Chicago's summer calendar is jam-packed with high-profile music festivals, from Lollapalooza to this weekend's Pitchfork. But The Chosen Few, one of the city's bigger and longer-running music events, is still little known outside house music circles and the city's South Side.
Damn if R. Kelly doesn’t love the drama. The Chicago R&B artist’s autobiography Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me comes out this weekend (although Kelly won't be making promotional appearances, citing a recurrence of the throat problems he had last year).
By now many Chicagoans have become familiar with the name Vivian Maier. The one-time nanny would never have made it into the history books, except for her hidden passion: photography. From the mid-1950s through the late 1990s Maier roamed the streets of Chicago (and other cities) photographing the indigent and rich, the young and the old – pretty much anyone who passed by her lens. But unlike other amateur shutterbugs, time and time again she took absolutely great and mesmerizing pictures.
Maier’s sharp, critical and oftentimes funny eye was only discovered about five years ago, when tens of thousands of her images (negatives, undeveloped film, prints) were sold at auction.
For lots of folks inside and outside of Chicago’s gay community, last Sunday’s Pride Parade is the focal point of what’s become a month-long celebration of gay pride.
Not so for many in the black LGBT community. In fact Chicago Windy City Black Pride didn’t enter a float, didn’t even march in the parade – though they did participate in the annual Rocks LGBT Pride celebration at Melrose Harbor.
When I ask why, Chicago Black Pride’s president Jesse Hinton says, “That’s a good question. Historically there’s been a division among white and black gay people, a sense among past presidents that the mainstream [and largely white] gay community is not very embracing.”
It isn’t news that racism runs through both gay and straight life – Hinton says, “You can see it in the way young African-Americans are treated, the way the police and the gay community handles them.” And segregation is as visible in Boystown as it is in other Chicago neighborhoods.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in saying a little light reading of Playboy magazine was one of my formative sexual experiences. My Dad had a pile on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in his basement office. He said the subscription was a "gift." Must have been from a pretty generous friend – the issues just kept on coming, through many years of my late childhood/early adolescence!
I learned a lot from the magazine and in fact I should probably thank my Dad because beyond the stash of Playboy he was pretty much mum on matters sexual. In other words, I definitely wasn’t reading the articles. Instead I checked out the photo spreads and also poured over the handwritten profiles by the centerfolds, whose pursuits seemed as glamorous and foreign as the illustrations of sleek interiors and ads for high-end stereo equipment.
But I especially liked the drawings and cartoons, whose humor was well suited to young readers - juvenile and very broad in taste.
Summer hasn’t officially started but Weekender’s decided to take a short vacation. Or at least I’m heading out – home to see some of my family in Winnipeg.
I’ve had many friends and acquaintances pass through and ask me for a list of places and things to see – “my Winnipeg” I guess. And since in Chicago I’ve developed this strange sideline-slash-job as a weekend planner, I thought I’d share some of the sights and sounds I’ll be sure to check out on my visit.
My hometown sometimes gets a bad rap – I remember reading a line from a Faulkner novel in which a character, looking out over a desolate scene, likens it to other remote and unhappy places, including Winnipeg!
All of Mankind is considered a significant piece in the overall body of work of William Walker, who is one of the founders if not the founder of the community murals movement in Chicago.
