Chicago Reader

What to do at Do-Division Street Fest

Luca Cimarusti — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:30:00 -0500

Highlights of the Do-Division Street Fest include Peanut Butter Wolf, Le Butcherettes, and Pinebender by Luca Cimarusti This Weekend The sixth annual Do-Division Street Fest pitches its tents on Division between Damen and Leavitt. This year it runs three days, not the usual two—Fri 6/1 through Sun 6/3—but it's got the same two stages of live music.…

This week's Culture Vultures recommend:

Kelsey Gee — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:00:00 -0500

Chicagoans recommend summer music festivals, Dawoud Bey, and the Encyclopedia Project by Kelsey Gee Gabriel Wiesen and James Nuccio, owners of Beavers Coffee & Donuts are busting out their party hats for: Summer music festivals Me and Jim are huge fans of electronic dance music, and music festivals in general, going back to our days as drummers in high school, and, more recently, our previous jobs in nightlife hospitality.…

If a tree falls in the Inland Steel Building . . .

Sam Worley — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:00:00 -0500

The results of the "Idea Tree" competition appear in a pop-up show by Sam Worley I recently talked to a friend who'd just seen Hinoki, the enormous installation in the Art Institute's Modern Wing, and boy was he pissed. The problem was the story behind the piece.…

Going, going . . . Take my jacket, please!

Deanna Isaacs — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:42:13 -0500

Issey Miyake was born in Hiroshima in 1938. He survived the atomic bomb and grew up to design items of clothing that are museum-quality art, along with Steve Jobs's famous black turtlenecks.…

Chicago Craft Beer Week and more in this week's food and drink events

Alison Marcotte — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:09:21 -0500

Friday25

The third annual Chicago Craft Beer Week began May 17 and ends May 27. Celebrate the tail end in the cozy, hip Hungry Brain, which boasts both a good selection of well-priced craft beers and, tonight, the live talk show You, Me, Them, Everybody.…

Film Center presents a digital restoration of The Gold Rush and other notable screenings

J.R. Jones — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:34:00 -0500

This week Gene Siskel Film Center screens a new digital restoration of Charles Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), including six minutes of footage long deleted from circulating prints and a 5.1 Dolby digital recording of Chaplin's original score. Another great revival this week is Elia Kazan's Wild River (1960), presented next Wednesday at the Portage by Northwest Chicago Film Society.…

Your Memorial Day cookout Spotify playlist

Miles Raymer — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:00:06 -0500

It's approximately 70 hours till your Memorial Day cookout should be getting going. There's a lot to do between now and then—stocking up on supplies, marinating some of those supplies in other ones, driving across the border to buy illegal fireworks—and it's entirely possible that you may find you don't have time enough to put together a cookout playlist.…

Should Tamms be saved for the jobs?

Steve Bogira — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:24:00 -0500

We need to keep torturing people in Illinois because it provides jobs.

This is the unspoken argument of legislators who want to save Tamms, the supermax at the southern tip of Illinois.…

Tonight: a rare Chicago performance of Georges Aperghis's Recitations

Peter Margasak — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:19:02 -0500

I couldn't write at length about Greek composer Georges Aperghis in my preview of Saturday's concert by International Contemporary Ensemble at the MCA, where the program includes two of his compositions. To be honest, I'm playing catch-up where Aperghis is concerned—he wrote a lot of music—and I've still got a long way to go.…

Eat spaghetti with your hands at Den Den

Mike Sula — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:49:57 -0500

Eritrean food? Pretty much the same as Ethiopian.…

Columbia College to cut cinema studies?

Ben Sachs — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:07:18 -0500

This past week, Columbia College president Warrick L. Carter jeopardized the future of cinema studies courses at the school by writing in his prioritization report to the film and video department, "The department should carefully consider the ongoing role of Cinema Studies, including the possibility of eliminating it. Although I understand the department’s argument for retaining it as a generalist degree, I remain skeptical of its value to student learning and to the department."

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Cauleen Smith, John Parot, and other arty stuff to do this weekend

Elly Fishman — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:39:35 -0500

John Parot: "Excavation"

This weekend, Western Exhibitions presents "Excavation," a solo show by John Parot. Parot's new body of work builds on his interest in psychedelic patterns and hippie ephemera, and also explores his interest in ancient Egyptian tomb art.…

12 O'Clock Track: Colleen Green, "Good Good Things"

Luca Cimarusti — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Colleen Green's new full-length, Milo Goes to Compton (Art Fag), comes off kind of like a tribute to the great punk bands of the past. Its title and black-and-white, marker-drawn cover are obvious nods to the Decendents' classic Milo Goes to College, and the LP's second track, "I Wanna Be Degraded," is an almost-cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones.…

Street View 012: Day + Night

Isa Giallorenzo — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:38:28 -0500

Street View is a series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights fascinatingly fashionable Chicagoans.

