Illinois news

• Odd to see

  06-08-2026 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. I’m continuously seeking transcendent moviegoing experiences, ones in which I’m moved—sometimes almost physically, the merging of image and body and then form and soul—by the sublimity of cinema. I’m lucky to […]
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• Chicago, what’s up with the AI flyers? 

  07-08-2026 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  For DJ Ca$h Era, there isn’t one single moment that stands out as to why she created an Instagram post urging artists, creatives, and business owners not to use artificial intelligence for graphic design work and promotion.  “I logged on Instagram one day, and I scrolled really quick, and it was just back-to-back AI flyers […]
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• Mary Nisi, DJ and radio host

  07-08-2026 01:58 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Mary Nisi fell in love with DJing as a volunteer with Loyola University station WLUW in 2000. She DJed at venues and clubs around the city before finding a niche as a wedding DJ. In 2005, she founded DJ company Toast & Jam, which she says employs around 20 part-time DJs. And none of them […]
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• 72 hours in Milwaukee with Abby Pucker, Chanelle Lacy, and Emma McKee

  06-08-2026 23:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The Flyover Gals is a Chicago Reader series written by Gertie’s Abby Pucker and Chanelle Lacy, alongside Mariane Ibrahim Gallery’s Emma McKee—three women rooted in Chicago’s art scene, sending back vivid dispatches from their art world journeys across the midwest. The trio captures the creativity, grit, and unexpected beauty shaping the heartland’s cultural landscape. For […]
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• The Notebook comes back in a solid touring production

  06-08-2026 22:25 via chicagoreader.com
  The Notebook, through 8/16, Broadway in Chicago at Nederlander Theatre
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• In Greater Grand Crossing, a transcendent For Colored Girls is more than enuf

  06-08-2026 17:22 via chicagoreader.com
  
  For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf
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• Mutual dreams upend two marriages in Marble

  06-08-2026 17:08 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Marble, through 8/30, Gift Theatre at Copernicus Center
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• De Las Cenizas ignites the next Monday Night Foodball

  06-08-2026 17:07 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Adalberto Olaez hated the sound of the ticket printer. It was a microplane zesting the back of his skull for nearly 14 years in just as many professional kitchens. “The restaurant closes at 10,” he says. “But as a line cook, it takes you 45 minutes prior to that to start wrapping up, start wiping […]
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• Modern Archaic’s The Bacchae is a mortal production with god-tier possibilities

  06-08-2026 16:47 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The Bacchae, Modern Archaic Theatre Company at Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble
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• The Outsiders honors the spirit of S.E. Hinton’s book

  06-08-2026 16:34 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The Outsider, through 8/16, Broadway in Chicago at Cadillac Palace Theatre
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• Who watches the watchmen?

  06-08-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Just Neighbors examines the city’s homeless encampment sweeps, focusing on the human impact of a fragmented, interdepartmental process. Excluding Judah, the names of all unhoused people in this story have been changed to protect their identities. Judah Venturi, 40, is an independent researcher, writer, teacher, and philosopher. He’s lived all across the eastern half of the […]
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• Review: Blue Film

  06-08-2026 15:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Blue Film screening through Sun 8/16 at Facets
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• Cook County judges granted majority of pretrial detention requests in spring 2025, new study finds

  06-08-2026 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) took full effect in September 2023. The landmark legislation fully abolished cash bail in Illinois—the first state in the nation to do so. It also required prosecutors to petition judges when they believe someone should be detained before trial and established a three-prong test for judges to consider, along with […]
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• Review: WTO/99

  05-08-2026 19:06 via chicagoreader.com
  
  WTO/99 screening Thu 8/11 at 7 PM at the Music Box Theatre
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• Illinois prisons expand free phone calls

  05-08-2026 17:40 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) is extending a pilot program that provides incarcerated people with 775 minutes of free phone calls per month.  Naomi Puzzello, public information officer for the IDOC, confirmed in an email to the Chicago Reader that the department decided to extend the program after seeing “a significant increase in minute […]
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• Chicago Reader Volume 55, Number 19

  05-08-2026 16:31 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Chicago Reader Volume 55, No. 19. August 2026.
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• The quiet infrastructure of control

  05-08-2026 15:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Right now, as you read this, someone is watching you.  From AI-powered cameras and automated license plate readers to drones and GPS monitors, police at every level have access to a truly impressive arsenal of tools collecting information, whether you’re on the bus, at a coffee shop, or within the confines of your own home. […]
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• Southeast Spotlight: Jordans Beauty Supply

  05-08-2026 15:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Jordans Beauty Supply1911 E. 79th Street, Wed, Thu, and Fri 10 AM–5 PM, Tue and Sat 10 AM–3 PM, closed on Sun and Mon(773) 734-6268, jbseducational.com, Email  [email protected] @JordansBeautySupply, Facebook Jordans Beauty Supply Some businesses are built on ambition; Jordans Beauty Supply was built on belief. When the company where Ike Jordan had spent years […]
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• ‘I found it in the alley!’

