Lucky Stiff performs “Jesu Maria” in The Memory Place
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DESIGN
“Godfather Of A. I.” Regrets Life’s Work
“For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm,” reports the New York Times. Hinton “joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers popular chatbots like ChatGPT.” He “has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than a decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work.”
CTA Boss Used Transit Twelve Days In 2021-22
CTA President Dorval Carter “swiped into the CTA system twenty-four times in the past two years with his agency-issued card, according to CTA data,” reports Block Club. “Seven of those twenty-four swipes were transfers to other trains or bus lines, and another seven were all done the same day at O’Hare.”
IBM To Start Replacing At Least 7,000 Jobs With Chatbots
“Roughly 7,800 IBM jobs could be replaced by AI, automation,” reports Bloomberg. “Hiring in back-office functions—such as human resources—will be suspended or slowed… These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers.” Said CEO Arvind Krishna, “I could easily see thirty-percent of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”
DINING & DRINKING
Superdawg Is Seventy-Five
The owners of Superdawg tell Block Club that “they are maintaining its legacy by staying true to the original recipes, getting to know regulars and treating employees like a big family.” “The Superdawg recipe is my parents’ own recipe that they developed in the 1940s and continue to still be made specially for us today,” co-owner Scott Berman said. “It’s a larger-than-most hot dog. It is extra time in the smokehouse, extra spices. So, it is a particularly delicious dog.”
Fulton Market Could Be Avli’s Agora With Four Tavernas In One Building
“Avli, the group of Chicago-area restaurants that ushered in modern Greek dining [in the city], is not only opening a rooftop restaurant in Fulton Market, but it could have up to four new restaurants inside the historic building that houses event space Morgan’s on Fulton and ground-floor restaurant Marvin’s Food and Fuel,” reports Eater Chicago. Avli has outposts in Lincoln Park, River North, West Loop, Lakeshore East and Winnetka. The group “will now determine what parts of that model they’ll apply in Fulton Market.”
Nisos In Fulton Market Lasts Less Than A Year
“Nisos opened in July along Randolph Street’s Restaurant Row. Restaurant leaders said they mutually parted ways with the executive chef and are looking to reevaluate the Nisos brand,” reports Block Club. It “was one of the most anticipated restaurant openings last year with executive chef Avgeria Stapaki from Greece.” For now, “the restaurant inside a massive, two-story, 9,000-square-foot space” has closed.
Latino Brewery Comes To Back Of The Yards
“Somos Monos Cervecería, a longtime Back of the Yards home-brewing operation,” reports the Sun-Times, “is joining a Southwest Side project at 47th and Ashland known as United Yards that’s getting Invest South/West money. It will be one of the first Latino-owned breweries in the city and one of the few [breweries] on the South Side.”
Pig Star Returns With Big Star Patio Hog Roasts
Big Star Wicker Park is bringing back Pig Star, their monthly patio hog roast featuring top Chicago names in Mexican cuisine. Starting Monday, May 22, each chef will work alongside culinary director Chris Miller to fashion a menu of pork-centric dishes featuring their signature culinary flair. Chefs include David Rorigues (Xocome Antojeria), Oliver Poilevey and Marcos Ascencio (Taqueria Chingon), Gilberto Ramirez and Maria Landa (Rubi’s Tacos), and Brian Enyart and Jennifer Jones (Dos Urban Cantina) for a monthly pig roast on the patio. Each guest chef will join the Big Star team in roasting up a whole Slagel Farms hog from which they’ll create a collaborative menu of dishes, giving the guest chef a chance to showcase their signature style.
Chef David Rodrigues Jr. of mother-and-son owned-and-operated Xocome Antojeria on the Southwest Side is up first, with a take on their tlacoyo, a pre-Hispanic dish from Central Mexico, featuring salsa verde drenched pork, queso fresco, sour cream, onion and cilantro as well as pork shoulder flautas and cemitas with crispy pork, garlic aioli and pickled jalapeños. Reservations here.
FILM & TELEVISION
Thousands Of Writers On Strike
Film and television writers put the pencils down: “Following the unanimous recommendation of the WGA Negotiating Committee, the Council of the Writers Guild of America, East, and the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America West acting upon the authority granted to them by their memberships, have voted unanimously to call a strike, effective 12:01am Pacific Time, Tuesday, May 2,” the groups announced in a statement. “The decision was made following six weeks of negotiations with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount and Sony under the umbrella of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The WGA Negotiating Committee began this process intent on making a fair deal, but the studios’ responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing.”
“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing. From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a ‘day rate’ in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession… Picketing will begin tomorrow afternoon.” Producer-writer James Schamus (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) points to a piece from Deadline: “In case you were wondering who we’re negotiating against: CEO Pay High In 2022 Amid Industry Shakeup, Looming Writers Strike.”
