Today In The Culture, June 7, 2023: James Beard Awards | Joyce Awards | Esquire’s Best American Bars

Director Terry Kinney rehearses Steppenwolf’s “Another Marriage”/Photo: Michael Brosilow

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ART

2023 Joyce Awards Announced

The 2023 Joyce Awards, the flagship artist grant program of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, has announced five winners of its $75,000 award toward the creation of a new large-scale work by five artists of color, each commissioned by a nonprofit in the Great Lakes region, developed in collaboration with communities. The hyperlocal projects “explore themes of pressing global relevance, including communal approaches to urbanism and land stewardship, queer resistance, indigenous reclamation, and harnessing emergent technologies for social good.” The 2023 Joyce Awards have been awarded to Regina Agu with the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago; Sonny Mehta with Mandala South Asian Performing Arts; Marisa Morán Jahn with the National Public Housing Museum; Marlena Myles with Franconia Sculpture Park; and Julie Tolentino with SPACES. More here.

DESIGN

2023 Design Impact Grants Awarded

Designing a Better Chicago’s 2023 recipients of the Design Impact Grant Program are the Center for Native Futures and the Chicago Tool Library. Now in its fourth year, Designing a Better Chicago is a collaborative initiative from NeoCon, THE MART, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and the Design Museum of Chicago that is dedicated to supporting organizations that contribute to civic and social growth. The Center for Native Futures will use the grant to strengthen the visibility for local contemporary Indigenous curators and artists through an enhanced curatorial and art residency program. The Chicago Tool Library aims to further expand its extensive library of tools, appliances and other useful items so that it can reach more of the city and provide the most useful and needed tools.

Could Bears Suburb-Shopping Be Good Omen For A Soldier Field Deal?

“With a Bears move to Arlington Heights facing new uncertainty, a state legislator whose district includes Soldier Field is urging the city to make a new pitch to keep the team somewhere in Chicago,” reports Greg Hinz at Crain’s. State rep Kam Buckner “said he believes a path to get Chicago back in the game may have opened in the wake of the team’s announcement that it no longer is focusing strictly on Arlington Heights and has talked to Naperville about building a new stadium complex there.”

NASCAR Drivers Predict “Gnarly Challenge”

“Big-city street racing on Lake Shore Drive, Roosevelt and Michigan, with Columbus Drive turned into Pit Row?” reports the Sun-Times. “‘I think we’re all excited and we’re all really nervous at the same time,’ reigning Cup Series champion Joey Logano said. ‘Racing through the city streets, very narrow, I honestly don’t know how it’s all going to work out,’ said Bubba Wallace… There will be a hard-to-imagine seven ninety-degree turns on the course, leading in some cases—the drivers guarantee it—to crashes as bunched-up cars try but fail to pass others cleanly. Again, the narrowness of certain streets on the course—Balbo, to name one—will pose an uncommon, potentially gnarly challenge, as could the varying surfaces from street to street. ‘We’re usually pretty wide,’ Wallace said, ‘and we like to run into people.'”

Franklin Park Getting $8 Million Toward Rail Safety

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Railroad Crossing Elimination Grant Program has awarded $8 million to Franklin Park to complete project development and final design for a grade separation of Canadian Pacific Railway and Kansas City Southern tracks through the Village, while closing one or more at-grade crossings. This project aims to provide a safer crossing for roadway users and improve supply chain fluidity on both the road and rail network, while reducing the negative impact of freight movement on nearby communities. Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez says, “While we disagree with the Surface Transportation Board’s decision to approve the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Kansas City Southern merger, this investment demonstrates our collective resolve to protect our neighborhoods and continuously work towards people-centered, rather than profit-driven, transportation infrastructure.”

DINING & DRINKING

Three Chicago James Beard Winners

Three Chicago chefs are winners at the thirty-second annual James Beard Restaurant & Chef Awards. The Emerging Chef nod goes to Damarr Brown, chef de cuisine at Virtue Restaurant in Hyde Park; and Best Chef in the Great Lakes Region to Tim Flores and Genie Kwon at Kasama. The Sun-Times has the complete list. ““We have forty-six incredible team members. They’re just people who want to take care of people, and everything has fallen into place,” Kwon said. “I never thought I’d be cooking Filipino food until we opened Kasama,” Flores said. “To be recognized for cooking my mom’s food is insane… My parents are in the Philippines right now on a beach somewhere drinking out of a coconut while I stand on this stage shitting my pants.”

