Stately and elegant, red brick with white trim, partly obscured by a row of trees, the house has nothing to set it apart from the other homes on this affluent residential block of Kenwood. Except that it is protected. In the driveway there is always a black SUV. At the end of the street, where University Avenue meets Hyde Park Boulevard, a black sedan is parked behind a long wall of waist-high concrete barriers and metal pipe fences. The blockade reaches along the street, across the sidewalks and back on the other side, enclosing half a city block in each direction. At every entrance, a blue metal sign covered with yellow and white letters declares in English and Spanish: ATTENTION: BY ENTERING THIS AREA YOU ARE CONSENTING TO A SEARCH OF YOUR PERSON AND BELONGINGS.

Barack Obama doesn’t live here anymore, but his presence does. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Upon hearing that Chicago’s Queer Intercollegiate Alliance was planning to stage a flash mob on the steps of the Art Institute, I was instantly reminded of the scene in Gus Van Sant’s movie “Milk” in which a furious horde of gay rights activists spills out into the streets of San Francisco and sends a trolley careening off of its rails. So imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the Institute at 6pm last Thursday, only to find that the “flash mob” consisted of about thirty blue-lipped college students (a bit less than the 550 who had replied “attending” on Facebook) forming a disjointed, shivering rainbow and being corralled to one side of the steps by slightly amused museum guards. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday found Virginia Miller, operations manager of the Midwest Workers Association (MWA), standing outside the door of a low-rise housing complex in Bronzeville accompanied by two college undergraduate members-in-training. A young woman, still in pajamas, comes to the door. After introducing herself and the two undergraduates, Miller begins to talk about the MWA:

“We’re an organizing drive of working people, people who are out of work, people on fixed incomes, joining together to gain the strength to determine our future. More and more of us are working twice as hard for half as much and more of us can’t get access to the things we need, like medical care. We know that there is strength in numbers, and we know that it takes organization to change our conditions.” Miller hands the young woman a pamphlet.

The concerns that Miller voices are just some of the many problems the Midwest Workers Association, an independent, member-based workers’ advocacy organization run out of Chicago’s South Side, was created to address. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reverend Stitch Jones leans over the counter at Augustine’s Authentic Spiritual Goods and addresses the woman sitting before him.

“So, do you meditate?” He is surrounded by semi-filled bottles of different colored oils and powders labeled with names like Love, Dragon’s Blood, and Peace.

“Is there any particular type of Buddhism you’re interested in?” His subject mentions a few names, and they are greeted with hearty recognition by Reverend Stitch. Candles ($19.95 each), a couple of books, a package of incense ($5.95), and some bath salts lie between the two individuals. Reverend Stitch is trying to explain to his customer how she can empower herself to feel better. Read the rest of this entry »