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DESIGN
Wright To Auction Sealed First-Gen iPhone
Wright will present a first-generation Apple iPhone, model A1203, as a leading lot of its March 30 Design auction. Released in 2007 as the first smartphone to be offered by Apple, “the iPhone 1 is an unparalleled object born from the intersection of design, technology, and communication, and it is hard to overstate the impact that its arrival has had on the world.” This factory-sealed iPhone 1 comes to Wright via Donald Gajadhar of Fox-White Art & Antique Appraisals. “[It] slowly dawned on me when I held [this] boxed Apple cellphone,” says Gajadhar, “my client not only had an unopened cellphone, but a truly unique version. A Willy Wonka, ‘24 karat’ Golden Ticket.” Indeed, the present lot features an upside-down Apple logo sticker bearing the words ‘lucky you.'” The Apple iPhone 1 and all works featured in Design will be on view March 23-30, 10am-4pm. The live auction will take place at Wright in Chicago on Thursday, March 30, beginning at noon and will accommodate advanced bids, telephone bidding, and live online bidding here.
DINING & DRINKING
Dimo’s Opens Full-Service Spot In Lincoln Square
“Dimo’s will bring its funky spirit to Dimo’s Cafe, a new full-service restaurant in Lincoln Square,” reports Eater Chicago. “The brand is known for its creative pizza interpretations of Reubens, banh mi, mac and cheese, and chicken and waffles—it even had a Malört pizza at one point—and the menu will boast the same whole pies seen at Dimo’s Pizza. It’ll also include a smattering of small dishes to share, including smashed fingerling potatoes, grilled asparagus, and focaccia with whipped ricotta. Items will rotate according to the season and the creative whims of the chef… Customers can expect drinks like the Banana Bird, a banana-infused riff on the classic Jungle Bird.” Also: a Malört Sour, “appropriately dubbed the Don’t Shoot the Bartender… Dimo’s is also making space for a new wine program. Diners will be able to order wines by the glass or even take a bottle home at the end of the night.”
Kenji López-Alt Obsessively Teaches Himself To Make Chicago Thin-Crust Pizza
“Some family members may call it obsessive behavior. I call it a gripping intellectual and culinary pursuit,” writes J. Kenji López-Alt at the New York Times. “For the past five months, I’ve been on a mission to [create] a home cook-friendly recipe for a thin-crust pizza popular in the Midwest, Chicago in particular. It’s taken me through scores of iterations, furtive late-night pizza texts with other obsessives across the country, dozens of eating excursions (including a two-day, twelve-stop tour of Chicago and Milwaukee), bags of flour, pounds of sausage and several gallons of tomato sauce… I’m talking thinner-than-a-saltine thin, with a shatteringly crisp crackle and just enough structure to hold its own weight against a heavily seasoned sauce and a caramelized layer of mozzarella. It’s probably topped with hand-torn nubs of sausage, maybe a sprinkle of hot giardiniera. Forget the puffy, handlebar-like crust of a New York pie: Thin crust has sauce and cheese all the way to the edge—an edge that comes out extra-crisp with a frizzle of nearly blackened cheese overhanging it.”
Levy Restaurants Brings New Products To Sox Concessions
“Check out the Belgian Banger. It’s a half-pound Polish sausage on a pretzel bun. Or try a new take on loaded mac and cheese featuring chorizo,” writes CBS 2 of premium concessions coming to White Sox games via Levy. “Sample the Hog Wild smoked rib tips or Colossal potato wedges. Also to eat are pineapple-cucumber chamoy skewers. You’ll need to wash it down, so why not do it with a mangonada?” Prices: not reported.
Black Walnut Could Become Illinois State Nut
Let Republican-led states salute their state munitions, Illinois has set the modest black walnut for plaudits. “The Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill with near-unanimous support that would designate the black walnut as the official state nut,” reports NBC 5. Other Illinois state symbols, including state rock, state dance, state grain, state pie, state reptile, state snack food, state microbe and state fossil are here.
Green City Market Opens For Twenty-Fourth Season
Green City Market is opening its flagship sustainable farmers’ market in Lincoln Park on Saturday, April 1 and will be adding four new farmers and food producers to its community of over fifty vendors.The nonprofit’s West Loop location will reopen on Saturday, May 6. Details here.
Francesco Panella Partners With Gioia
West Loop Italian ristorante Gioia is partnering with Italian restaurateur and television host Francesco Panella. “As an international restaurateur and entrepreneur, Francesco Panella has always been inspired by the stories and traditions which are honored through food,” the restaurant relays. “Francesco will oversee brand development, food and beverage programming, and restaurant operations with the Chicago team… In tandem with Panella’s new partnership with Gioia, Gambero Rosso, the most important multimedia brand in the Italian food and wine world, awarded Gioia a seat in its Top Italian Restaurants 2023 guide.” More here.
