Last Thanksgiving a gift arrived that evoked warm memories. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The youngest of nine children, Salvino grew up in the kitchen, learning at an early age to prepare food the Sicilian way. His mother loved to cook, even when that meant baking ten loaves of bread every other day. “I remember how I loved to watch her and play at doing just the same as she did,” Salvino says....
Back between the two world wars was a great time to be a Czechoslovakian citizen. The republic had been born in 1918, headed by president Tomas Masaryk, who was not only a democrat but a feminist. Czech had become the national language, blossoming after its second-class status to German under the Austro-Hungarian empire. The new country had both industry and agriculture, and its citizens jubilantly renamed streets and monuments and revised school curricula....
By Kari Lydersen Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nine workers chose the separation package, and 73 were hired by SEI. The remaining 28 workers, including Thayer, wanted to stay with Com Ed, either because they hadn’t been hired by SEI or because they didn’t want to lose their pensions. According to Riley Vercher Jr.–president of the union at State Line, United Steelworkers of America Local 12502–these workers were willing to accept all the terms of the deal except the pay cut, and they asked Com Ed to negotiate on that issue....
PETER BRATZMANN OCTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In 1968 German saxophonist Peter Brštzmann led an octet through a recording session that took the energy of Albert Ayler and jacked it up into pure sonic violence, with none of Ayler’s soulful undertones. Nearly three decades later the aptly titled Machine Gun (FMP) has retained every bit of its shocking intensity, from its all-acoustic brutality–breath as a weapon–to its uncompromising textural gambits....
By Ben Joravsky De Rosa says her grandfather was a Taylor Street kid, the son of a sewage ditch digger, who dropped out of school at age nine and went on to become one of the country’s most powerful union leaders. “He had to leave school to help his family make a living,” says De Rosa. “He attended Hull-House. Jane Addams gave him his first trumpet. He used to play weddings....
Hey, Faggot: These locals also claimed some women have been kidnapped from their own countries, such as France and Italy. I figured someone on your staff, or maybe you, might be knowledgeable in this area. Are these stories true? –Fox Valley Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to someone on my staff, your letter–with references to white slavers and rapacious sheikhs–smacks of pernicious anti-Arab stereotypes....
Upper Crust Like most costume bands the Upper Crust is working a gimmick, but this one is sheer genius. Let Them Eat Rock, the band’s 1995 debut, merges the cliches of the spoiled rock star and the contemptuous nobleman; its witty rip-offs of AC/DC, Cheap Trick, and the Buzzcocks excoriate the poor and celebrate the pleasures of wealth and dissipation. As a parody of hard rock, the record ranks second only to This Is Spinal Tap....
DEVIL IN A WOODPILE 7/7, Pops Highwood; TUESDAYS IN JULY, THE HIDEOUT This local quartet’s relaxed brand of pan-Americana recalls a time when people used to play music on their porches and wave at whoever walked by–hard to envision in this city of locked black iron gates and flat-faced condo developments. On their new Division Street (Bloodshot), Rick Cookin’ Sherry, Paul Kaye, Tom Ray, and Gary Elvis Schepers (who produced the album in addition to playing tuba) mix classics from Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, and the Reverend Gary Davis; public-domain treasures; and trad-influenced originals with an easygoing instrumental fluency that provides a nice contrast to Sherry’s stiff declamations....
By Kari Lydersen “I think [CEO] Chris [Christianson] made [company owner William] Farley a promise that if we went on strike he could guarantee 30, 35 guys working, and he needed [White] to deliver that,” says Theodore Wynn, a black striker who was also once friends with White. “[White] went to the blacks trying to get them to cross. But he didn’t go to me–he knows I’m prounion. When I started here 20 years ago there was a lot of prejudice, but then we got closer and closer, so that we were closer than our own families....
The folks at the Factory Theater have to be a little nervous about leaving their comfy Rogers Park storefront, where they resided for six years, and renting long-term from Footsteps Theatre in Andersonville. Given that only four people showed up for the Factory’s grand reopening last week, I’m guessing some nerves are seriously frayed at this point. But the reason those four people came–Amy Seeley’s one-person show–should enable the Factory to continue to draw crowds....