Screenwriter Zack Stentz in the New York Times: “The last thing we need is for film and television to become like the music industry, another creative field disrupted by the internet and tech money, where the middle class has been hollowed out while risk has been pushed from the companies onto the artists themselves. The WGA’s fight isn’t just about keeping writers employed but about maintaining the health of the entire ecosystem that makes our industry run and keeps the supply of quality film and television flowing for viewers around the world.” Interviewed at the entrance to the Met Gala, Amanda Seyfried cuts to the chase: “Everything changed with streaming and everyone should be compensated for their work. It’s fucking easy. I don’t get it.”
“OTVTonight” Returns At MCA
After a three-year hiatus on in-person events, Open Television, the “nonprofit streaming platform and media incubator for intersectional storytelling, will gather for ‘OTVTonight: A Return to Fellowship,'” reports the TRiiBE. “Over the last couple of years, as we’ve been [making the transition] back into space, something that was important for us was to be mindful of the communities that we represent,” said Elijah McKinnon, co-founder and executive director of OTV. “As an intersectional platform, [we’re] bringing in folks who are immunocompromised or disabled or coming from Black and brown communities already quite susceptible to COVID-19 and other barriers. So it wasn’t ethical to pack out a 200-person-plus event… We gained our footing as a platform in Chicago by our events. That was what we did for so many years since our inception.” MCA, Tuesday, May 16, 6pm. Ten-dollar tickets here.
LIT
“Poetry Is For The People,” Says Poet Laureate
Says avery r. young at the Poetry Fest, “I hope to create a situation where I can garner some support and resources so that we can open up opportunities for other folk artists to create poems and songs and art about the great people, places and things in Chicago, the greatest city in the world,” reports Block Club. “The poet laureate has to be someone who’s walking into so many other rooms, outside of open mics and libraries and bookstores… The poetry is for the people. Poetry has never been for the poets. Somehow, poets messed around and made it for ourselves.”
MEDIA
Terri Hemmert On The New Orleans Shooting At Her Seventy-Fifth Birthday
“My two friends and roommates this weekend and I are laying low,” Terri Hemmert posts on Facebook. “We’re not going to the fest. No restaurants, please. For now. We have stayed in our hotel. We have had friends come to bring us food and company. We appreciate it so much. Many have gone home early to be with their families. My excellent travel agent and friend rearranged our travel plans so my friend with a bullet in her back will not have to travel alone. We will both be in wheel chairs, first class, with complimentary adult beverages. My neighbor will pick us up. I will reunite with my cat and friends. She will embrace her sons and father. But none of us at that gathering will ever be the same. You can read about trauma but you can’t know how it feels till you wonder if its bullets or fireworks, and you look down and see two people you love covered with blood… Life goes on within you and without you. But as long as we refuse to do something about this epidemic, we are not ‘safe.’ And neither are you. And everyone you love.”
Mary Knoblauch, Trib Reporter And Transformative Editor, Was Eighty
“Mary Knoblauch was a writer and editor at Chicago newspapers including the Tribune, where she helped develop new features sections, oversaw the Sunday magazine and was a writing coach for many years,” reports the Trib. She loved movies, and had been a film critic, too: “I have a recollection of her standing between Gene and Roger when they would get into fights, and Mary was about five-foot-one and she’d stand in the middle of them, trying to keep them from hitting each other,” said retired Tribune reporter Dorothy Collin. “She loved being a film critic at Chicago Today.”
Maureen Dowd Proffers A “Requiem” For The Newsroom
“I don’t want this to be one of those pieces that bang on about how things used to be better and they’ll never be as good again. But when it comes to newsrooms, it happens to be true,” writes senior opinion columnist Maureen Dowd at the New York Times. “It seems like a good time to write the final obituary for the American newspaper newsroom… An editor sent me out for beer on deadline and then almost fired me when I brought back Miller Lite. Reporters had temper tantrums, smashing their typewriters or computer terminals on the floor…There was an incredible camaraderie and panache about the whole endeavor, whether we were pursuing stories about murder, politics or the breeding woes of the pandas at the National Zoo… I worry that the romance, the alchemy, is gone. Once people realized the completely stunning fact that they could put out a great newspaper from home, they decided, why not do so?”
VICE Prepares For Bankruptcy
“VICE, the brash digital-media disrupter that charmed giants like Disney and Fox into investing before a stunning crash-landing, is preparing to file for bankruptcy,” reports the New York Times. “In 2017, after a funding round from the private-equity firm TPG, VICE was worth $5.7 billion. But today, by most accounts, it’s worth a tiny fraction of that.”
Politico Sale Cash Donated To Train “Empathetic And Brutally Honest” Journalism
“Politico founder Robert Allbritton is committing $20 million to start a [nonprofit] journalism institute which will pay aspiring journalists for two years to learn how to write and report,” posts Semafor’s Max Tani. Allbritton’s group ” will train aspiring reporters from different backgrounds and who have different views to create ‘fact-based, non-partisan journalism on government and politics’ that is ‘both empathetic and brutally honest.’ … Fellows will have health insurance, paid time off, and an annual salary of $60,000 to report for the institute’s publication and learn from over twenty professional journalists, who will serve as mentors.” Allbritton is allowed to pursue nonprofit ventures in agreements made after “selling Politico to Axel Springer, the German media company which acquired Politico in 2021 for over a billion dollars.”