Lagunitas Tap Room Reopens April 13
The Lagunitas Brewing Company is reopening its Chicago Tap Room & Beer Sanctuary within the 300,000-square-foot brewery in Douglass Park on April 13 after three years closure. “We’ve missed our Windy City friends and family, who have been waiting and asking for this day to come. All I can say is thank you for your patience and welcome back,” Paige Guzman, Lagunitas’ chief marketing officer says in a release. The Tap Room’s thirty-two draft lines will include the popular year-round Lagunitas brews like Lagunitas IPA and Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’, as well as non-alcoholic options like Hoppy Refresher and IPNA, and a rotation of seasonals and one-off tap-only brews. More here.
Starbucks Darkly Roasted
Reports the New Republic: “Workers at more than a hundred Starbucks locations across the country went on strike Wednesday to protest the company’s alleged union-busting tactics and demand a contract negotiation.” Jacobin: “Howard Schultz has yet again left the top executive position at Starbucks. He’s carefully cultivated an image as a progressive CEO. In reality, he has spent his tenure viciously trying to destroy the Starbucks workers’ union.”
Incoming CEO Laxman Narasimhan addresses Starbucks’ “all partners”: “Starbucks is an incredible company and its best days are ahead of it. We have a critical role to play in bringing human connection to a world that’s quite disconnected. And in that quest, the best days for you, my partners, are ahead of you… Howard [Schultz] believes strongly that the partners in this company come first. While there is always more we can do, and will do, the investments set in place by Howard over the last year have set the table for a new future for the company. He knows—because he came up with it—that in order to exceed the customer expectations, we must first exceed partner expectations. For that, Howard deserves nothing but all the praise and the gratitude.” Starbucks has announced expansion plans in a country with lower wages and labor rights—3,000 more stores in China within the next two years, up from 6,000, reports the Financial Times,”one of Howard Schultz’s last acts before he stepped down as chief executive.” That’s one new store every nine hours through 2025. A price war is planned with local competitors. “Many small independent stores charge a fraction of the price at Starbucks and other international competitors.” Says a researcher: “Basically it’s become a price war. The private equity money has come in.”
Rum Fest Returns
The Seventh Annual Chicago Rum Fest will bring together rum lovers and trade professionals from all over the country at Logan Square Auditorium on April 22. “This year’s event promises to be a one-of-a-kind experience, featuring premium rum expressions poured, speaker programing and entertainment,” the fest advises. “The U.S. is considered one of the most important countries in the entire rum industry. Before the American Revolution, rum was the most consumed spirit and is now experiencing a renaissance. Illinois is one of the largest rum consumer markets in the U.S, and this year two Illinois-based vendors, Star Union Spirits and Chicago Cane Cooperative, will share their wares. More here.
White Claw Taking On Tito’s Vodka
“The billionaire who upended the beer industry with White Claw hard seltzer has turned his sights on vodka,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Anthony von Mandl is releasing on Tuesday a line of vodka sold under his popular brand. Straight and flavored versions of White Claw Premium Vodka will be sold in bottles; vodka and soda cocktails will be available in twelve-ounce cans.”
Reprieve For UpRising Bakery?
An online fundraiser garnering over $30,000 is keeping the doors of besieged UpRise Bakery And Cafe in Lake In The Hills open, being used to pay rent and back taxes, reports NBC 5. Plans to close for good are being reconsidered, and a decision will be made by the end of the month. Of the attacks on the establishment for hosting a drag brunch, owner Corinna Sac says, “It’s not right for someone else to step up and take their uncomfortably with someone else’s passion or job and forcefully say they cannot do it or take away that right to be who they are… We lost a lot as a result of all of this, [but] if I can use my platform to make a change and make a difference, I will do that every single day. I will do it over and over and over with no regrets.”
LIT
Measure Passed To Slash Grants To Illinois Libraries That Ban Books
“The Illinois House approved a measure that would allow the Illinois secretary of state’s office to deny grant funding to public and school libraries if they ban books or fail to devise policies against removing titles from their stacks,” reports the Tribune. “The 69-39 party-line vote in the Democratic-led House reflected the partisan divide on the book-banning issue both in the state and nationally. The bill will now move to the Senate for consideration.”
What Book-Banning Is Really About
Teen Vogue continues its tradition of pointed political coverage. Writes Reshma Saujani: “Women of color are taught from a young age to take up as little space as possible: to be soft, to be quiet, to be careful. So when I learned that my book about young women of color owning their confidence and learning to code was banned last year, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Because at its core, the ban on my book isn’t about books at all. None of them are. Rather, book bans are about oppressing girls—especially girls of color, queer girls, and nonbinary people—by making us believe that our stories aren’t worth sharing, our aspirations aren’t worth pursuing, and our identities aren’t worth celebrating.”
