Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Food & Drink Food Chain A new food website aims to help give minority women a seat at the table
Posted By Julia Thiel today at 06.00 AM
There's an old saying that if you're more fortunate than others, it's better to build a longer table than a higher fence. Loosely, that's the principle on which the new website Equity at the Table is based; it describes itself as a "practical and proactive response to the blatant gender and racial discrimination that plagues the food industry." The site's founder, Julia Turshen, chose the name "equity" deliberately; it's not the same as equality.
"I think they're really different," she says. "It's not just about who's invited to the table, it's who gets to do the inviting, who gets to sit at the head of the table. It's not looking at diversity for the sake of diversity, but true inclusion and intersectionality."
Turshen, a cookbook author based in New York's Hudson Valley, created Equity at the Table to be a database of women and gender-nonconforming individuals in professions related to the food industry, nearly all of them people of color or queer people (or both). The site encourages straight white women to join if they're able to provide resources for food professionals, but it's mostly intended for women who are part of at least one minority group. (Turshen herself is gay.)
Crime Film Foreign On Video The Internet FilmStruck’s ‘Early Hitchcock’ shows the master of suspense mastering suspense
Posted By Patrick Friel today at 06.00 AM
The streaming-video channel FilmStruck is currently featuring Alfred Hitchcock's early British features from the 1920s and '30s. Many of the director's favorite themes, motifs, and visual devices are already in evidence, as is his dark, sardonic wit. Highlighted below are two of his more famous films from the period (The Lodger and Sabotage) and two real obscurities.
Archive Dive Arts Visual Art Joe Rode wasn't a great artist, but he lived a great Chicago life
Posted By Aimee Levitt today at 06.00 AM
The Reader's archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we'll dig through and bring up some finds.
One of the charms of reading the Reader, back in the Golden Age of classified ads when editorial space was not at such a premium and writers had more freedom to write about oddities they happened to find, was getting to meet Chicago artists who were unlikely to become famous or even earn a living in their chosen fields but who continued to create and dream anyway. Such a person was Joe Rode, a sculptor who, in December, 2000, was having his first exhibition since the 1970s, when he'd owned his own gallery. The Reader's art critic, Fred Camper, commemorated the occasion by writing a profile.
Do This Film LGBTQ+ The film shorts program ‘I’m Not Sure What You Mean?’ spotlights queer coming-of-age experiences
Posted By Ben Sachs today at 06.00 AM
Tomorrow night at 8 PM, Logan Square’s multipurpose arts space Comfort Station will host a free program of short, queer-themed films that were made over the past several years. The program is titled "I'm Not Sure What You Mean?," a witty summation of the themes reflected in the works. The six shorts consider not only queer identity, but also, per guest curators Rebecca Ladida and Jess Lee, "the feeling of being lost in translation and the necessity to make new languages, with all the hesitations, uncertainties, and ellipses this entails." Such a description might suggest a program of heady, theory-driven works, but the selections are in fact entertaining and emotionally relatable—a few are even laugh-out-loud funny. Ingratiating in tone, the shorts inspire enormous sympathy with their subjects, some of whom describe growing up queer in hostile environments.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Music Post No Bills Things I Hate Things I Love Oakland’s Once & Future Band stage a battle between obnoxious prog and massive hooks
Posted By Peter Margasak on 04.23.18 at 04:24 PM
I listen to music for most of every day, every week, and I can say without hesitation that the majority of music released today shouldn't be. Though professional and competently played, it's so generic—so lacking in passion or purpose—that I don't know how the musicians involved can imagine that anyone would bother to engage with it. It's not that I'm too jaded to hear value in anything anymore—rather, I've learned how much genuinely interesting new music is being made, and I don't want to waste my too-scarce hours on anything else. Most of the time I can make clear distinctions between what I love, what I hate, and what I think is merely serviceable, but once in a great while an artist defies even that most basic kind of categorization. Oakland's Once & Future Band have been tying my brain in knots since last fall, when I first heard their self-titled 2017 debut—released, like the new four-track EP Brain, via the Castle Face label run by John Dwyer of Oh Sees.
Sports Animals Dog Day brings the best (in show) to Guaranteed Rate Field [PHOTOS]
Posted By Sue Kwong on 04.23.18 at 02:29 PM
Dogs and their friends can catch the White Sox play the Mariners tonight.
