Cover Photo: John Greenfield | Cover Design: Dan Streeting
July might be the best month. The middle of the season, with the topsy-turvy weather of June finally settled and August with its looming sense of September growing each day: in July, summer is on. Laziness is acceptable, hanging out with family and friends at a BBQ or just on the patio is expected.
And for Newcity, too, July is a publishing month without a big special feature built in, so we can be a bit crazy, or simply put together a mix of fresh stories. Like Dave Hoekstra’s delightfully meandering journey in journalism, which travels from The Mob Museum in Las Vegas to one of the most colorful couples to ever grace Chicago’s suburbs (as long as that color is red), to the legendary, for many of us early-television creation Garfield Goose. If we needed a theme, maybe it would be the summer reading issue, a beach companion with stories like this: long and enrapturing enough to ensure sunburn if you’re not careful.
Or maybe it would be the road-trip issue, with John Greenfield’s unlikely foray into the nearby fields of Indiana, where he discovered a theme park (of sorts) dedicated to Jesus, or with Megan Bickel’s slightly further foray to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, where a local couple’s magnificent art collection is on one-time display before it is dispersed statewide.
Or it could be our outdoor culture issue, featuring Dennis Polkow’s in-depth conversation with Ravinia chief conductor and possible Riccardo Muti heir apparent at CSO Marin Alsop, and others, about all things classical now and in the future.
But where to put Vasia Rigou’s conversation with the artist Gary Simmons about his magnificent new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art?
I guess it will just have to be the issue without a theme. It’s time for me to go find a hammock and take a nap.
BRIAN HIEGGELKE
Look for Newcity’s July 2023 print edition at over 300 Chicago-area locations this week or subscribe to the print edition at Newcityshop.com.
IN THIS ISSUE
The Fire Right Now Gary Simmons fights the power at the MCA
Hoosier Savior? A sort-of Christian theme park in Indiana
The Mass Menagerie The connection between suburban TV pioneers Bruce and Claire Newton and Al Capone, Garfield Goose and Soul Train
Walking Speed A curator’s tour in Louisville
Ms. Maestro Is Marin Alsop next at the CSO?
AND
Poetry “Moving In” A new poem by Elizabeth O’Connell-Thompson
And so much more…
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