Chicago Reader

Best of Chicago is coming soon (even sooner if you pay attention)

Gwynedd Stuart — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:56:00 -0500

As you might have gathered from this shoddily shot Vine we posted to Twitter, on Monday night we finished up our 2013 Best of Chicago issue and sent it off to be printed and stapled somewhere closeish to the center fold.

Nestled within its pages: 264 of your picks for the best things in Chicago, plus 164 of our critics' picks for Chicago's best things.…

NeverWet: Today's science mind-melt

Kevin Warwick — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:29:22 -0500

Finally, an excuse to squirt copious amounts of yellow mustard onto your fresh white pants or drop your iPhone into the toilet without any consequences. Be dazzled.…

VICE magazine tries to find the glamour in suicide

Sarah Nardi — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:46:21 -0500

Camus wrote that there is only one truly serious philosophical question—and that is suicide. "Judging whether or not life is worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy," he writes in The Myth of Sisyphus.…

Jeremy Scahill on Dirty Wars and the global battlefield

Dan Massoglia — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:14:00 -0500

Understanding America's foreign policy can be an impossible task, even for those in the know. Yet state secrecy is being eroded daily, and Dirty Wars, now playing at Landmark's Century Centre, makes transparent what was once clouded.…

The unstoppable Pharrell Williams

Miles Raymer — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:39:31 -0500

Pharrell Williams is having a fantastic year. Right now "Blurred Lines," which he produced for Robin Thicke (who's starting to look and sound increasingly like a more Vegas-y James Murphy), is sitting at the top of the Hot 100.…

Outdoor film series sponsored by the Latino Cultural Center begins tomorrow

Ben Sachs — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:09:11 -0500

Starting tomorrow the Latino Cultural Center will bring back popular movies from this year's Chicago Latino Film Festival for a weekly series of free outdoor screenings. The first, a revival of the Venezuelan film The Blue Apple Tree, takes place at Harrison Park (1842 South Wood Street) and begins around 8 PM.…

Just illin' with the New York Times

Steve Bogira — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:57:00 -0500

I like Well, the weekly two-page spread in the New York Times, but I think it is misnamed.

Well runs in the Tuesday Science Times section, and it's also an NYT blog.…

12 O'Clock Track: Gunplay's ravey mixtape cut "Been Did It"

Miles Raymer — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:06:00 -0500

Lately southern hip-hop's ongoing obsession with MDMA and ravey synthesizers has bled over into a serious interest in dance music. Waka Flocka Flame's working on a record with a bunch of straight-up EDM producers (including local boys Flosstradamus), and pretty much every good mixtape coming out of the south has at least one track that could work with the Spring Awakening crowd.…

Did you read about Brazil, Jimmy Hoffa, and Chief Keef?

Reader staff — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:10:00 -0500

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us.

Hey, did you read:

• The New Yorker's Jill Lepore on the history of surveillance and the loss of privacy? —Tal Rosenberg

That, according to a Fortune magazine analysis, Trib Co. may owe the IRS more than half a billion dollars?…

Where are the editorial cartoonists who take the side of the NSA?

Michael Miner — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:39:00 -0500

Each week the Tribune scans the nation's editorial cartoons for the handful it republishes in its Cartoon Gallery on Sunday. Last Sunday's gallery consisted of five cartoons—by Dana Summers, Signe Wilkinson, Walt Handelsman, Steve Kelley, and Michael Ramirez—reacting to the revelation that the NSA is vacuuming up data whenever we talk on the telephone or browse the net.…

The TIF wash—et tu, Bright One?

Ben Joravsky — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 07:37:17 -0500

Over the years I've heard just about every conceivable explanation and defense of the $450-million-a-year mayoral slush fund known as tax increment financing.

On Friday I heard a new one: it's "a wash," financially speaking, for the Chicago Public Schools.…

Reader's Agenda Tue 6/18: Millennium Park movies, One-Minute Play Festival, and Douglas Ewart

Tosten Burks — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:08:34 -0500

Looking for something to do today? Agenda's got you covered:

Millennium Park's summer film series is back.…

Hedwig Dances joins forces with Cuban group DanzAbierta

Laura Molzahn — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Hedwig Dances joins forces with the Cuban group DanzAbierta. by Laura Molzahn Gazing at ripped bodies is the raison d'etre of dance. Or is it?…