  05-08-2026 15:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Social Fabric is a glimpse into the vibrant lives, objects, and spaces that shape our city, cocurated with community archives and local photographers. It can be the most mundane day: gloomy, overcast, and, somehow, both chilly and muggy, when a walk through a Chicago alley brings about an entirely new trajectory. Maybe you spotted a […]
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• I lived in the women’s prison slated for closure

  05-08-2026 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  When I read the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) announcement that the new Logan Correctional Center will be built in Crest Hill, next to the new Stateville prison, I felt deep worry for all those still behind bars at the current prison. As a woman previously incarcerated there, I know firsthand that conditions at Logan […]
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• Chicago’s alleys are a little world

  05-08-2026 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In a bustling city where every nook and cranny is packed with bars, coffee shops, and corner stores, alleys exist as a place of calm, one where people can find far more than a parking spot. Sometimes, that’s a painting. Madisyn Mettenburg was roaming aimlessly through the alley near her Ravenswood apartment after a rough […]
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• Chicago’s alleys are a little word

  05-08-2026 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In a bustling city where every nook and cranny is packed with bars, coffee shops, and corner stores, alleys exist as a place of calm, one where people can find far more than a parking spot. Sometimes, that’s a painting. Madisyn Mettenburg was roaming aimlessly through the alley near her Ravenswood apartment after a rough […]
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• Can zines help us resist the slop overtaking the Internet?

  05-08-2026 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  I came into writing this piece several months ago—wide-eyed, Gen Z, hopeful that gripping on to analog methods for dear life might just help us resist the slop and the shit overtaking our media landscape. It’s not news that everything posted online is surveilled by federal agencies and regurgitated by bots, then collected as personal […]
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• The resurrected Krill release their first song in a decade

  04-08-2026 18:28 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Late last month, Boston-born trio Krill dropped “Commemorative Plaque,” their first new release in ten years—and their first piece of music as a Chicago band. Formed in 2010, Krill became an important band in New England indie rock, which at that time also produced Speedy Ortiz, Ovlov, and Pile. The terrifically knotty title track of […]
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• The staying power of the handmade

  04-08-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In the project 60 wrd/min art critic, writer Lori Waxman explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For this iteration, Waxman reviews the work of New York illustrator Morain An. Morain An […]
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• Virtual reality

  04-08-2026 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In the project 60 wrd/min art critic, writer Lori Waxman explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For this iteration, Waxman reviews a recent exhibition by Chicago-based artist Xinlyu Wang. Xinlyu Wang […]
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• Nitro-a-Go-Go severs the music festival from the music business

  04-08-2026 00:14 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In late July, musician and poet Cole “Johnson Rockstar” Hunt, cofounder of the band TV Buddha, hosted the first Nitro-a-Go-Go. This four-day DIY festival consisted of six shows at a variety of outdoor locations around Chicago. Hunt got the idea for the festival in October, after a three-day underground fest called Bread & Roses debuted […]
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• Rise thru the concrete with Dandelion Town

  03-08-2026 23:30 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Editor’s note: The formatting of all written quotations obtained for this story has been preserved to reflect the sources’ styles. Earlier this year, we at the Reader celebrated the creation of Eyewash Video Magazine as one of the best things to happen in our city in 2025. In the Best of Chicago story, creator and […]
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• On friendship

  03-08-2026 18:31 via chicagoreader.com
  
  “What is a friend How do you get a friend How do you keep a friend How come I don’t have a friend?” —Dr. Steve Brule “Friendship, this relation without dependence, without episode, yet into which all of the simplicity of life enters, passes by way of the recognition of the common strangeness that does […]
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• Virginia band Book of Wyrms conjure vintage metal and fantasy vibes

  03-08-2026 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Book of Wyrms Sat 8/22 at Reggies Music Joint
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