Illinois news

• Duels and duets

  12-04-2023 17:33 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The lobby filled with the heat of many bodies on April 8 for closing night of Shamel Pitts|TRIBE’s Touch of Red, the first program of the MCA’s spring On Stage series on Blackness and movement, Frictions, curated by Tara Aisha Willis. By the spiral staircase, the short film Touch of Red: Overture plays on a […]
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• Paletero bells to whistles: Latine creation is an act of resistance in Chicago

  05-03-2026 23:02 via chicagoreader.com
  I grew up on Chicago’s south side, in the heart of Little Village, surrounded by the sounds of paleteros ringing the bells of their ice cream carts, the bright colors of freshly cut fruit, and the aroma of tamales filling the streets. The bells meant summer. They meant joy. They meant children running outside with […]
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• An AI character comes to life in Morning, Noon, and Night

  05-03-2026 20:14 via chicagoreader.com
  Morning, Noon, and Night, through 3/28, Shattered Globe Theatre at Theater Wit
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• Theatre Y’s Charges (The Supplicants) updates Aeschylus for the urgency of our times

  05-03-2026 19:53 via chicagoreader.com
  Charges (The Supplicants, through 3/29 at Theatre Y
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• A wedding and a funeral

  05-03-2026 19:39 via chicagoreader.com
  Pivot, through 3/21 at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble
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• Going through the motions

  05-03-2026 16:54 via chicagoreader.com
  Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Winter Series, which ran February 26 to March 1 at the Harris Theater, featured a mixed bill of three full company works by Amy Hall Garner, Juel D. Lane, and Nacho Duato. The works by Garner and Duato were created on different cohorts of the company, 17 years apart.  In Garner’s […]
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• Estrella del Mar’s pan-Latin-Hawaiian coastal cooking comes to the next Monday Night Foodball

  05-03-2026 16:03 via chicagoreader.com
  It is often said that the best poke on Oahu is served at Foodland Farms supermarkets. But for Star Urquidi, her best poke was her first poke: at a little restaurant near her junior high school in Honolulu. “Me and my friends would go whenever we could come up with some money and get spicy […]
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• Meet me in the middling

  05-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film buff, collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to offer. As many of my fellow film critics will attest, the hardest films to write about are often the middling ones. Perhaps you even liked such a film, enjoyed the time you […]
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• Gasoline and slot machines

  05-03-2026 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  It’s long been frowned upon to drink beer at a gas station. But a quirk in Illinois law has recently led such businesses across the state to secure liquor licenses that let customers drink on premises. It’s not really about the booze. It’s about gambling. In 2009, Governor Pat Quinn signed the Video Gaming Act, […]
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• Reform in reverse at the State’s Attorney’s Office

  04-03-2026 16:24 via chicagoreader.com
  It has been just over a year since Eileen O’Neill Burke took office as Cook County state’s attorney. Now is an appropriate time to assess how her policies are impacting our communities. The state’s attorney is one of the county’s most powerful elected officials, determining who receives mercy and who faces lengthy sentences, whether law […]
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• Best Chicago DJ bottling music into scent

  04-03-2026 16:09 via chicagoreader.com
  Zernell Gillie I first heard of Zernell Gillie when midwest perfumer Alie Kiral (Pearfat Parfum) mentioned him on Instagram, which led me to discover his fragrance House, a lush scent named for the homegrown electronic music style. One whiff and I was back at Smartbar in 2016 with my husband, bodies in motion under the […]
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• Best way to see Black Chicago (and beyond) through a fresh lens

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Suspending disbelief, in film parlance, assumes a poetic faith in which audiences believe in the supernatural to engage with a storyline. The Black Film Club Collective creates an experience that assumes a poetic faith all its own: a lens through which we can communally immerse ourselves into stories that center Black lives. Many of us […]
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• Best vegan restaurant doing comedy and giving back

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  I first heard about Kale My Name in 2020 when it opened in Albany Park during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order, at a time when most restaurants were only offering takeout or closing their doors completely. A mutual friend, Chicago comedian Tina Youkhana, kept posting about it on Instagram, and it stuck in my head. Growing […]
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• Best underground entertainment trend

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  This cultural moment feels medieval. Maybe it’s something about the collapsing of traditional social models, the rise of authoritarian hierarchies, or the spreading of once preventable diseases and viruses that can kill large swathes of people. Perhaps it’s being forced back into Middle Ages–style espionage by ICE and the omnipresence of the technosurveillance state. Whatever’s […]
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• Best third-party food delivery platform inspired by the theories of a late 19th-century Russian anarchist

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  If he were alive today, Pyotr Kropotkin probably wouldn’t recognize a tamal. But the Russian philosopher, who popularized the concept of mutual aid, would definitely understand the principles guiding this five-year-old volunteer bike squad that got its start delivering hundreds of burritos every month to hungry Chicagoans in collaboration with the Chicago Burrito Brigade. Last […]
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• Best team that took over for my tamale vendors as masked federal agents terrorized Chicago