Writes Julia Moskin at the New York Times: “The chef and writer Tanya Holland, who leads the awards program, said that overall ‘the new system is working the way it should.’ She noted that the 2023 finalists, chosen by about 240 judges, reflected diversity in every region, cuisine and category. Among about thirty winners this year, twenty-five are people of color.”

Chicago Chefs Support Flooded Farmers In Italy With The Emilia-Romagna Dinner Series

Chicago Chefs Cook, the chef-driven philanthropic organization, has teamed up with the National Italian American Foundation to set the Emilia-Romagna Dinner Series, to support farmers in the northern Italian region who lost their crops and homes to the devastating, once-in-a-century floods. Proceeds benefit the Italian American Relief fund. Chicago locales include Alla Vita; Gibson’s Italia; GT Prime Steakhouse; Il Milanese; Italian Village; Monteverde; Nonnina; Petterino’s; RPM Italian; Stefani Prime, Lincolnwood; Testaccio Chicago and UMMO. Participating restaurants will host chef-curated dining across Chicago from Thursday, June 8 to Monday, June 12. Check for updates on reservations here.

Esquire Plucks Three Chicago Bars For Best In America

“Birds were on every page. Pretty ones. Ugly ones. Downright strange-looking ones. I was perusing the avian-themed cocktail menu at Meadowlark, an old library-like spot in Chicago’s Logan Square,” writes Esquire. “Each drink was meant to resemble a specific feathered friend. You looked at the glass in front of you, sipped, looked at the bird picture again—and all of a sudden, it clicked. This joyfully odd drink menu was the brainchild of Abe Vucekovich, Meadowlark’s beverage director, who used to work in one of the country’s most serious temples to the cocktail, just a few El stops away, the Violet Hour.”

What had “sparked the idea to try something so delightfully trippy? … ‘People were ready for something more fun after the pandemic… We felt that people deserved novelty.’ He knows his customers: Every seat at the bar was full by 6:30.” The magazine’s other local choices: After and Easy Does It.

Fate Of Fish Featured

“Global warming not only increases ocean temperatures, it triggers a cascade of effects that are stripping the seas of oxygen,” reports Yale Environment 360. “Fish are already moving to new waters in search of oxygen, and scientists are warning of the long-term threat to fish species and marine ecosystems.”

FILM & TELEVISION

“The Luckiest Guy In The World,” Steve James’ Latest, On ESPN

Steve James’ docuseries, “The Luckiest Guy In The World,” is playing on ESPN and ESPN+. The series “tells the colorful (some might say psychedelic) story of Bill Walton, cultural icon, baller for the ages, divisive broadcast personality, and the world’s biggest (and tallest) Grateful Dead fan. Bill’s life has been marked by the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. This is far more than a basketball story,” James relays. The first two episodes are on ESPN+ now; episodes three and four debut Tuesday, June 13 at 7pm and on ESPN+ directly after. “We recommend watching the streaming versions, as episode four is longer (and better!)—the filmmaker’s cut.” (James offers “major shout-outs to the team. Among them, Zak Piper, my son Jackson, David Simpson, Kevin Shaw, Dan Sharkey, Mike Matusak, Drew Weir, and Rubin Daniels Jr., and many others.”)

Actors Follow Writers, Not Directors, In Strike Against Studios

SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, posts: “In a powerful show of solidarity, SAG-AFTRA members have voted 97.91% in favor of a strike authorization ahead of negotiations of the TV/Theatrical Contracts, with nearly 65,000 members casting ballots for a voting percentage of 47.69% of eligible voters.” Posts filmmaker-activist Boots Riley in reply: “Ohhshit. This has never happened this way in the history of SAG. This is a strike authorization, allowing SAG to enter into negotiations while flashing their weapon. This is a part of the biggest strike wave the US has seen in half a century. We can shape the world around us.”

STAGE

Steppenwolf “Another Marriage” World-Premieres June 15

Steppenwolf Theatre Company continues its forty-seventh season with the world premiere of ensemble member Kate Arrington’s unconventional love story “Another Marriage,” directed by ensemble member Terry Kinney. Marking Arrington’s playwriting debut, “Another Marriage” opens June 15 and runs through July 23 in Steppenwolf’s in-the-round Ensemble Theater. “Another Marriage” features ensemble members Ian Barford and Caroline Neff, with Judy Greer and Nicole Scimeca. “Another Marriage” is “an intimate and beautifully rendered portrait of an ever-evolving relationship that may never be quite finished. Ensemble member Kate Arrington’s playwriting debut upends time and the typical romantic comedy to explore the liabilities of falling in and out of love.” Full cast and creative team bios are here. Single tickets starting at $20 here.

