have launched into 125th-anniversary celebrations for the late Chicago composer (1895–1968) and onetime St. James Cathedral organist. Any such plans were obviously tabled, but luckily for us, quasquicentennial recordings of Sowerby’s chamber works are nonetheless bubbling to the top of Cedille Records’ catalog, starting with this Lincoln Trio album (and continuing with his Organ Symphony in G on July 9 and his symphonic jazz forays on August 13)....

Julia Thiel Homemade Irish cream Last November, when a couple of friends from college said they’d visit me in early January, I promised to make them homemade Irish cream. I can’t remember why, exactly, but I know I had been reading about how to do it—it sounded like a fun project, but at the time I had eggnog to make, age, and then taste. About an hour before they showed up I remembered the promise and took a quick trip to the corner store for the necessary ingredients: cream, sweetened condensed milk, and Irish whiskey....

Julia Gham was seven months pregnant, with a toddler and just $100 to her name in 2015 when the financing for her restaurant fell through. For ten years she’d had multiple jobs—slinging ice cream, working hotel gigs, driving a cab—preparing an ambitious business plan to open a spot specializing in the food of her native Cameroon. Just as she’d attracted enough backing to make it happen, an angry text from her jealous fiancé scared off her investors....

Kokopelli, the flute-tooting Hopi trickster fertility god whose emasculated likeness appears on more tie-dyed T-shirts, skateboards, beach towels, and fanny packs than Bob Marley’s, arrived in Wicker Park a few months ago in the form of yet another upscale taco joint. If the neighborhood seems to have hit critical mass for this particular kind of cheffy taqueria (see Big Star, Antique Taco, Takito Kitchen, Authentaco, and occasionally Xoco Bistro), it’s because the City Council secretly rezoned it as a taco increment financing district, subsidizing the proliferation of $4 tacos....

Ryan Smith Reenactors in period garb gathered in Springfield for the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s funeral. Clad in a blue wool Civil War-era military outfit, an actor playing Major General Joseph Hooker wrapped up a stately reenactment of Abraham Lincoln’s burial on Sunday in Springfield with a famous line from former secretary of war Edwin Stanton: “Now he belongs to the ages.” Burlingame’s speech was compelling but felt hollow as I stopped to look at the faces of the several thousand spectators gathered in the shadow of Springfield’s Old State Capitol to celebrate “the black man’s president....