Buena Park Home Designed By Inventor Of The Skyscraper Can Be Yours
A nineteenth-century row house designed by William Le Baron Jenney, the Chicago architect who did the first modern skyscraper is for sale, reports Dennis Rodkin at Crain’s, and “many of the charming tile, wood and stained glass details are intact in the house, in the Buena Park neighborhood of Uptown.”
Fort Wayne Hotel Emphasizes Local Art
The Bradley, a just-opened boutique hotel in Fort Wayne, Indiana, created in partnership with hotel owner and operator Provenance and Barbara Bradley Baekgaard (co-founder of fashion label Vera Bradley) is awash in local art. “The Bradley illuminates the bright talent of Fort Wayne by featuring locally sourced art to tell the story of the historic city, on display in the guest rooms, lobby, meeting spaces and restaurants,” writes the hotel. “Each guest room will include commissioned custom botanical-inspired letterpress prints by local artist Julie Wall of HEDGE Studios. The hotel will feature a rotating art gallery in partnership with Purdue University Fort Wayne Department of Art and Deign as well as works created by artist Theoplis Smith III, aka Phresh Laundry, known for his pop culture art installations and larger-than-life murals placed around the city.” More here.
Snøhetta Design For Expansion Of Nebraska’s Largest Art Museum Shown
Snøhetta has unveiled its latest project, the expansion and site redesign of the Joslyn Art Museum, in Omaha, reports ArchDaily. “Developed in partnership with local architects Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture, the project seeks to add new gallery space, public gardens, and outdoor spaces as well as restore and modernize existing office spaces in the Joslyn Memorial building.”
DINING & DRINKING
Taylor Street Little Italy Festival Canceled
The Taylor Street Little Italy Festival is canceled for the second year, reports the Sun-Times, “with organizers saying holding the event would put an additional strain on already struggling businesses. The announcement was made jointly by the Little Italy Chicago Neighborhood Association and Onesti Entertainment — the organization that puts the event, which typically draws tens of thousands of people to the neighborhood.”
Reasons Behind The Hospitality Worker Shortage
“More than half of hospitality workers who’ve quit said no amount of pay would get them to return,” reports All Things Considered. “For many, leaving food service had a lot to do also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable hours, no benefits and so many rude customers.”
Eater Aggregates Coverage Of Onrushing Delta Effect
“For a few months, it seemed like the U.S. was on the path toward post-pandemic life, with constant mask-wearing and endless anxiety largely a thing of the past,” reports Eater Chicago. “Highly effective, widely available vaccines had curbed case counts and allowed people to gather safely across the country throughout the spring and early summer. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the fully vaccinated could, for the most part, stop wearing masks indoors. Diners and restaurant workers alike were able to relax as bars and dining rooms filled back up and friends met to celebrate some form of normalcy.” Eater goes on to say, “But…”
Savoring Legendary Chef Bernard Cretier
Maureen O’Donnell shares the essence of chef Bernard Cretier at the Sun-Times. “Bernard Cretier was part of a wave of French chefs who arrived in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s, slicing and dicing the city’s meat-and-potatoes identity from the stockyards into a culinary destination. For thirty-eight years, Mr. Cretier operated Le Vichyssois restaurant in far northwest suburban Lakemoor, drawing diners from downtown Chicago and Wisconsin who’d feast on his pâtés, pumpkin soup, Dover sole, salmon en croûte and tarte au chocolat… Cretier was known for his restaurant’s ‘warm welcome, being a wonderful chef, having it be consistent,’ his daughter said. He always preferred simple food. ‘When I am in France,’ he once told the Chicago Sun-Times, ‘I go for grilled pig’s feet.'”
Fourth Annual Wine Rival Returns To Chicago
The fourth Annual Wine Rival (formerly Somm Madness) returns on Sunday, August 29, to award the 2021 title of Wine Rival Champion at Radius Chicago. Tickets are $50 and the evening includes a premium Tailgate Tasting from 5-8pm and the Wine Rival Tasting Tournament from 6-9pm. The event is hosted by Adam Sweders, creator of Wine Rival and sommelier Jon McDaniel, Food & Wine’s 2018 Sommelier of the Year. Wine Rival brings together the nation’s sommelier community and wine aficionados for a blind tasting tournament. Sixty-four individuals will go head-to-head to advance to the championship round with the ultimate hope of taking home the grand prize: $20,000 cash. New in 2021, there is a $3,000 cash prize for the runner-up and a $1,000 cash prize to the final four contestants. More here.
LIT
Chicago Youth Storytelling Program Emphasizes Beauty, Art
Rex Huppke at the Trib profiles Chicago Stories on the Block, a program that has young people find and tell positive stories in their neighborhoods and not be solely caught up in the violence that plagues many areas.
