Clik here to view.
Blind Arvella Gray
Editor’s note: This story originally ran in the Reader on January 7, 1972. It’s been transcribed exactly as it appeared then, and has not been updated to correct typos or conform to the Reader’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Young Guv’s Guv III threatens to give you the warm fuzzies
In all my years contributing to the Reader, the artist I’ve written about the most is probably Toronto’s Ben Cook—partly because he’s been so incredibly prolific for the past two decades, but also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘I don’t need fans, I need comrades’
Patrick Haggerty has just made me cry. Though we’re talking over Zoom, a day before the 78-year-old heads out on tour in support of his second record, Blackberry Rose and Other Songs & Sorrows,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chicago jangle-pop group CalicoLoco drop their sharpest single yet
Since 2019, local jangle-pop six-piece CalicoLoco have been dropping singles whose smart, rigorous songwriting sensibility reminds Gossip Wolf of 80s UK indie-pop masters such as Prefab Sprout and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best local conservationist rocking it out on YouTube
Julian Baumgartner may be the sole owner of Chicago’s oldest conservation studio, but that doesn’t keep him from being simultaneously the master of old masters and social media. He’s a man with a fan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Don’t look back
Hadestown, the 2019 Tony Award-winning musical that grew out of a 2010 concept album by Anaïs Mitchell, is an earnest and goodhearted show (now in a short run with Broadway in Chicago) that in some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sea changes
In his preshow speech, Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell asked the audience how many had ever seen Henrik Ibsen’s 1888 play The Lady from the Sea before. “We’re at Court Theatre and we’re...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Idle Muse tackles a Shakespearean deep cut
For scholars and dramatists, is there anything more alluring in theater than works dubbed impossible or unfinished or a problem? Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Shakespeare’s seldom-performed and dubiously...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Together again at Filament
Pronoia: the belief that the universe is conspiring in your favor. After two years away, Filament Theatre is back with an original production that brings this hopeful and expansive feeling to its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Little Al Thomas lent his big voice to Chicago blues for more than 50 years
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A chilly Passage
Before the house lights go down, the cast of Passage stands in a flat line on a stage dappled with lights and fractured diagonally from floor to far wall. They introduce themselves by details...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best LGBTQ+ bar 75 steps from the Mag Mile
Look for the unassuming, narrow doorway wedged in between an Armenian restaurant and the former staff entrance to the now-shuttered Gap behemoth on Michigan Avenue, climb the nearly vertical and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Free Street celebrates Radical Love
Free Street Theater was founded in 1969 by Patrick Henry, an alum of the Goodman School of Drama whose vision was to create a multiracial ensemble that could tour neighborhoods and break down “the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The goalie
It’s been about a week since former House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, once the most powerful Democrat in the state, was indicted by federal prosecutors on various corruption charges, and I’m like the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Something old, something new
After a dazzling return to live performance at the Harris Theater last autumn, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is presenting two programs over two weeks at the Museum of Contemporary Art this March....
View ArticleClik here to view.
It’s deep-fried dopamine from Flavor Supreme and Mom’s Chicago on Monday...
“Mom” is the nickname of the deep fryer at the Kedzie Inn,* so it’s a delicious coincidence that Kelly Ijichi of Mom’s Chicago will be on the baskets, dunking barbecued eel croquettes, chicken gyoza,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Panel weighs problems and solutions at Cook County domestic violence court
The Chicago Reader and Injustice Watch hosted a panel discussion Tuesday about the challenges that survivors of domestic violence face navigating the Cook County court system. The event came on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Poetry, radical love, and snacks
Another slate of both online and in-person events for this weekend and beyond. For anything that makes you leave your house, please be smart and check both the weather report (hello late winter and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
AdultFriendFinder review: Is it real? Does it work in 2022? 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,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Seeking Arrangement Review: Does It Work in 2022? Can You Find a Real Sugar...
Seeking Arrangement (now known simply as Seeking) is quite arguably the premier site for sugar daddies and sugar babies. If this is the kind of relationship you’re interested in pursuing, Seeking is a...
View Article