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  The first time I met Martha, I was in sweatpants, walking the dog. Martha, an Albany Park resident since the 80s, and another neighbor were out on a chilly Saturday morning slinging tamales. They’d taken over the stand from its usual vendors, allowing them to stay safer at home during the immigration enforcement surge in […]
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• Best sober-focused music series

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Matt Ciarleglio became co-owner of the Empty Bottle in 2023, but when he started working security at the club in 2010, after a few years playing shows there, he was fresh into adulthood. He worked his way up through different positions (bartender, marketing manager), and along that road, he realized he wanted to get sober. […]
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• Best small bookstore with titles I never knew existed

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Jarvis Square Books There are a few excellent used bookstores in Rogers Park and Edgewater, including Armadillo’s Pillow and Heirloom Books. But with just three hundred square feet, the smallest of the bunch, Jarvis Square Books, most consistently surprises me with titles I haven’t heard of but instantly know I need. On one of my […]
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• Best show to laugh until you cry

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  The first time I saw Second City’s Black Excellence Comedy Revue, I cried real tears from laughing so hard. The 2024 title, Black by Popular Demand, was the second year Chicago’s most acclaimed comedy institution had this very Black show, and my best friend, WBEZ host Sasha-Ann Simons, wanted to cover it for her show. […]
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• Best Ravenswood barber who can give you a sharp cut while regaling you with tales of drumming at the Fireside in the 90s

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  C.J. Heimberger at Northside Barbershop When it comes to sourcing professionals to help maintain my personal hygiene and grooming regimen, I look to my friends. After all, I can see when a buddy has gotten a sharp haircut. (Just don’t ask me how I investigate my friends’ dental work!) When my pal Joe recommended booking […]
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• Best postprotest busking

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  With pink cheeks and icy hands, my wife and I split off from the mass of roughly 30,000 people slow-walking through downtown Chicago in protest. Thousands more across the country were simultaneously marching in unified defiance of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and with this knowledge, I felt the conflicting swells of both hope […]
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• Best police force to protect a murderous army of secret police

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  What would you do if a bloodthirsty horde of fascist soldiers was carrying out a terror campaign in your state? If you’re Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, you’d call a press conference where you menacingly tell the president, “If you come for my people, you come through me.” Then, you’d marshal a small army of local […]
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• Best place to try out your act with the most supportive audience

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Come try out your new material—clowning, puppetry, music, burlesque, poetry, tap dance, or performance art—among the most hyped crowd at Stop Motion Plant’s monthly salon and go home with a new community to call your own. Taking place at venues all around town (even outdoor locations), the cozy aesthetic extends to the group collage that […]
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• Best place to support independent plus-size sellers

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Curvy Con Curvy Con is a joyful, size-inclusive market created by and for fat creatives. It’s also proof that community-centered shopping can be both fun and purposeful. Conceived and produced by Taylor Pasche, the event is run in collaboration with a dedicated team from Fat Theatre Project (FTP), under the artistic direction of Eileen Tull. […]
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• Best place to spot a black-crowned night heron

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  I feel self-conscious calling myself a bird-watcher; I don’t orient my free time around the pursuit of unfamiliar bird species, my grasp of avian taxonomy is almost nonexistent, and I’m reliant on Merlin, the free bird-identification app from Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, to figure out what winged creatures cross my path 90 percent of […]
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• Best place to see a live possum and vintage taxidermy

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  You may know the Insect Asylum as a quirky storefront in Logan Square where you can explore a whole underrecognized phylum and boop a possum snout all in the same day, but its coolness goes even deeper. Though the storefront opened Earth Day 2022, founder Nina Salem originally kicked things off in 2018 with a […]
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• Best place to meditate with live music

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Times like these demand moments of respite where we can pause, restore, and summon our energy to respond to the rough days now and to come. As we continue to move through the fear and violence inflicted by the federal government on our communities and on our country, we can find power in shared stillness. […]
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• Best place to daydream under a willow tree

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  In the heart of summer, when humidity drapes itself over Chicago, and every creature is out to play, the sounds of bomba, salsa, and reggaeton radiate from speakers at Humboldt Park. Children screech from a swing set in the distance. Longtime neighbors bring out their chairs to sit. Food trucks painted with Puerto Rican flags […]
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• Best place to buy cool guilt-free gifts

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  The shop at Chicago Fair Trade Museum If you ever bought into the myth that ethical shopping is boring or laborious, consider it officially busted. The shop at Chicago Fair Trade Museum at 4704 N. Broadway is one of the city’s most delightful spots to buy gifts with a conscience. It’s the kind of place […]
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• Best place for snack-time bleach

  04-03-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  There’s a lot to love about Devon Market. Where else can I leave with a stag-shaped bottle of wine, at least five different varieties of panettone, and Cok juice? The grab ’n go section usually has plates of vegan Ethiopian food for $9.99 that are so robust they last me four meals. The produce is […]
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