MUSIC
Ravinia Concert Series Tickets On Sale
Tickets to the 2023 summer concert series at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, with more than a hundred shows (here), are on sale here.
Aerosmith Says PEACE OUT!
“It’s not goodbye it’s PEACE OUT! Get ready and walk this way, you’re going to get the best show of our lives,” Aerosmith posted of its forty-date farewell tour, which hits Chicago September 15, retells the Hollywood Reporter. The Black Crowes open. Tickets go on sale 10am Friday, May 5 here.
STAGE
Jackalope’s Fourteenth Annual Living Newspaper Festival Opens
Jackalope Theatre Company’s fourteenth annual Living Newspaper Festival plays this week, featuring plays by Ike Holter, Felicia Oduh and Nora Leahy, with direction by Ike Holter, Jarred Webb, Lanise A. Shelley and Liz Sharpe. In homage to the 1930s Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project, Jackalope has assembled a line-up of three world premiere one-act plays inspired by recent headlines. Performances are at Jackalope Theatre Company in Broadway Armory Park, May 4-8. Single tickets and season subscriptions are available here.
Pivot Arts At Ten Is In “The Memory Place”
Pivot Arts, the multidisciplinary performance hub celebrating its tenth anniversary, will world-premiere “The Memory Place,” a multi-arts experience about cultural memory and hidden histories. It’s “a collaborative work amplifying Pivot’s multidisciplinary approach, site-specific aesthetic, and goal to be a multicultural organization that builds community between groups from a variety of backgrounds.”
Participating artists include writer Marisel Vera and her daughter, director Alyssa Vera Ramos, with “You Can’t Cover the Sky with Your Hand,” incorporating live music with theater to tell stories of Puerto Rican women; “IS/LAND,” an Asian American/Pacific Islander collective offering “Invisible Embrace,” a dance piece on Japanese internment camps with sound installation by Joo Won Park; tap dancer and choreographer Davon Suttles, who explores queer relationships and religion in “Past the Heavens,” told through original gospel music, tap dance and mixed media; trans and nonbinary director, writer and performer Lucky Stiff, who performs “Jesu Maria,” “an archaeological journey of identity and gender exploration inspired by Joan of Arc’s rallying cry”; and Polish director Wojtek Ziemilski, based in Warsaw, with “The Grounds,” “a video exploration of his apartment building and the histories that lie beneath the surface.” Performances are June 1-11 at The Edge Theater; tickets are on sale here.
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
Guggenheim Partners May Pull A Griffin And Exit Chicago For Miami
“Guggenheim Partners readying move to Miami,” posts Crain’s Greg Hinz. “Another pillar of Chicago’s financial community moves lots of people out of town with the HQ reportedly almost certain to go, too.” Hinz writes, “Guggenheim Partners, an investment firm which has employed roughly 1,000 people in the West Loop, is on the verge of deciding to move its headquarters to Miami, the Florida city to which Citadel recently decamped.”
Lightfoot Offers Trio Of Exit Interviews
At the Sun-Times, Fran Spielman summarizes the fistful of final interviews from the lame-duck mayor to WBBM-AM radio political editor Craig Dellimore, ABC 7 reporter Craig Wall and Politico’s Shia Kapos.”Lightfoot says she’s ‘done with electoral politics for myself’ and believes she lost, in part, because it was ‘hard to break through the anger bubble’ caused by the pandemic and civil unrest triggered by the murder of George Floyd.” She told Wall, “I don’t see myself running again for any office… Politics is a part of everyday life. But, I’m done with electoral politics for myself.” What stood between her and holding office? “Three-to-four thousand more votes across Black Chicago. That’s a difference-maker… The winds of dissension continue to blow at a furious pace… The biggest challenge was breaking through what I call that ‘anger bubble.’”
Lightfoot told Dellimore that focus on her management style was wrong: “The campaign seized upon the narrative that was created by the media… Look, I’m a Black, queer woman. I have always known my entire adult life that there is a different set of rules and standards by which I’m gonna be judged. That is not a surprise. And the obsession with, ‘Is she nice? Is she not nice?’ following Daley and Rahm Emanuel is, frankly, laughable.”
Wicker Park Photographer Roberto Lopez Was Seventy-Four
“Roberto Lopez took thousands of photos of the neighborhood, where he was a constant fixture since the early seventies. ‘I don’t think I ever knew anyone who loved that neighborhood as much as he did,’ said a neighborhood gallery owner,” reports Block Club.
UChicago Booth School Gets $100 Million Donation
“The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business Ph.D. program gets a new name along with a $100 million gift from entrepreneur, philanthropist and alum Ross Stevens,” reports Crain’s. Stevens, founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Holdings Group, a New York-based financial services firm, made the gift to celebrate “the hundred-year anniversary of the Ph.D. program” as well as to “advance the frontiers of academic business research.”
