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Get a copy of this week’s issue
The latest issue is the issue of January 20, 2022, the Winter Arts Preview issue. Delivery to these locations on the map below began this morning and continues through tomorrow, Thursday, January 20....
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The Chicago Reader at 50: A half-century of revolutionary storytelling
Update: This exhibit has been extended through Saturday, March 5, 2022. In celebrating the Chicago Reader’s 50th anniversary, Newberry Library is hosting an in-person archival exhibition. From October...
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It’s become a different world
We see a show and later learn that it had to close abruptly. We can empathize with the actors’ disappointment and distress because we can visualize their faces and recall their voices. But how has the...
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Kia Smith is a south-side diplomat of dance
At Chicago Dancers United’s Dance for Life festival last August, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion stage reverberated with layers of rhythm. Each row of dancers formed a different section of intertwining...
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Welcome to Venus
Back in December, there was a shining sliver of time when it looked like we—as individuals, as artists, as arts institutions—were forging a clear, or at least clear-ish, path forward. Hundreds of...
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Putting on the plaid
It’s not unusual to pick up labels in life; some you’re born with, some you achieve, some are thrust upon you. Cat McKay’s labels have come to her by all three methods as she wends her way through a...
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Come winter, come market
The cold outside might make you think that farmers’ market season is over, but there are plenty of ways to purchase locally grown and regionally-created food year round. Here are a few upcoming...
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Winter Arts Preview
Cover the Winter Arts Preview, Chicago Reader print issue of January 20, 2022. On the cover: Illustration by MikeCenteno. For more of Centeno’s work, go tomikecenteno.com. When we first started...
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Journalism and Police Accountability: Perspectives from the Chicago Reader...
Reader co-publisher Karen Hawkins, former Reader reporter John Conroy, Aislinn Pulley, co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, and Mark Clements, an activist and police torture...
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Local members, local food
Since 2009, the Dill Pickle Food Co-op has offered locally owned products, healthy food options, and specialty items that can’t be found in any other grocery store. This full-service independent...
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Chicago rapper Vic Spencer sticks to his ideals on Spencer for Higher 4
Chicago rapper Vic Spencer has built a catalog worthy of a book-length exposition, but for the time being I’ll restrict myself to a handful of observations about December’s Spencer for Higher 4 (Old...
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Chicago Americana outfit Dogs at Large flirt with the comforts of lo-fi sounds
Since the mid-2010s, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Sam Pirruccello (aided by a shifting group of collaborators) has been releasing languid, Americana-inflected indie rock as Dogs at Large. In 1975,...
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Building 63rd House
On August 5, 1966, near Marquette Park, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was attacked while leading a protest to demand housing desegregation. Several blocks away from this spot stands 3055 W....
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Black female friendships are taking over the small screen
Ever since Bernadine, Gloria, Savannah, and Robin laughed together, cried together, and fussed at each other in the name of friendship in theaters around the world, many have exalted the 1995 film...
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Art houses live
In an article for the Chicago Tribune published on November 26, 1972, film critic Gene Siskel (after whom, ironically, the institution would later be named) announced the pending commencement of a new...
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The Afterparty
At the after-party of a 15-year high school reunion, a famous alumnus is murdered and his classmates are all suspects. Tiffany Haddish stars as the detective trying (not very hard) to find out...
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Cicada
Matthew Fifer and Kieran Mulcare’s Cicada isn’t sure what it wants to be. Is it a cinematic narrative or a heart-wrenching documentary? The story of a partnership, or a classic character study? A tale...
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Nocturna: Side A – The Great Old Man’s Night and Nocturna: Side B – Where the...
Gonzalo Calzada’s ghost story Nocturna is broken up into two distinct films: Side A, the more linear narrative, and Side B, an abstracted addendum that parallels the events of Side A. Narratively,...
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Little Wild, little bunnies, a little gong
Let’s get into it, revelers, there’s a lot of stuff to do both online and off in the next few days! FRI 1/21 Fish (and visitors) are said to go bad after three days, but Fillet of Solo has been...
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