These are strange days for the Chicago Public Schools, but on the Tuesday morning before winter break, the fifth-graders in Mr. Harlan’s class at Brentano Math and Science Academy in Logan Square are less concerned with the prospect of a teachers’ strike than with coming up with satisfying endings for the monster stories they’ve been writing all semester with help from volunteers at 826CHI, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Wicker Park....

I became a baseball fan at the back end of the bar of the Deadwood, in Iowa City, Iowa. It was 1985, the Cubs had just missed getting into the World Series the year before, and a quasi-boyfriend from Chicago initiated me, teaching me the basics of stats and keeping score. With a bunch of us huddled up, drinking Old Style, making jokes, and occasionally cheering, it was kinda like being a bleacher bum—we just had our necks craned up at a TV....

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Saverio Truglia Third Coast Percussion This week’s installment of the Empty Bottle’s free Monday series features Joshua Abrams’s Natural Information Society and Spires That in the Sunset Rise, which starts tonight at 9 PM. If that’s not your thing, there’s Ergs offshoot Black Wine at Township with excellent postpunk openers Meat Wave. Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things play on Tue 8/25 as part of this summer’s Tuesdays on the Terrace series at the MCA, while Arcade Fire play the first of two consecutive shows at United Center....

Seven-piece pop outfit the Lemons debuted this winter with Hello, We’re the Lemons, a straight shot of summertime. The band’s charmingly wistful, borderline ramshackle tunes about ice cream, jelly beans, and Chubby Checker make it sound like these folks just leaped out of a time machine from the mid-60s. The Lemons’ songs are sweeter than a mouthful of Bazooka bubble gum, and their sugar rush lasts longer—the songs on Hello, We’re the Lemons average a little more than a minute, which is easily twice the time it takes for that gum to turn into putty....

There’s never been a more important moment for alternative newsweeklies in America. Nor have they ever been so difficult to pull together. There’s no funding, little support. The very notion of unfake news has been degraded in recent years—it’s downright reviled by the White House. Daily newspapers are shrinking as they struggle to keep themselves afloat. How can we possibly think about recommitting to alternative journalism? It’s the city that works....

An Elton John look-alike plays piano beneath a pink spotlight in the middle of a Wrigleyville apartment-building courtyard. Donning a white boa, platform heels, and blinking sunglasses, he busts into a spot-on rendition of “Bennie and the Jets.” A flapper and a vampire roam the grounds, chatting with corpses and taking selfies. Lured by the spectacle a group of drunken Cubs fans stumble toward the apartment’s entrance, woo-wooing in the neighborhood’s native tongue....

Formed in San Francisco in 2006 and named after a Black Sabbath song (a pretty, mostly acoustic interlude on the 1971 LP Master of Reality), Orchid play the kind of old-school doom metal that tempts people to call it “occult rock” or “heavy psych” instead. (As though you couldn’t tell that from the photo.) They hail from deep in the hazy realm of bell-bottoms, black-light posters, custom vans, and amplifier cabinets large enough to sleep in....

This week, preorders opened up for a career-encompassing box set by Norwegian black-metal pioneers Emperor. Released by Finnish label Blood Music, this massive collection is among the biggest box sets ever made, and for just under $800, all 24 of its LPs can be yours. Copies are going fast, so take note, black-metal completists with plenty of disposable income: this set compiles pretty much everything Emperor recorded in their 23-year run, including all their studio albums, demos, outtakes, and covers, as well as multiple concerts....

Lil Wayne wrote a really boring prison diary—which turns out to be a fitting expose´ of the injustices of Rikers Island Last October, Lil Wayne published a memoir of his imprisonment at the infamous Rikers Island. Jarrod Shanahan writes for The New Inquiry that it’s often irredeemably boring—and as a result, it’s also the perfect embodiment of the dehumanizing practices of Rikers. [The New Inquiry] Trap music has brought Atlanta onto the global stage, but the city’s relationship with its biggest cultural export remains tense Trap music has overrun the charts and brought Atlanta to the forefront of the global pop-music conversation—but how do the politics, economics, and social circumstances of America’s “black mecca” interact with the genre’s success?...

Entering the country illegally—without going through an immigration checkpoint—or overstaying a visa isn’t a criminal offense but rather a civil violation of federal law. A growing percentage of the “undocumented” population in the U.S. are people who overstayed their visas rather than people who made unauthorized border crossings. Of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today, about 500,000 reside in Illinois, mostly in the Chicagoland area. After processing, adults arrested in Illinois are then taken from the processing centers to one of seven county jails in the region that hold immigration detainees for ICE: to the Kankakee, McHenry, or Pulaski county jails in Illinois, the Kenosha or Dodge county jails in Wisconsin, the Clay County Jail in Indiana, or Boone County Jail in Kentucky....

Mike Sula Cucumber, mint, yogurt, Pita Puff Last week I used up considerable space lamenting the dreary Middle Eastern food at Logan Square’s Masada and its inverse relationship to the elaborate and lysergic decor. I’ve also spent considerable time over the last few years whinging about the overall decline in Middle Eastern food in Albany Park, once a bastion for the stuff that has long since ceded its preeminence to the southwest suburb of Bridgeview....

John H. White/Sun-Times Media Alderman Willie Cochran says “a change in the mentality about guns” is a leading cause of violence. Alderman Willie Cochran has been trying to get to the roots of the violence battering the south and west sides since long before the latest carnage—14 people killed and 68 others wounded over the three-day weekend, and more in the days since, including a fatal shooting on the Dan Ryan Expressway Wednesday morning....

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the Loyola University Museum of Art brings us “LUMA at 10! Greatest Hits,” an eclectic mix of works from past exhibitions tied together by LUMA’s mission to, in the words of cultural affairs director Pamela E. Ambrose, “examine the arts across all cultures engendered by faith, religion, and spirituality.” The centerpiece of this exhibit is no doubt Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds, returning to LUMA after a very popular run in 2008....

Kweku at Pitchfork 2018

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I must start with a disclosure: Leah Ball is a neighbor and a friend. But it took me a while to realize what a powerhouse she is, because she’s about as modest as she is talented. And she’s megatalented. Her work has been featured in trend-setting magazines like Nylon and Creem, her jewelry has been sported by artists such as Alyson Fox and Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan, and her line has been carried by major retailers including Free People and Urban Outfitters....

Rivendell Theatre produces works by, with, and about women. That’s the mission and the brand. But the company’s two most recent shows introduce a surprising subniche: works by, with, and about women and centered on teenage boys. There’s a similar precision to Susan’s urban, rationalist condescension as she first discounts, then attempts to contain, and finally reacts to Micah’s challenge. Neither Treischmann nor Rebecca Spence’s finely drawn Susan supply the easy Enlightenment version of a happy ending that they must certainly know their audience expects....

When I interviewed him over the phone last week, comedian Brennen Reeves was huffing and puffing while taking a walk on a hot day in Savannah, Georgia. When I followed up with him later, he was packing for a move. These two routine activities—walking and lifting—are borderline miracles for Reeves, who underwent a double lung transplant when he was 19 years old. He was aware of his life expectancy during his youth, but most kids see the future in the abstract....