Chicago Children’s Choir/Photo: Todd Rosenberg Photography
ART
Annie Leibovitz On Her Art
On Tuesday night, Chicago Humanities Festival presents Annie Leibovitz talking about the range of her many decades of photography. Harris Theater For Music and Dance, Tuesday, December 7, 7pm. Tickets still available here.
DESIGN
Redesigned Divvy E-Bike Is Here
Divvy has introduced a redesigned bike, reports Streetsblog Chicago, or, “Divvy 3.0 given that this is the third major design change to the fleet since the system launched in 2013. Divvy plans to add 2,000 of these bikes to the system. Similar to the existing black e-bikes, which see two to three times as many riders per bike as the baby-blue non-electric bikes, these bikes are going to be popular. The novelty of the new color, the increased range (sixty miles compared to the upper twenties for the black bikes), and a new design that makes riding more comfortable for people of a wider range of heights will aid in the new cycles being a hot commodity in the Divvy network.”
Prominent Office Landlord Betting $100 Million On Loop Properties
“One of the city’s most prominent office landlords is betting $100 million that the Loop is poised for a strong recovery from the pandemic,” reports Crain’s. New York-based AmTrust Realty “will spend that money renovating a portfolio of downtown office buildings to try to fill big blocks of vacancy amid eroding demand for downtown office space. Details of the capital improvements across about 4.7 million square feet of AmTrust’s downtown portfolio were not disclosed, but AmTrust said in a statement it will begin with renovations to its million-square-foot office building at 30 North LaSalle. Subsequent work is planned at the twenty-eight-story building at 33 West Monroe; the two-building Illinois Center property… and the forty-one-story at 1 East Wacker.”
DINING & DRINKING
Pioneering French-Japanese Yoshi’s Cafe Made It Nearly Forty Years
“After a 39-year run in Lakeview, Yoshi’s Cafe’s end is here,” reports Eater Chicago. Nobuko Katsumura “notified her staff that the restaurant will close on Sunday, December 12. She’s reached a deal to sell the restaurant space on the southeast corner of Halsted and Aldine. Katsumura says the buyer is local and the purchase should be positive for the community. She wouldn’t reveal the buyer’s plans but did say another restaurant isn’t in the works. The deal happened quickly. ‘I’ve been trying to keep up the restaurant,’ says Katsumura, who is sixty-nine. ‘We have been doing pretty good. But it’s about time for me to go on to the next chapter.'”
Fifty-Year-Old Starbucks Doesn’t Want Unions
“Starbucks is fighting an expanded effort to unionize its stores, even as a union vote proceeds at three of the coffee-chain’s locations in Buffalo, New York,” reports AP. “Starbucks has never had unionized workers at its U.S. stores in its fifty-year history. The Seattle-based company says its 8,000 company-owned U.S. stores function best when it has flexibility and can work directly with employees.”
Michelin-Starred Elske To Reopen In West Loop
“Twenty-one months and two temporary shutdowns into the pandemic, Michelin-starred Scandinavian restaurant Elske will return to Randolph Street in the West Loop,” reports Eater Chicago. “Co-owners and chefs Anna and David Posey, who were among the first in the city to put their restaurant into hibernation last year, are slated to reopen Elske on Wednesday, December 8 at 1350 West Randolph.”
Le Bouchon Owners Map Obélix French Restaurant to Replace Michelin-Starred Entente
“Entente’s demise is permanent as the space will soon welcome new tenants: Oliver and Nicolas Poilevey, whose parents founded iconic Chicago French restaurants La Sardine and Le Bouchon. With their new venture, Obélix, the brothers are attempting to carve their own paths,” reports Eater Chicago, “a modern French restaurant that will retain some of the dishes served at Le Bouchon and La Sardine, dishes like French onion soup and beef Wellington stuffed with foie gras.”