My favorite book about Chicago moviegoing

Ben Sachs — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:00:00 -0500

In middle school my favorite author was Daniel Pinkwater and my favorite book was The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, which he wrote in 1982. (Lizard Music, Pinkwater's first young-adult novel, was a close second.)…

Suddenly, it's summer: More alfresco drinking and dining

Kate Schmidt — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:12:00 -0500

Back in May, when we pulled together alfresco picks for our Summer Guide, we weren't expecting another month of gray skies, flash floods, and temperatures chilly enough to make you curse the weather guesser. But look—quick!…

The black power Burzum‬: A Gchat about Kanye West's Yeezus

Leor Galil — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:54:00 -0500

Kanye West's sixth album, Yeezus, leaked on Friday, and plenty of rap fans, pop critics, and Twitter users have had something to say about it almost immediately. Reader music critics Miles Raymer and Leor Galil recently hopped on Gchat to discuss their reactions to the record, the reactions to the reactions, and what they hope comes next.

Leor Galil: So it's been a few days since Yeezus leaked—what did you think of it during your first listen?‬

Miles Raymer: ‪Initially I was all shock and awe. There's nothing that sounds even sort of like it in hip-hop, or in pop music in general, right now.…

DryHop may not need a good review, but they're getting one

Philip Montoro — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:00:00 -0500

When DryHop brewpub threw a preopening party on Saturday, June 8, it sold 300 growler fills and 300 tasting flights to an estimated 400 guests in just two hours. When I visited on Saturday, June 15, two days after DryHop formally opened, I showed up around 3 PM, hoping to squeak in between the lunch and dinner crowds—but there was no "between."…

Best shows to see: East-West Collective, Shockwave Riderz, French-American Peace Ensemble

Tosten Burks — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:43:54 -0500

Maybe tonight you you'll watching the Hawks silence TD Garden. Or maybe you're feeling so cocky you figure that's a foregone conclusion, and you want to take in some jazz instead.…

How to eat radishes

Mike Sula — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:37:00 -0500

Radishes are some of the first things to pop out of the ground every spring, and they grow so fast and plentifully it's not uncommon for me to feel besieged by them. If I limited myself to eating the peppery little bastards raw I'd be able to breathe fire.…

12 O'Clock Track: Airport 5's (Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout) "Stifled Man Casino"

Tal Rosenberg — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:00:00 -0500

It's Monday: maybe you're back at work, maybe you're not. Either way, it's noon right now, and if you're in the doldrums, here's Airport 5's "Stifled Man Casino."…

Did you read about Bernard Sahlins, death cafes, and Vladimir Putin?

Reader staff — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:59:00 -0500

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us.

Hey, did you read:

• That Second City cofounder Bernard Sahlins has died at 90? —Tony Adler

• About the addictive positive-reinforcement feedback loop of social media?…

Reader's Agenda Mon 6/17: "Chicago 78/79," The Russian Play: An Improvised Black Comedy, and the African Diaspora Film Festival

Drew Hunt — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:09:28 -0500

Looking for something to do today? Agenda's got you covered:

"Chicago 78/79," currently on display at Alibi Fine Art, features late-70s-era photos of Chicago by David Gremp.…

Reader's Agenda Sun 6/16: Bloomsday, Eleventh Dream Day, and HMS Pinafore

Tosten Burks — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 06:00:00 -0500

Looking for something to do today? Agenda's got you covered:

The day James Joyce ~~got married~~ met his future wife (and the day on which he set Ulysses so as to not forget) only comes once a year.…

Reader's Agenda Sat 6/15: Taste of Randolph Street, Mods vs. Rockers, and Takin' It to the Streets

Tosten Burks — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 06:00:00 -0500

Looking for something to do today? Agenda's got you covered:

Taste of Randolph Street continues today in the West Loop.…

Clinton Global Initiative: A brief note on economic policy from the opening session

Deanna Isaacs — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:52:28 -0500

There was a lot of talk at the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting yesterday about the virtue of the next big thing in government: private investment.

Former president Bill Clinton heaped praise on things like social-impact bonds and infrastructure banks; guest speaker Rahm Emanuel said "we need private-sector resources" to help us get public projects done; and future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned that "we can't look to government to solve all our problems."

Then Bill gave his account of the Chobani, Inc., success story (the company founder was a panelist): Turkish guy goes to upstate New York, gets a government small-business loan, buys a 90-yr-old factory, makes Greek yogurt, goes to Idaho, builds another factory, "and that's what's great about this country!"

Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya noted that the government loan was critical.…