Zahara Bassett fell on the floor of her best friend’s house exhausted from a long day of making $9 an hour and barely getting by. She was working as a housing monitor for TransLife Care at Chicago House, a transitional housing program for transgender people who have nowhere to stay or are reentering society. All […]
Posted inCity Life
Chicago Reader’s Nonprofit Guide for 2023
Around this time of the year you’ll begin to hear the phrase “the giving season.” It’s the moment when donation-dependent organizations ramp up their campaigns in the hopes of being included in the gifting air that comes in on a wind of mailers, calls, and fundraisers. For the Nonprofit Issue, we thought it would be […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
Partywatcher honors his Dominican roots with his first all-Spanish release
For seven years, Chicago musician Jochy Saldivar has been releasing suave R&B-inflected pop as Partywatcher, and this Friday he drops the EP El Tipo, his first release sung entirely in Spanish. The new EP also breaks stylistically from Partywatcher’s 2022 EP, Moreno, which leans heavily on 80s synth pop dosed with reggaeton; by contrast, El […]
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Posted inGhost Light
Remembering Marc Silvia, Debra Rodkin, and Ernest Perry Jr.
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,” observes Claudius in Hamlet. And for Chicago theater artists, the last two weeks of November were particularly sorrowful, as three actors who helped shape and define the work that emerged here in the late 1970s and beyond—Marc Silvia, Debra Rodkin, and Ernest Perry Jr.—died […]
Posted inFilm
Coming soon—to a theater near you?
Movie theaters may not be an issue as detrimental as the inequalities that divide Chicago’s communities, but the waning of their presence mirrors larger issues of economic opportunity in the city, community investment, and access to recreation and culture throughout Chicago.
Posted inMusic
Balikbayan Worldwide takes Filipino dance music global
On Saturday, October 21, more than a hundred people packed a white-walled warehouse in Hermosa to get sweaty to Filipino dance music. It was the launch party for the newest imprint of Feeltrip Records, Balikbayan Worldwide, which focuses on sounds from the southeast Asian diaspora. To many of the partiers, the event was just an […]
Posted inChicagoans of Note
Izzi Vasquez, music-adjacent multimedia artist
Izzi Vasquez is a multimedia artist who has helped some of Chicago’s most celebrated musicians with the visuals for their visions. Vasquez has created animations and designed album packaging for the likes of Kaina, Sen Morimoto, Nnamdï, and Kara Jackson. In their art, Vasquez gives new form to the lessons they learned from their grandmother, […]
Posted inCity of Win
Loona Dae opens up a new world of psychedelic R&B
“When I started skating, I was definitely in a creative rut, and I needed to push myself in a way,” says Chicago R&B singer Loona Dae. “It’s scary to fall, but I found a lot of refuge in skating because it’s just you and the skateboard. It taught me to trust myself more and rewired […]
Posted inTheater Review
Paramount’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adds a touch of bitter to the sweet
Whether you’re waiting anxiously to see Timothée Chalamet in Wonka (the musical prequel to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), or are rolling your eyes in anticipatory disgust (look, after the 2005 Johnny Depp cinematic debacle, I don’t blame you for being anxious!), Paramount Theatre’s current staging of the 2013 musical Charlie and the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Public and private politics in Vietnamese art
Subtly evoked or explicitly referenced, reclaiming individual narrative is a major subject for the Vietnamese artists whose work is on view in dual exhibitions at the John David Mooney Foundation: “A Village Before Us” and the Albert I. Goodman Collection of Vietnamese Art. The Goodman collection is one of the most complete collections of Vietnamese […]
Posted inFeature
The Reader’s 2023 Holiday Gift Guide
1 Chicago stepping lessons from award-winning south sider Shaun Ballentine of Effortless Stepping. —Salem Collo-Julin Open group lessons Wednesdays at 7 PM, Effortless Stepping Studio, 1850 E. 79th. $20 per person, 21+ only. For private lesson rates or information about having Ballentine do a stepping class at your event, message through Instagram or Facebook. 2 […]