MEDIA
Tribune Shrinkage Pronounced
“Weekday print editions of the Tribune shrank from four sections to three and the newspaper’s stand-alone feature section vanished,” reports Robert Feder of last week’s most-visible signs of downsizing after new owner, hedge fund Alden Global Capital, bought out more than forty newsroom employees. “Under Alden, Tribune Publishing newspapers were ordered to cut local and feature pages by twenty percent, move up editorial deadlines and halt most special sections,” according to Crain’s Chicago Business.”From an unsigned letter this week to readers by Colin McMahon, editor-in-chief of the Tribune: ‘We hope that these changes, while they may take some getting used to, offer you more consistency and predictability in the makeup and order of the newspaper… We’ll still have roughly the same amount of news space dedicated to our journalism as opposed to advertising. We measure that in column inches, and that total will be roughly the same.’” Feder reports that McMahon told remaining staffers in a meeting that none of the departed columnists would be replaced.
Monica Eng Departs WBEZ Curious City
Curious City dropped a mention of the departure of reporter Monica Eng in a Friday tweet.
MUSIC
Lori Letting Lolla Lapse?
Will the Lollapalooza contract with the Chicago Park District be renewed after its ten-year contract expires this year? Bill Ruthhart asks at the Trib. “Our partnership with the city of Chicago and Chicago Parks has been incredible,” said Sandee Fenton [of] C3 Presents. “We look forward to [building] our partnership for years to come.” The Chicago Park District would not answer questions, but issued a statement: “The city of Chicago has had great experience with C3 each year they produce the Lollapalooza festival… We look forward to our continued partnership and enhanced improvements to Grant Park that will make the experience even greater for Chicagoans and patrons alike.” C3 Presents added a sweetener to the city last week: “As C3 Presents prepares to bargain with the Lightfoot-controlled Park District over a new deal, the promoter announced a new initiative on Friday: a five-year, $2.2 million program to support arts education in Chicago Public Schools. ‘We have been a part of the Chicago community since 2005, and this investment allows us to expand our impact in a significant way,’ Charlie Walker, the C3 Presents partner, said in a statement. ‘We know that the next generation of artists and musicians is growing up right here in Chicago schools, yet too many children have little or no access to arts education. The Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund aims to ensure that all Chicago Public Schools students have the opportunity to develop their creative talent.'” Here’s the Sun-Times’ take on the $2.2 million spread across five years.
Lolla Loot Leads City Choices?
“Lollapalooza is on the books. Now ahead, comes the major COVID-19 outbreak, super-spreader style. That’s not just the likely outcome of Chicago’s just concluded four-day music festival. It’s a certainty.” Laura Washington opines at the Sun-Times on the brash choice made to go forward with hosting 400,000-plus Lollapalooza-goers downtown during the growing Delta wave of the pandemic. “On the Monday morning after, questions remain.How many of those young revelers presented real, valid paperwork? The FBI and watchdog groups have been calling out the proliferation of fake vaccination cards for months. How many tested negative one day, then were infected the next? What happened to the old Lori Lightfoot? The Lightfoot who, last year, sternly tweeted, scolded, even threatened us to obey the COVID rules, for our own good and for the sake of our lives? … One final question: Why was Lollapalooza allowed to go forward? That one is easy…”
The TRiiBE On Not Covering Lollapalooza
Within the firehoses of social media about and coverage of Lollapalooza, Morgan Elise Johnson kicked off the weekend with the reason why the TRiiBE wasn’t there: “We’re not covering Lollapalooza 2021… Lollapalooza 2021 opened at full capacity. Regularly drawing in about 100,000 people each day, Lolla is known as one of the largest music festivals in the world… As The TRiiBE is an unapologetically Black outlet, let me say that Lollapalooza is for white people. It’s marketed to appeal to white teens with trendy, mosh pit-inducing acts such as Playboi Carti and SAINt JHN along with some nostalgic bands such as Jimmy Eat World for the older crowd… Trust me when I say that there is absolutely nothing newsworthy about Lollapalooza that’s worth possibly dying for. I can even predict what most media packages will look like after each day at Lolla… I do not trust the young Lollapalooza crowd to be vaccinated or sanitary. Plus, Lollapalooza’s COVID-19 safety pledge was inadequate and lazy. There is no way to verify vaccination cards for any crowd. If the Delta variant is more transmissible than regular COVID-19, why are we having large-scale events this year but couldn’t have any last year?”