Adetutu looks perfect for the office: appropriate but creative, fun and feminine. Trade the big purse for a clutch and this outfit goes straight to the movie, dinner, club, whatever she fancies.…

The difficult architecture of William Forsythe’s Quintett

Laura Molzahn — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:00:00 -0500

The new program from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago includes William Forsythe's Quintett by Laura Molzahn Once Hubbard Street Dance Chicago has it completely assembled, the U.S. premiere of William Forsythe's 1993 Quintett should be an architectural wonder. But an enterprise this unusual, intricate, and intensely athletic requires painstaking preparation.…

Quarterly report: Cubs sunk, Sox so-so

Ted Cox — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:32:20 -0500

Most baseball teams passed the quarter mark of the season earlier this week, making it a good time to assess our teams' progress.

Or lack of it.…

A rare visit to my hometown, Moline

Kate Schmidt — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:57:00 -0500

Around here, the New York Times isn't exactly noted for acumen or accuracy when it comes to the midwest. Still, I was surprised by a recent Sunday Times piece about freshman Republican congressman Bobby Schilling, a Tea Party-backed candidate now running for reelection in the longtime Democratic 17th District.…

Crib's Albert D'Angelo surfaces in Brooklyn and other food & drink news bites

Mike Sula — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:18:00 -0500

Crib chef Albert D'Angelo has surfaced in Brooklyn.

More food shockers . . .…

Working for the Sun-Times—just like Mike Royko!

Ben Joravsky — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:54:32 -0500

Four thousand years ago, I got my first job in journalism, working as a copyboy for the Chicago Daily News.

Yes, yes—copyboy.…

Friday at the Bottle: the polystylistic grind of Starring

Peter Margasak — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:16:01 -0500

Back when she lived in Chicago in the mid-aughts, violist and musicologist Amy Cimini immersed herself in the city's experimental and improvised-music scenes; among her many projects were the Civil War, with guitarist Adam Sonderberg and bassoonist Katherine Young, and the duo Architeuthis Walks on Land, also with Young (who continues to be one of her most steadfast collaborators—AWoL plays at Elastic on June 28). Since she moved to New York, however, most of the music she's made (or rather most of what I've heard) has been either sunny chamber pop with the Fancy (also with Young) or hard-hitting prog-rock with Starring.…

Torkwase Dyson: Slip 'n Slide as art project

Elly Fishman — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:57:04 -0500

Yesterday afternoon I found myself barefoot on the beach at the South Shore Cultural Center, where I watched artist (and friend) Torkwase Dyson wrestle an 80-foot piece of metallic bubble wrap in the water. As Dyson crawled atop the serpentine structure, she looked like a kid playing on a Slip 'n Slide.…

Randolph Street Market, discounts, and other weekend fashion sales and events

Heather Kenny — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:40:02 -0500

It's pretty quiet on the local fashion scene this Memorial Day weekend, but there's plenty to keep you busy at the Randolph Street Market, which sets up shop outside for its ninth year of featuring vendors in antiques, furniture, crafts, vintage clothing, clothes and accessories by independent designers, and all sorts of bric-a-brac. As always, it's at 1340 W. Washington and runs 10 AM to 6 PM Saturday and 10 AM to 5 PM Sunday.…

Times-Picayune scales back, but can an iPad produce the same intimacy?

Michael Miner — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:52:05 -0500

Six years ago I was asked to help choose the journalism awards that the American Planning Association would be giving for "outstanding coverage of city and regional planning issues." One entry, from the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, stood above the others by so many heads and shoulders that there was actually a brief discussion of taking it out of the competition.…

One Bite: fuzzy green almonds

Mike Sula — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:04:17 -0500

This time of year it's not uncommon to see folks standing in the produce sections of certain internationally inclined groceries puzzling over these fuzzy, green ovoids, perhaps wondering if there's a planet of extraterrestrial castrati that sacrificed them for our snacking pleasure. No, these are immature almonds, which in the Middle East are commonly dipped in salt and nibbled whole.…

Rogue elephants and troubled teens: new Reader performing arts reviews

Rebecca Cohen — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:28:44 -0500

As the title of Catherine Trieschmann's Crooked suggests, there's nothing straightforward about being a teenage girl—especially when you're navigating religion, sexuality, and mental health in the Bible Belt. What is straightforward, says Kerry Reid, is the precision with which director Sandy Shinner and her Rivendell Theatre Ensemble cast dissect the often terrifying world of female adolescence.…