FILM & TELEVISION
Media Confused By The “Home Alone” House Rental Gimmick
“Even during his lifetime, Nelson Algren was considered out of fashion, a writer whose sensibilities were shaped by his days riding trains during the Great Depression, and who persisted in writing about the noir worlds of drug addicts, prostitutes, and thieves even during the prosperous years of post-World War II America,” opines Edward McClelland at Chicago. “’The bard of the stumblebum,’ mocked critic Leslie [Fielder], ‘The Last of the Proletarian Writers.’ … Algren may not have been a writer for those times, but he’s a writer for ours.”
MEDIA
A.V. Club Workers Given Ultimatum: Leave Chicago For Los Angeles
Chicago A.V. Club employees were given an ultimatum last week in an all-hands meeting, reported late Friday by Gawker: “The staff of the A.V. Club—the music, film, and entertainment website owned by G/O Media—was informed yesterday that the company will be shuttering its Chicago office, where the bulk of its editorial team is based. The website’s editor-in-chief, Scott Robson, told employees that they would be required to move to Los Angeles, where he’s establishing a new office or else lose their jobs… When a staff member asked for clarification on his choice of words—’You said that the Chicago team is being “invited,” is it an option or is it mandatory?’—Robson declined to call the move mandatory. He insisted staff would ‘have the option to come.’ They were ‘certainly not required,’ Robson said. ‘But the jobs are going to be moving to L.A.’ Later, when another staffer asked if those who ‘take the option’ not to relocate would get severance, G/O’s Human Resources Manager, Vanessa Fils-Aimé, jumped in: ‘Yes, absolutely.'” Why this, now? “Robson said that the company had wanted to ‘establish a meaningful base’ in L.A. for a long time. ‘You know, covering the entertainment industry, it just makes life better, makes the product better, makes everything easier.'”
Former A. V. hands speak: Sam Adams: “well this is just fucking awful… if anything I would say the AV Club has benefitted immensely from being in a (huge!) city that is not New York or LA, and it sucks that the brain geniuses who own it now think the best course is to do exactly the same fucking thing as every other site… as a culture writer with many AV Club bylines who also lives in a (huge!) city that is not New York or LA, I do not at all take this personally or want to start screaming at my computer on a Friday afternoon… after the last 18 months it is just ridiculous that an online media site would force people to move 2000 miles so they can silently Slack one another from adjoining cubicles… (I know the point of this is that they actually want to fire the entire staff but lack the guts to do it)”
Scott Tobias: “Fuck these ghouls… Check out the word ‘invited’ here. Only consolation is that Scott Robson will one day be ‘invited’ to leave his office, as the last scrap of carpet is pulled up behind him by these bandits… You have to understand, the company does not expect (or want) these workers to take them up on the offer. It would be absolutely foolish to do so. This is a soft firing… One thing about The A.V. Club is [that] Andrew Dowd and company have made it better than it was when I left it. Considering the progression of increasingly vile parent companies, this is a miraculous achievement… I think anyone who does this for a living knows how much it takes out of you to keep filling that content maw. You’re underpaid. You burn out. You destroy your body and your work/life balance. But to get no respect for that labor at the end of the line? It’s just an obscenity… And one cool thing we liked about being in the Midwest is our distance from access. We wanted to be free of all that stuff.”
Tasha Robinson: “Heard about The AV Club shuttering its Chicago office a few days ago, but couldn’t talk about it until it was public. It feels like the end of the version of the AVC that gave me my career, that shaped how I think, talk, and write about culture.” Now “it’s moving on and leaving Chicago behind, which feels so odd in an era of remote work. Weirdly, I checked the masthead to see who’s still there full-time… and found a whole description of the AVC ethos that I wrote most of, possibly 20 years ago… can you even imagine being in a work meeting and being told ‘Oh, we’ve got an optional shift to LA coming up. No big, you can go there or stay here, where you’ve bought homes and put down roots. Whatever you want to do. But your JOBS are moving to LA.'”