Known as Dog Day, the game sets aside a few sections at Guaranteed Rate Field for canines, so the Fido-to-human ratio will please you dog lovers. Between innings, you can grab a beer, a hot dog (the sausage), a Cuban burger, or churro ice cream sandwich with your dog, as long as it's on a leash.
The best part about bringing your pooch is that in the event the self-proclaimed sports expert sitting next to you tries to explain the game to you (poorly), you can ask him to repeat everything to your dog. In any case, dogs and their owners can also bone up for the next Dog Day on Monday, September 23, versus the Cleveland Indians.
For more details, visit mlb.com/whitesox. But first, check out our #SoxDog photo gallery below:
Known as Dog Day, the game sets aside a few sections at Guaranteed Rate Field for canines, so the Fido-to-human ratio will please you dog lovers. Between innings, you can grab a beer, a hot dog (the sausage), a Cuban burger, or churro ice cream sandwich with your dog, as long as it's on a leash.
The best part about bringing your pooch is that in the event the self-proclaimed sports expert sitting next to you tries to explain the game to you (poorly), you can ask him to repeat everything to your dog. In any case, dogs and their owners can also bone up for the next Dog Day on Monday, September 23, versus the Cleveland Indians.
For more details, visit mlb.com/whitesox. But first, check out our #SoxDog photo gallery below:
News Politics Dorothy Brown will make history as first black woman elected mayor, supporters say
Posted By Ashley Mizuo on 04.23.18 at 11:55 AM
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To a roomful of Dorothy Brown supporters, it wasn't a question of if she becomes mayor—but when.
Throughout a media conference Brown called Sunday to announce her candidacy in the 2019 race, her enthusiastic supporters stood and cheered. First, as the embattled Cook County circuit court clerk walked into the Boulevard room of the Chicago Hilton & Towers as blues music blared through the speakers, and then later, as Brown and others spoke from a podium about everything she brings to the table.
"She would be the first black woman as the mayor of Chicago," said Emma Lozano, founder of the Mexican advocacy organization La Familia Latina Unida/Sin Fronteras. "She's making history."
Whenever attendees said "if she becomes mayor," the 125 supporters packed into the room corrected them, saying, "when she becomes mayor."
Archive Dive Food & Drink When a reporter sees right through her subject
Posted By Aimee Levitt on 04.23.18 at 06:00 AM
The Reader's archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we'll dig through and bring up some finds.
Journalists are ace bullshit detectors. Or at least that's what we like to tell ourselves. You do not need me to tell how a lot of that is absolute bullshit. Journalists are just as susceptible to a good story as anybody else, especially when the person telling it makes us feel trusted and important and special. Often this has had disastrous consequences. But you don't need me to tell you that, either.
And then there are pieces like Sarah Nardi's 2013 Reader story "Who does Brandon Baltzley think he is?" It's a portrait of a very gifted and very troubled young chef whose substance abuse problem kept getting in the way of his career. As Nardi points out, it's not an uncommon story. "The restaurant world is teeming with hard-living, heavily tattooed prodigies—cooks who could turn into marvelously talented chefs if only they could get their shit together. The industry tends to draw very intense, creative people. But creation and destruction can be the same impulse, refracted differently by the will."
Arts Do This Natural Affection at the Athenaeum Theatre and more of the best things to do in Chicago this week
Posted By Steve Heisler on 04.23.18 at 06:00 AM
There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts to attend this week. Here's some of what we recommend:
Arts Books News Is this the final chapter for the great Evanston Public Library used book sale?
Posted By Deanna Isaacs on 04.23.18 at 06:00 AM
It was a dark and stormy night last Wednesday when the Evanston Library board met to discuss the fate of its long-standing used-book sale. You wouldn't have guessed from the meager turnout that the cancellation of the quarterly event, and of the book-donation program that fueled it, has evoked some real passion in the community, especially among the volunteers who ran and staffed the sale, and worked year-round sorting a mountain of donations.
According to the library's website, 1,000 books and related items (DVDs, CDs, etc) came in every week for the sale, which occupied its own sizable room on the third floor of the main library building at Church and Orrington. Every three months or so, the public would be invited in to peruse the collection and purchase items at bargain-basement prices.