Bloomington’s Constellation Names Associate Artistic Director

Constellation Stage & Screen has added associate artistic director Daniella Wheelock, which coincides with the move of Constellation’s artistic director Kate Galvin to a part-time position as Constellation’s casting director and creative consultant starting in August. Chad Rabinovitz, currently artistic director of new works, will assume sole artistic leadership later this summer. More here.

Bigger Casts And Premiere Promised By American Players Theatre

This season’s roster of actors, designers, directors and crew members at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, is “noticeably bigger, and includes many new faces,” reports Isthmus. “We had the opportunity this season with ‘Our Town’ and ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ to invest in bigger casts, with lots of opportunities for representation. So we did a really deep dive into our audition process, evaluating how we could improve it and ensuring that we are truly hiring the best people for the roles,” artistic director Brenda DeVita tells the paper. “We started asking people to read the plays before they met with us, so they could have deeper conversations with directors about the work.” They write, “As a result, actors with diverse backgrounds are coming to Spring Green from all over the country.”

ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.

American Murder Down

“Murder is down twelve-percent in over ninety U.S. cities with available data so far in 2023,” writes Jeff Asher at the Atlantic. This “strong evidence of a sharp and broad decline in the nation’s murder rate” could indicate “one of the largest annual percent changes in murder ever recorded, according to my preliminary data. It is still early in the year and the trend could change over the second half of the year, but data from a sufficiently large sample of big cities have typically been a good predictor of the year-end national change in murder, even after only five months… The drop shown in the preliminary data is astonishing… We do not yet know how successful agencies have been at [increasing] their ranks or whether more police officers are resulting in fewer shootings. Murder is down in Chicago, New Orleans, and New York, for example, but Chicago’s number of police officers is virtually unchanged from last summer.”

“About Ducking Time”: Apple Tweaks Autocorrect

“One of the most notable happenings at Apple’s event for developers,” headlines Reuters, “is likely the iPhone maker’s tweak that will keep its autocorrect feature from annoyingly correcting one of the most common expletives to ‘ducking.’ ‘In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,’ said Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief.”

Google Privacy Settlement In Illinois Less Than A Hundred Dollars Per User

“More than 687,000 Illinois residents filed valid claims that their photo appeared on Google Photos between May 1, 2015, and April 25, 2022, in violation of state privacy laws,” reports the Sun-Times. Those “who filed a claim to receive a portion of a $100 million settlement that Google agreed to last year in a biometric data privacy class-action lawsuit will get around $95 each.”

Violence Toward Target Employees Increasingly Normalized

“Target is the latest brand to be engulfed in culture wars, as polarizing social issues spill into store aisles and shoppers become more emboldened to engage in confrontational, even threatening, behavior,” reports the Washington Post (via Yahoo News). “Retailers such as Kohl’s, Walmart and PetSmart have also felt backlash from the far right for stocking items that extol equal rights and acceptance for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals. In Target’s case, though, it has pulled its Pride merchandise and promotional materials back from store windows in recent days after a string of threats and harassment against employees. The move then sparked multiple bomb threats, targeting stores in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah, from people claiming to be angry about the removal of merchandise.”

At a Target in south Florida, “shoppers have called employees ‘child groomers,’ a far-right slang term for pedophiles, and accused them of ‘shoving your woke agenda down our throats.'” Lindsay Schubiner, “who studies violent movements for the Western States Center, an anti-extremism watchdog,” says, “We don’t always know exactly where these sort of anti-democracy actors are going to point to next, but the increase in threats and harassment from anti-democracy movements in the U.S. has become so frequent that this is something that absolutely just needs to be planned for.”

Florida’s Nab-And-Dump Of Migrants From Texas To California Seen As Kidnapping

“Another plane carrying migrants arrived in Sacramento on Monday, marking the second flight in recent days that California officials allege was coordinated by Florida,” reports the Tampa Bay Times. “‘While we continue to collect evidence, I want to say this very clearly: State-sanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy choice, it is immoral and disgusting,’ California attorney general Rob Bonta said.”

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