Philip Montoro, music editor and union shop steward of the Reader: “Classy move here. Chicago writers being told they can either be in Los Angeles or be fired. As though nearly two years of remote work haven’t given the lie to all of this posturing and bullying by management.”
Ashley Ray, TV writer and host of TV I Say Pod: “oh this is really bad and if you’re a writer in LA you probably shouldn’t apply to these jobs because they should stay in chicago… the av club has been covering the entertainment industry from chicago for how many years now? people celebrate it for making chicago an indie media center. ive literally had PR people tell me they love the av club because it’s the only thing in chicago that does what they do… so somehow you think moving to LA, where there are SO MANY people covering entertainment and you lose the one thing that makes you unique is going to make the site better? i don’t see that happening!” Slashfilm’s Jacob Hall: “My heart goes out to the AV Club writers presented with the awful choice of being forced to move to LA or lose their job. Writing about pop culture is a worldwide calling, not one that belongs to the coasts. This sucks.”
Toronto film writer John Semley posts: “to me the AV Club is a Chicago institution. like Second City or…Steve Albini.” Reporter Aimee Levitt: “This is bullshit. And, btw media world, you have the chance right now to pick up some great Chicago writers and editors and give G/O Media the fuck you it richly deserves.”
MUSIC
Chicago Jazz Trumpeter And Teacher Burgess Gardner Was 85
“Jazz was more than an outlet for his artistry and a source of income” for Burgess Gardner, remembers Maureen O’Donnell at the Sun-Times. “It was a wellspring of Black pride. He also taught music in Chicago’s public schools.”
Chicago Children’s Choir “Songs of the Season” Returns
Chicago Children’s Choir, “a nonprofit organization that empowers and unites youth from diverse backgrounds to become global leaders through music,” has announced the return of its concert “Songs of the Season.” “This decades-old tradition will unite the entire CCC family in celebration of the Choir’s sixty-fifth anniversary season, bringing together singers from years past with today’s youth to perform alongside CCC’s world-renowned Voice of Chicago ensemble and Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir… The one-of-a-kind program will be an uplifting celebration of the music of the season, featuring holiday favorites interspersed with highlights from CCC’s repertoire,” including “Fauré’s Requiem,” “O Holy Night,” “Go Tell It On the Mountain,” “Winter Wonderland,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” from South Africa, “Shosholoza” and from Puerto Rico, “En Mi Viejo San Juan.” Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 South Ashland, Saturday, December 18, 5:30pm-7pm. Tickets are $30 and must be purchased in advance. More here.
ARTS & CULTURE
Marilyn Jackson Of United Way New President-CEO Of Muhammad Ali Center
The Muhammad Ali Center has selected Marilyn Jackson as its president and CEO. Jackson will be the first woman to hold this position in the Center’s sixteen-year history, the Center writes in a release. Jackson, a longtime arts professional in Chicago, will join the Ali Center from United Way of Metro Chicago, where she is the chief strategy and engagement officer. She will start at the Ali Center on January 17, 2022, which is Muhammad Ali’s eightieth birthday and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Jackson will oversee the day-to-day management of the organization and lead its strategic planning, entrepreneurial revenue generation, partnership-building and community engagement. “She will be responsible for advancing the Ali Center’s relevance and brand in the community and beyond, especially in today’s social landscape.”
Salvation Army Cries Bell Ringer Shortage
“The worker shortage plaguing business locally and across the country is also taking a toll on the Salvation Army, whose annual Red Kettle campaign in the Aurora-Naperville area is off to a struggling start,” reports the Aurora Beacon-Express via the Trib. “‘We’re pretty far behind… One of our challenges—and I think we’re in the same boat as a lot of organizations and businesses—is that bell ringers are hard to come by,’ said Major Gabriela Rangel, officer for the Salvation Army Aurora Corps, which covers an area that includes Naperville. ‘We only have 10 bell ringers, even though we have thirty-four spots that need to be filled.'”
