Independent arts collective Lumpen’s eighth annual Select Media Festival promises to offer four nights of video programming, group exhibitions, performance art, and live music that will shock, blast, and perhaps even use hypnosis to instill art appreciation back into anyone who’s been jaded by too many wine and cheese gallery openings. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s be clear: Bridgeport’s new Asian-fusion restaurant Han 202 is not for seasoned foodies or anyone serious about their Chinese food. For gourmands, its half-hearted nods towards French techniques and cross-cuisine flavor pairings can’t help but disappoint. For lovers of Asia’s ethnic food, the kitchen’s weak spices and Americanized menu will leave them longing for the pungent offerings in Chinatown. But Han 202 provides a valuable service to diners unfamiliar with tasting menus and the use of whole chilies, easing them into the world of haute (or at least middling) cuisine while comforting them with the familiar taste of takeout. Read the rest of this entry »

This time last year, the Weekly came out with its first guide to 24-hour restaurants on the South Side. In that issue, we covered classics like Izola’s, Depot, and the original Maxwell Street Polish stands. We’re back this year with a few more selections from the South Side nightscape. From the welcoming diners of Bridgeport and Pilsen to a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown to a fishery along the Chicago River, we present the second course of our after-dark dining manual. Read the rest of this entry »

June 19, 2007. The scene is a large, fluorescently-lit conference room, walls draped in threatening black curtains, the air chiming with the scattered tinkling of metal, glass, and thick, cream-colored hotel-grade dinnerware. Slight murmurs drift upwards from a series of round tables filled with the occupants’ self-satisfied smiles. If it weren’t for the overabundance of grey suits, the scene could be mistaken for the Daytime Emmys, but lo: the smiles are shrinking. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to believe the light-filled, airy room that currently houses Nana was once a dingy neighborhood bar. If you squint, you could maybe see it, but only if you ignore the recycled-wood tables, the clean white chairs (bought en masse at a thrift store), the brass light fixtures, the French doors thrown open to welcome the sun in, and the general sense of healthy wholesomeness. The organic breakfast/brunch/lunch joint is a recent addition to Bridgeport’s culinary scene, and a welcome one. Read the rest of this entry »

Originally called Hardscrabble, Bridgeport began as a community of Irish-American canal workers paid for their labor with land deeds. While its segregation from the South Side’s black neighborhoods made it a hotbed of torrid racial relations up through the ’90s, today it is considered one of the city’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods and is home to large Lithuanian, Polish, Hispanic, and Chinese-American populations. Spawning both Richard Daleys and three other Chicago mayors, Bridgeport has been nicknamed the “Cradle of Mayors,” but it’s equally a cradle of beautifully maintained historic churches, diverse ethnic eats, and underground culture. As Pilsen faces the twin blows to low property values of gentrification and economic recession, many of the Chicago Arts District’s slick galleries and squalid artists’ lofts flock to the home turf of Chicago’s merry prankster art collective, Lumpen, and struggle to find new life while rent is cheap. The bountiful DIY concerts, gallery openings, and ethnic street fairs offered by Chicago’s latest “Neo-Bohemia” are a valuable resource for culture-hungry South Siders. Bridgeport is one of the more convenient neighborhoods to access, lying due west of the Red Line’s Sox-35th stop. The 35 and 8 buses will help you navigate the neighborhood. Read the rest of this entry »

Curating a show isn’t something new for Chicago artist Bert Stabler. His show “$(heart),” which was featured in the NFO/XPO at Lumpen’s Version Festival 2009 this past spring, dealt with our psychological relationship to currency. A year previous, “Vulva O’Keefe Versus Angry Goldsworthy” prompted artists to “interact” with his premised division of the sexes: an “Eternally Perverse Primal Father Creator/Destroyer” and an “Infinitely Schizophrenic Future Mother Protector/Disintegrator.” Other favorite themes include paganism, swamps, and perversion (“Brown River,” July 2007). Stabler fully embraces the notion that being a curator can be artistry in itself, and each of his shows have sought simultaneously to express his own ideas and provoke new concepts from fellow artists.

While “Salad, Church, and Exercise” (a.k.a. “Sal-ChEx”), Stabler’s upcoming group show at the Co-Prosperity Sphere, has similar goals, the curator’s relation to the exhibition is slightly different. Read the rest of this entry »

“It does surprise me,” says Mark Solotroff, “how within genres of music that are underground, confrontational, and aggressive, people can still be closed-minded to other underground, aggressive, dark music.” The Chicago musician and scene veteran hits upon an all-too-common contradiction in musical subcultures, which preach nonconformity while erecting their own rigid aesthetic expectations. Matchitehew Assembly, a two-day festival featuring a range of acoustically vicious performers that “encompass the spectrum of dark sound,” breaks down boundaries by uniting diverse patrons of extreme music under the Co-Prosperity Sphere’s roof. Read the rest of this entry »