Clik here to view.
Jackass Forever
With the collective pleasure centers of the viewing public at record levels of fried, it’s beginning to look a lot like Jackass’s world, a world we are now all condemned to endure. Copycat activity...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New directors in a new year
Every January, Japanese young people celebrate Seijin-no-hi, or Coming of Age Day, to commemorate their passage from childhood into adulthood. With this, and both the calendar and Lunar New Year in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Light up your life with these lovely events
Are you loving life? Or living to love? While we don’t have recommendations for romantic fireside dinners (expect perhaps, don’t wear flammable fabrics and keep your phone charged in case you need to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Drinking games
Q: I’m a 40-year-old bi guy, and I’m really into drinking cum. I say “drinking” and not “swallowing” because I’m talking about glassfuls. I make and sell videos of me drinking large amounts of cum....
View ArticleClik here to view.
A time that was wonderful
I didn’t meet the revered Chicago Tribune theater critic, Richard Christiansen, until 2016 when I started interviewing him for my book Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater. He was 84 years old...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sidaka had his foot in the door of Chicago hip-hop, and he kicks it open with...
Chicago rapper-producer Sidaka began dabbling in music seven years ago, when he was a 15-year-old tinkering with a piano in an effort to impress a crush. Since then he’s gone from experimenting with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
La Armada keep fighting the good fight on Anti-Colonial Vol. 2
The pandemic hasn’t been easy on anyone, but it’s been especially unkind to those who rely on live music for income or a creative outlet. That said, if there were any local band I had faith was going...
View ArticleClik here to view.
CPS nurses are exhausted
From the ebbs and flows of the pandemic, to chronic understaffing, to numerous public fights between their union and the district, school nurses in Chicago are frustrated, stretched thin, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Music Frozen Dancing will have you sweating through your coat
For many of us, the malaise and isolation that often accompany Chicago winters have been exacerbated by the pandemic—when the weather is at its most brutal, it can be hard to leave your warm, cozy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chicago underground heroes Cheer-Accident stay joyously weird on their 24th...
When I moved to the Windy City in 1995, “psychedelic” and “progressive rock” were dirty words associated with patchouli-scented hippies. A few local bands were boldly mining this expansive territory,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘We need to be imagining other possibilities for ourselves’
The United States incarcerates more people and incarcerates them at a higher rate than any other country in the world, with 2.3 million people presently in custody—over half a million more than the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Garifuna singer Ifeanyi Elswith drops a powerful, poignant Valentine’s Day...
In summer 2020, local Garifuna musician Ifeanyi Elswith released the album Everything Festyle, which Gossip Wolf hailed as a “star-making turn” that feels like “an intimate conversation with the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alison Shearer debuts with a fusion of grief, joy, and jazz
Alto saxophonist Alison Shearer had nearly completed her debut solo album when her father, acclaimed photojournalist John Shearer, died in 2019. In the aftermath, the Brooklyn-based musician, who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No más
With word just breaking that Kenneth Griffin kicked in $20 million to Richard Irvin’s gubernatorial campaign, I guess you can say he passed the audition. Irvin, that is, not Griffin. No, Griffin’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A fresh Evita
Marcia Milgrom Dodge demonstrates in Drury Lane’s Evita what great casting in 2022 looks like. The director and choreographer gathered a cast diverse in race, age, and body type, creating what feels...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Something’s here, something great
I can’t think of an American musical with a better pedigree than West Side Story, conceived, directed, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with a score by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Chicago helped put the Queen of Grunge back on her throne
On January 4, 2020, Jen Lemasters started She Bop, an Instagram account dedicated to recordings by women in rock. Lemasters has a huge record collection, not least because she and her husband, Nick...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Searching for The Pigeon Lady
Are pigeons beautiful? I think they might be, but I rarely stop to look. Sometimes though, walking to the Jackson Red Line stop on my way home, I notice them. There are dozens here, heads bobbing up...
View ArticleClik here to view.
True blues
A fine cast backed by a first-rate jazz combo make Porchlight Music Theatre’s revival of Sheldon Epps’s concept revue Blues in the Night a delicious musical feast. A 1982 Broadway vehicle for Leslie...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A note on this week’s cover story
“The Pigeon Story,” as it came to be colloquially and intriguingly discussed among Reader editorial staff in the past few weeks, went through many iterations. When its author, staff writer Katie...
View Article