Millennium Park Summer Monday Music Series Starts Tonight
Millennium Park Summer Music Series, presented by the Millennium Park Foundation, kicks off tonight, and “features a wide variety of music from established and emerging artists — in ten genre-defying concerts at the Pritzker Pavilion. This year’s series is putting Chicago on stage — aligned with the City’s artist relief efforts and featuring a nearly all-Chicago lineup filled with debuts, new works, commissions and special collaborations.” Tonight’s bill features “I’m Every Woman: Divas Through the Decades,” with Akenya & Friends and Mermaid. “LGBTQ+ party institution Slo ‘Mo celebrates its tenth anniversary with a tribute to queer pride anthems under the musical direction of Akenya featuring an all-star list of Chicago musicians and vocalists covering women-powered R&B, house, disco & pop. Spanning hits from the seventies to today from Chaka Khan to Mariah Carey, the concert will journey through a soundtrack intrinsically connected to LGBTQ+ culture and resiliency. R&B and folk-influenced duo Mermaid open the show.” More here.
Kanye Notes Late Mother’s Chicago State University Ties To Honor Her As “Donda” Drops
“Chicago State University’s Garrard McClendon got a call. ‘Get on a plane,’ the professor of educational policy studies was told. ‘Kanye wants to see you,'” reports Maudlyne Ihejirika at the Sun-Times. The result? “West flew McClendon, 55, who has taught at CSU for eleven years, to San Francisco, where West had rented out an entire Silicon Valley resort while working on the reveal of his album, a tribute to his mom, who died in 2007 at age 58 of complications following plastic surgery. West wanted McClendon’s help with a philanthropic endeavor he’s putting together to honor her… All that McClendon can share for now is that a curriculum based on Donda West’s work is being developed for educational purposes, spearheaded by her music and fashion icon son. ‘I spent five days out there with him. It was beautiful. It was my privilege to be there. His brilliance, I got to see it. My role was just to be a conduit, a provider of any information he needs on his mother’s work in his effort now to honor her. He is a multifaceted creative, to be sure.”
STAGE
Couple Carrie Coon And Tracy Letts On A Year In The Ghost Light
Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon talk about the dark year that was, in an interview and photoshoot at Harper’s Bazaar. Carrie Coon: “It was grief. Tracy had been grieving and didn’t really realize that he’d been grieving. We already lived in a country that was, especially under the [Trump] administration, very hostile to the arts. We were already struggling. And then we’re having this racial reckoning in all of our institutions, which was so necessary, and we couldn’t be together to have that reckoning. To not be able to do that in a room together like we were accustomed to doing— everything was just an extra layer of devastation on top of what was already a systemic issue.” Tracy Letts: “The theater at its best does something that movies and TV and other forms of storytelling can’t do, which is to remind us of the flesh and blood, the humanity that’s in the room with you.” CC: “There are studies done where people are together at a live performance and they actually start breathing at the same rate.” TL: “Their hearts sync up.” CC: “And breathing was the most dangerous thing you could do all of a sudden. There was so much fear and uncertainty.”
Mandates For Audiences On Broadway
“The Broadway League announced that the owners and operators of all forty-one Broadway theaters in New York City will require vaccinations for audience members, as well as performers, backstage crew, and theater staff, for all performances through October 2021,” Deadline reports. “Masks will also be required for audiences inside the theaters, except while eating or drinking in designated locations. Charlotte St. Martin, President of the Broadway League, said in a statement that a uniform policy across all New York City Broadway theaters ‘makes it simple for our audiences and should give even more confidence to our guests about how seriously Broadway is taking audience safety.'” Pediatrician Daniel Summers comments on Twitter: “Just heard on NPR that Broadway’s vaccine requirement will include a religious exemption, which means they may as well scrap it entirely. Vaccine refusers will simply cite it, so why bother? I don’t care what the non-medical reason for not getting it, no shot no show… A few people have pointed out that New York requires a religious exemption for vaccines for employees (scrap it, Empire State!), but I was primarily thinking about audiences.”
Chicago Production Of Teatro ZinZanni Requires Proof Of Vaccination
The Chicago production Teatro ZinZanni is requiring proof of vaccination for everyone over the age of 12, reports Miriam Di Nunzio at the Sun-Times. “The dinner-theater experience is currently in an open run in the intimate Spiegeltent ZaZou on the 14th floor of the Cambria Hotel. The new mandate joins previously announced safety protocols which already included fully vaccinated cast, crew and staff, and an enhanced air filtration system… ‘Given the unique nature of our intimate venue, social distancing is impossible, so vaccination presents our best option to continue operating safely,’ said the show’s executive producer Stan Feig via statement. The Goodman Theatre has announced mandatory masks, regardless of vaccination status, for all patrons and staff for its production of ‘School Girls; Or The African Mean Girls Play,'” which is playing with in-person performances.
Chicago Fringe Opera Announces Season
Chicago’s “alt-opera company,” Chicago Fringe Opera, announces its seventh season. “Built within the parameters of the pandemic and return to live music, the company’s upcoming projects feature an eclectic mix of virtual and in-person productions.” Details here.