MEDIA
Forty Years Of “Fresh Air,” At A Cost
Seventy-two-year-old Terry Gross “has been bringing big names to her microphone for the past forty years,” reports Inside Radio. NPR is moving “to make that library of audio available to listeners as part of the exclusive bonus content that Fresh Air is making available to paid subscribers of the podcast. Subscribers to Fresh Air+ will also get more recent exclusives, such as unaired excerpts from recent interviews and behind-the-scenes content that pulls back the curtain on how [the] show is made… Fresh Air+ archive episodes will be re-mixed with new audio or music. Regular episodes of Fresh Air continue to be available for free to listeners on all listening apps.”
STAGE
Broadway Shows Looking Shabby
“There is a depressing sight that New York theatergoers are becoming all too accustomed to: a brick wall at the back of the stage,” reports Johnny Oleksinski at the New York Post. “Scenic downsizing is all the rage in Midtown for a range of reasons—skyrocketing costs, cold concepts, quick turnarounds. As a result, storied houses are morphing into university black boxes; shows into showcases; dramas into drab-a-thons. How sad. Set design, an art that’s always been essential to conjuring Broadway’s incomparable magic, is being treated like a luxurious want rather than a basic need for a memorable night out.”
Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship To Tonika Lewis, Rivendell
The League of Chicago Theatres awarded the 2023 Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship to artist-activist Tonika Lewis Johnson and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble to collaborate on The Folded Map Project. The fellowship is an annual grant awarded to a Black theater artist to fund a residency or collaboration with a Chicago area nonprofit organization. Johnson and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble will collaborate on an expansion of The Folded Map Project, which visually connects residents who live at corresponding addresses on the North and South Sides of Chicago, aiming to further the understanding of how Chicago’s urban environment is structured. In its third year, the fellowship offers early to mid-career Black theater artists the opportunity to work with a Chicago-based nonprofit organization, providing the artist with a grant of $20,000 and the partner organization receives $7,500 to support their collaboration. The fellowship is administered by the League of Chicago Theatres and funded by the McMullen & Kime Charitable Trust. Applications were reviewed by an external panel of Chicago directors, actors, playwrights and administrators.
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
Sundays On State Dates Toddling On
Chicago Loop Alliance has announced the return of the acclaimed, award-winning event series, Sundays on State, which will close parts of State Street in the Loop to vehicle traffic on July 16 and August 13. Sundays on State is free and open to the public and will take place this year with an expanded footprint on State Street from Lake to Adams. More here.
McNASCAR Is Coming
The official title is “Founding Promotional Partner,” which means the McDonald’s logo will be all over the July 4 weekend road race shutting down downtown Chicago, as well as on other promotions and fripperies. This gives “Chicago-based McDonald’s a highly visible presence throughout the pop-up racecourse,” reports the Trib. “McDonald’s is, in essence, sponsoring the ultimate drive-through, as 200-mph race cars weave through downtown Chicago.”
Blackhawks Eschew Pride Jerseys Out Of Concern For Safety Of Russia-Connected Players
“The Blackhawks will not wear rainbow-colored Pride jerseys during warmups Sunday against the Canucks—the team’s scheduled Pride Night—due to safety concerns for Russian players,” reports the Sun-Times. “Conversations with security officials about the uncertain implications of a new Russian law banning ‘gay propaganda’ prompted the Hawks to make an organizational decision to scrap the Pride jersey plans… The homophobic law, enacted in December, makes it illegal for Russians to promote or ‘praise’ LGBTQ relationships or suggest they are ‘normal’… The Hawks currently have at least three players on their NHL roster—Russian defenseman Nikita Zaitsev, Swiss forward Philipp Kurashev and Kazakh goaltender Anton Khudobin—who are of Russian heritage or have family in Russia. The decision was made by the front office rather than by the players.” Other Hawks Pride events will go on as planned, as described here.
Delta, United Could Cut Summer Flights
“Delta Air Lines Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. are offering to trim flights by as much as ten-precent at some of the country’s busiest airports this summer to ease congestion and delays—but only in return for a promise from federal regulators that they can get them back,” reports Bloomberg.
Wyoming Judge Issues Hold On Abortion Ban
“Wyoming’s Constitution guarantees a right to make individual health care decisions… An overwhelming majority of Wyoming citizens voted for the amendment in 2012… The new ban attempts to circumvent that right by declaring that abortion is not health care,” reports the New York Times. “The law would make providing almost all abortions a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.” Asked the judge, “An abortion can only be performed by a licensed medical professional, so what authority does the legislature have to declare that abortion is not health care when our laws only allow a licensed medical professional to administer one?”
