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God: now at the mall
An immersive art exhibition in DuPage County brings the Sistine Chapel to the former site of the Sears store at Oakbrook Center. It had been almost exactly 30 years since I’d seen my favorite gorgon.…
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Best Free Sexting Websites and Apps for NSFW Messaging Online
It’s as simple as this: we all have sexual urges from time to time. Occasionally, we don’t have the energy required to find someone to meet IRL (in real life) for a quick hookup to satisfy our NSFW...
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AdultFriendFinder review: Is it real? Does it work in 2021? We paid for a...
AdultFriendFinder: Scam or real? This is always the question I ask myself when signing up for a new hookup site. I want to find a legit hookup, not spend hours talking to bots. Gather round kids,...
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Queer nightlife fixture Cae Monāe opens for her synergistic collaborators in...
Cae Monāe’s existence is her art. Whether she’s taking over an Instagram square with her face abstracted by embellishments and makeup or adorning herself in a custom outfit and commanding a stage with...
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Chicago art rockers Noir Disco complicate everyday experiences on NOW! 2073
Noir Disco’s new debut album, Now! 2073, belongs to a proud tradition of art-rock. Siblings Nolan and Carter Dickson lead the Chicago group, and their music draws on specific reference points from a...
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Working the program
Based on stand-up and radio personality Harry Teinowitz’s own experiences in rehab and recovery, this sweet, good-natured play takes its protagonist, Harry, through his journey in rehab, from his...
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Dynamic guitarist Nita Strauss will shred your face off
Los Angeles-based guitarist Nita Strauss has made her name as a session player and composer of music for video games and indie film. She’s also been Alice Cooper’s guitarist since 2014, and as she...
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Are neon signs really enough?
There’s a young person smiling, posing—hand on their hip—in front of a lit-up sign that reads: “EMPOWER WOMEN.” It intermittently flashes to include ED, making it “EMPOWERED.” The photo is snapped,...
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Percussionists Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang return to in-person performance...
Six years ago, I characterized Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang’s winter solstice concert series as “an anchor, a beacon, and a seasonal tradition in its own right.” The two drummers began performing as...
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Robert Marovich publishes a new book on King of Gospel James Cleveland
In a 2015 Reader story, critic Peter Margasak called scholar and radio DJ Robert Marovich “one of the foremost authorities on Chicago gospel” and wrote that his then-new book, A City Called Heaven:...
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Winter in the Wildwood is an earnest low-stakes fairy tale
Beyond a curiosity shop in a forest of Christmas trees, the lights of Wildwood have grown dim. The Winter Queen (Diane Berrios) is locked in a cursed sleep, and it’s up to intrepid quest adventurers...
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Best of Chicago nominations are now closed
It’s our favorite time of the year at the Reader, when our community comes together to highlight and celebrate the very best our city has to offer! We are looking for the BEST OF CHICAGO! Over the...
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Soak the suckers
In the days since a Cook County jury declared Jussie Smollett guilty, guilty, guilty I’ve been wondering how Republicans will use the verdict to squeeze even more money from the suckers and saps who...
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The Peep Show helped birth two of Chicago’s best early country-rock acts
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...
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The real stories of a queer SWANA family
Tucked into the corner of an expansive artist studio that he rents in Edgewater with 13 other creative friends, Martin Yousif Zebari spent the latter half of 2020 sewing and writing. When he wasn’t...
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Discover the magic of Spain at Christmas
For the second year in a row, people across the world are celebrating the holiday season in the throes of a global pandemic. Unlike last time, though, vaccinations offer hope to many seeking a sense...
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National Champions
In National Champions, two college football players, star quarterback LeMarcus James (Stephan James) and best friend Emmett Sunday (Alexander Ludwig), organize a player’s strike on the eve of the...
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The Hand of God
There has always been an undercurrent of nostalgia to the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s fables of excess. In The Great Beauty (2013), and again at crucial moments in HBO’s The New Pope, all the...
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The Novice
Lauren Hadaway’s The Novice is a powerful look at compulsion. The film focuses on Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman of Orphan fame, a movie that would make a great double feature here), a college freshman...
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Red Rocket is simple stuff about a simple man
It’s a certain kind of disappointment when a sexually explicit American art-house film is just plain tedious, when naked appendages are not enough to suffice for cinematic stimulation. It’s a shame...
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