On a windy day, the aroma can seep through your car window starting around 111th Street: a unique blend of truck exhaust and barbecue. I-57 Rib House in the far south neighborhood of Morgan Park is part of a chain of rib joints that mostly follow the path of Interstate I-57 as it runs through Chicago and south into the suburbs. Read the rest of this entry »

For a few decades at the beginning of the twentieth century, between the collapse of its fading colonial empire and the eruption of a civil war that led to 39 years of dictatorship, Spain saw a brief period of intense cultural revival. The painter Picasso and the philosopher Ortega y Gasset are internationally known, but other figures from this burst of Spanish modernism, including some of the most innovative composers of the twentieth century, have faded from popular memory. Their music and the contexts that produced it are the center of the festival, “Beyond Flamenco: Finding Spain in Music,” which takes the stage at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall this weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

As denizens of the neighborhood nurse their thirsty vehicles at the BP station on East Hyde Park Boulevard, just east of the Metra tracks, they can already hear it. Perhaps they are distracted by the hiss of the frothing pump or are inside buying a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos; but if you pause and look around, they all appear to be swaying to a subdued bass line and a chilling croon with no ostensible earthly source. Around the corner, the street is showered from above with dense light. Clouds and skulls dance before the sidewalk on a monolithic screen, accompanied by a tune that has already become to local residents disarmingly familiar.

This nightly apparition that haunts the corner of East Hyde Park and Cornell every night from 4 to 10pm is only a peripheral component of “Notes to Nonself,” an installation that has been hosted at the Hyde Park Art Center for the past 21 days and will remain until May 2. Read the rest of this entry »

Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” was supposed to discuss her book last Wednesday evening in the large central room of the Experimental Station, but the heating went out. So instead, about a hundred of us packed tightly into a small, multi-purpose room next door, filling even the kitchen at the back of the space, piling our coats together on refrigerators and over each other’s seats. Read the rest of this entry »

What if you liked hash browns? What if you really liked hash browns? What if you liked hash browns so much that the paltry tater tot excuses for them at the grocery store just didn’t cut it? What if you spent days and nights encamped by your window-side, perhaps weeping, wondering when the delicious potato-y goodness of your dreams would at last triumphantly appear on the culinary horizon?

You cried out, friends, and Hashbrowns answered. The imaginatively named brunch joint delivers exactly what it promises. Read the rest of this entry »

All the surfaces in the lobby of Pilsen’s EP Theater are covered in vinyl, chipped polish, and at least seven layers of irony. The decorators of this room seem to have taken their cues from effete Victorian imagery and coupled it with the limp-wristed flamboyance of ’70s chic. So it came as no surprise that, before the Lights Out Theatre Company’s performance last Friday of Justin Tracz’s “Song For A Future Generation,” a woman emerged from behind the cardboard backdrop and welcomed the twenty or so audience members with the introduction: “This play is about a dance party in space, so let’s make some noise, alright?” Read the rest of this entry »

Art is meant to draw people together, to forge cultural bonds that cross social boundaries. And yet, for decades, issues of race have impeded the diffusion of artistic innovation across the South Side’s social and racial lines. Although the University of Chicago’s presence in Hyde Park has engendered cynicism from surrounding communities, a few years ago, several Woodlawn residents and UofC students joined forces in an effort to dismantle the boundaries that have been impeding productive musical and artistic dialogue. The result was the creation of Woodlawn Collaborative, a communal space for art and activism. This Friday, the space will encourage the larger South Side community to come together and make music by providing a smorgasbord of artistic forms and flavors. Read the rest of this entry »

“We don’t hear too much about Haiti anymore, because most Americans were evacuated.” Thus East Coast artist Charles Jean-Pierre, a Chicago native and the son of Haitian immigrants, introduces a fundraiser in support of Haiti on Mardi Gras, February 16, at the University of Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »