Dale Roberts of Write Insights scrutinized how some Chicago graffiti writers dot their Is and cross their Ts—and what the penmanship might say about the mysterious people behind the tags. oh shit! “The O and the H run into each other. When letters are crowded, usually that person doesn’t have a great sense of social boundaries. They’re in your face.” “The script has a back slant, which comes from a person who is cautious....
Be careful not to capture any of the entertainers in the shot when you’re Instagramming your steak at this slick strip joint in west-suburban Stone Park. Rocco, Allure’s greeter (of course that’s his name), won’t like it. Owner Bob Itzkow—who’s perhaps best known for opening his strip club next door to a convent—tapped venerable North Shore fine-dining chef Michael Lachowicz to design a full restaurant kitchen and train the staff to implement his menu, which leans toward standard steak-house meat and potatoes rather than the formal French style Lachowicz is known for....
Runner-Up Lakeview
Salvage One 1840 W. Hubbard Runner-Up Lillstreet Loft
205 E. 75th 773-224-0104 originalsoulvegetarian.com Runner-Up Chicago’s Home of Chicken and Waffles
I’d been set to write about Kevin Gates’s brand-new mixtape, By Any Means, when I noticed local rapper Chandler London had dropped a new EP from nowhere—or perhaps deep space, which is kind of what the new Ritchie: A Space Odyssey revolves around. London calls it the introduction to a space rap opera, an idea that he’s been working on for six years (at least that’s what he told Fake Shore Drive)....
Chicago guitarist James Elkington has played in so many bands and collaborated with so many musicians that it can be difficult to keep track of everything. He remains best known for leading a sophisticated pop band called the Zincs, which split up not long after releasing its third album, Black Pompadour, in 2007. In 2004 he and singer Janet Bean (Freakwater, Eleventh Dream Day) launched a duo called the Horse’s Ha, which put out its second and final record, Waterdrawn, in 2013....
Claire Greenway/Getty Images Frankie Knuckles in 2007—RIP. At its best, disco music combines the extremes of opulence and brute force. It flaunts the ostentatiousness of classical music, some of the musical interplay of jazz, the warmth of soul-music singing, and the rhythmic directness of early R&B and rock; it borrows the best of everything without wearing its complexity or musicianship on its sleeve. Frankie Knuckles emerged out of the New York disco scene of the early-to-mid 70s, but his genius came from his ability to see past disco’s ornamentation and pinpoint its essence—namely, rhythm....
Julia Thiel The Bitter Bourbon Buck, Letherbee Fernet I stopped by Parson’s earlier this week for the launch party of Letherbee’s new fernet—a type of amaro that’s incredibly popular in Argentina (even more so than in Italy, where it originated) but less well known in the United States (outside San Francisco, anyway). Distiller Nathan Ozug says he’s been into Italian bitter liqueurs for a while, and has wanted to make his own version of fernet since he first began working for Letherbee a year and a half ago....
Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Nightlife personality Claire Van Eijk was channeling some serious “Aquawoman” vibes at the East Room during their hip-hop night. Love Claire’s skin-tight glossy dress paired with her fiery red messy bun. Adding hip to her hop, she grounded her outfit with a pair of white—and very current—Adidas sneakers, creating a sexy yet sporty look....
Michael Gebert Rick Bayless presenting at Modern Mexican “What is the relevance of the Mexican pantry in modern cuisine?” asked Rick Bayless of a crowd of about 60 or 70 people assembled lecture-hall-style in front of a test kitchen area at Kendall College on Saturday morning. The chef of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo was leading an all-day session on Mexican cuisine in fine dining called Modern Mexican, or Mod Mex for short, an adjunct event to the upcoming Chicago Gourmet festival in Grant Park at the end of the month....
As a performer, Dael Orlandersmith, who wrote and starred in the Obie-winning 1995 one-person show Beauty’s Daughter, is pure empathic gravitas. Her chopping-block physique, orotund voice, and stately bearing give her a monumental presence, while her uncanny ability to conjure exquisitely damaged and pathetic characters lends a disarming warmth to everything she does. And she captivates through the most modest of means; a slight shift of her head, lowering of her voice, or adjustment of her posture is all she needs to transform convincingly from one persona to another....
@eveewing Runner-Up @arayyay
Twitchin Skratch soundcloud.com/twitchinskratch @TwitchinSkratch Runner-Up Twitchin Skratch
Kathleen Rooney kathleenrooney.com @KathleenMRooney Runner-Up Stacey Ballis
AP Photo/John Raoux NFL commissioner Roger Goodell I believe I speak not only for myself when I declare that Thursday night at 7 PM can’t come too soon. At that time—prime time on ESPN—the NFL draft will finally begin and the sports pages of America will suspend their frolic through the enchanted forest of what if? Meanwhile, the Sun-Times, which on Thursday offered a mere five stories on the draft, dabbled in numerology....
Q My friend is in her late 20s and married, and she has two little kids. Her husband had a rough childhood and has some issues. Since their most recent child was conceived, they have not had sex. He says he believes there is a difference between a lover and a mother, and he refuses to have sex with his wife now because he thinks of her as a mother to their children and not as a lover....
When Ibraham Parlak was arrested by Homeland Security in July of 2004 as a Kurdish terrorist who needed to be thrown out of the country, the first Chicago journalist to write about his plight was Mike Sneed. I had something to do with that. Parlak ran a restaurant on the Red Arrow Highway in southwest Michigan and was a popular member of the Harbor Country community. But his application to become a naturalized American set off an alarm....
While the Chicago Humanities Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary with a season that’s all about journeys, artistic director Matti Bunzl is about to embark on a one-way journey of his own. At the end of this year, Bunzl will leave the festival—and the University of Illinois, where he’s spent the last 16 years as a professor of anthropology—to return to his native Austria. It was announced last month that he’s been tapped to be the next head of Vienna’s estimable Wien Museum, the municipal institution of history, art, and culture that he says inspired his career....
ARTIST: Ryan Duggan SHOW: Brian Costello’s Songs With Friends at Empty Bottle on Tue 2/7 MORE INFO: ryanduggan.com