Around the Coyote Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Running September 9 through 12–and dedicated to the memory of founder Jim Happy-Delpech, who died August 3 after a long struggle with AIDS–the tenth edition of this annual multidisciplinary arts festival in Chicago’s Wicker Park/Bucktown area showcases the work of emerging artists in all media. The offerings include a slew of theatrical productions, improv shows, and spoken-word/poetry performances; these are shown in the following listings, which are arranged chronologically, based on information provided by theater coordinator Jonathan Pitts, poetry coordinator Michael C....
KARRIN ALLYSON, NANCY KING Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Before I learned about this bill, I’d have never guessed that Karrin Allyson had even heard of Nancy King–let alone that she’s adored King’s records for years, as she’s recently said. Though the two share a husky-voiced assertiveness, their territories don’t seem to overlap: King, an intrepid scat improviser based in Portland, Oregon, got her start in 1960s San Francisco; Allyson came of age two decades later in Nebraska and Minnesota, developing a gift for melodic paraphrase and a muscular swing....
Lead Stories Lessons From the Business World Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Asian Wall Street Journal reported in April that a Muslim organization in Jakarta has decided to establish a formal recruiting and registration office for suicide bombers. “We got 600 applicants in two days,” said the office director. And in March authorities investigating suspected kidnapper and sex offender David Parker Ray in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, said Ray had prepared an orientation videotape that showed his victims what they could expect to happen to them....
Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Beyond fingerprints and earprints: Lavelle Davis, 23, was convicted of murder in Geneva, Illinois, in February. Davis and an accomplice had rehearsed the murder at the scene, with the accomplice placing duct tape over Davis’s mouth just as they would later do to the victim. Davis was linked to the crime scene when his lip prints were found on the piece of tape....
No More Monkey Business Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Donna Rice Hughes says that once a pornographic image has been seen, it can never be totally erased from the mind. That’s one of the reasons she’s working for Enough Is Enough, a nonprofit group that seeks to protect kids from smut and its purveyors on the Internet. It’s a worthy cause, but her point holds for other images as well, including a couple of her that have proved indelible....
In the May 26, 2000, edition of the Reader an article entitled “Grave Robbers” by Sergio Barreto gave an important overview of what is happening to Chicago cemeteries in regard to our environment. Mr. Barreto alerts us that the cemeteries are habitat for both native and migratory birds and small animals. Deer were present at Montrose and Saint Lucas cemeteries too, but he made no mention of this. And he makes no mention of the prolonged and well-organized effort by the North Mayfair Improvement Association and the North River Commission to prevent the loss of open space that was adjacent and contiguous with the east side of La Bagh Woods....
By Nadia Oehlsen Then last summer everyone moved out. The building stood empty, the windows and doors blocked by metal security covers, until a month ago, when rehab workers started showing up. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Neither side disputes that Chicago has lost affordable rental housing to the demolition of CHA high-rises and the skyrocketing cost of housing brought on by the real estate boom of the past few years....
BLUE MEANIES, TOSSERS 12/23, METRO Billy Spunke says he had one goal for the Blue Meanies’ seventh album and major-label debut, The Post Wave (MCA), “and that was to actually sing.” That he does; on a few cuts, like the feel-good antiracist chant “All the Same,” he sounds like a cuter, twerpier Jello Biafra. Their newly streamlined ska-punk, polished to a sheen by Phil Nicolo (who did the same for Urge Overkill’s major-label work), is indicative of the way the genre as a whole has gone: what alarmed old folks back in the Reagan era now just makes parents happy that their kids aren’t listening to Eminem....
Fun and infuriating in roughly equal proportions, Mike Figgis’s Time Code is an unusually bold experiment for a major studio. Its plot is outlandish and its characters the most overblown parodies this side of Robert Altman. In some respects, it’s even more cockamamy than James Toback’s Black and White and its sensationalist riffs. So you can’t laugh at much of it without feeling either self-satisfied or stupid. The whole thing calls to mind a hyperbolically overdetermined board game with four squares, punctuated by no less than four earthquakes–each one providing a formal marker as well as a sensationalist frisson (and an effective means of coordinating the narrative developments in all four frames)....
TWO WHITE GUYS, at Improv-Olympic, and IMPROV SURVIVOR, at ImprovOlympic. ImprovOlympic has practically patented the thrill of the unknown, a fact evident in these two shows. Two White Guys–the female Rebecca Drysdale and the black Jordan Peele–have concocted a revue as sly as their name. Playing television addicts channeled from the couch to a stage, it’s their turn to do the entertaining. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When not spoofing channel surfing (a too frequent target), the Two White Guys’ skits are decidedly better than the boob tube....
