Author Archive

Everyone was well fed—Diane Adams made sure of it. The 56-year-old ran back and forth across the Woodlawn Mental Health Center so fast her red and orange outfit blurred into a comet. »

“Riffs” is a collection of the artist’s photographs and films. Together, the images swirl around the singular subject of life in Northern Africa, a place where colonizers came for raw resources, the Rolling Stones for drugs, and now European corporations for profit. »

Cyrus Dowlatshahi is a 30-year-old Hyde Park native, Iranian-American, Vassar alum, and massage therapist. To explore a side of Chicago more often misunderstood than seen, Dowlatshahi is taking on his preferred designation—filmmaker. The project sounds quite simple—with $25,000 raised from donations on Kickstarter.com, Dowlatshahi is going to film a feature-length documentary about the South... »

Bruce Taylor began the first day of class by asking his nine students why they were given their first names. “I was named Joy,” responded one student, “because my daddy said I brought joy into his life.” After two beats of respectful silence a single giggle escaped from someone’s mouth. The class erupted in... »

“No Place Like Home” examines the “dissonances between the ideal and the reality of home,” according to a statement written by the show’s curator, Dawoud Bey. To the dismay of audiences everywhere, Bey claims, “the secure, idealized place wishes to return to is one that exists largely as a mythic and nostalgic construct.”... »

Hyde Park and Kenwood are mostly residential and tree-lined, amber and beautiful in the autumn. The lake still reflects each sunrise, sending plumes of fog rolling west in the springtime. Surely more changes will come, but for now this area is a place for schoolchildren and undergraduates, working parents and professors, and of course,... »

In 1853, two trains riding along rival lines collided at what is now the intersection of 75th and South Chicago Avenue. To prevent future crashes, the government mandated all trains to stop at the crossing, bringing in hundreds of visitors daily. Since that time, nearly half the area’s population has slowly bled away. Nonetheless,... »

Playing the obedient son, I made sure to leave every bone of my Harold’s fried chicken exposed before heading over to Zberry—Hyde Park’s first and only frozen yogurt shop. »