Communal cocktail The Black Hearts Club at Machine: Engineered Dining & Drink
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ART
ARC Gallery Vandalized Again
ARC Gallery was vandalized earlier this week, the gallery reports on Instagram with a picture of the damage. “This is the 2nd time this year that the windows of the gallery have been broken! We are saddened by this during the fiftieth anniversary of this women’s co-operative gallery. Please support our mission to continue for the next fifty years!”
DESIGN
Future Firm Shows Off Historic Pullman Coffee Shop
“Despite our practice being named ‘Future Firm,’ we are lucky to be part of eight historically significant projects with Landmark or National Register designations,” the concern relays on Instagram. Work on a new café, “Pullman Club Coffee Shop at One Florence, across the street from the national monument… included restoring the historic porch, adding [an] accessible entrance with a landscaped ramp, and integrating a reconstruction of the historic fence with new outdoor seating. The project is a delicate balance of honoring the past, creating universal access for the community, and bringing Pullman into the future. This project was led by Pullman residents Mike & Pat Shymanski, who are hands-on responsible [for] much of the woodwork on the home itself with family, friends and local trades.” (Future Firm’s co-founder Ann Lui was Newcity Designer of the Moment in 2018.)
Commuters Take Action Plan Protest At CTA Headquarters This Friday
“CTAction will be meeting the day of CTA Board meeting to protest the ‘L’ service cuts that went into effect on October 8th. CTA ‘L’ service has been cut by 24% since 2020, bus service is down by 13%. Rail operator headcount has stagnated. Instead of cutting service, let’s cut the inept leadership!” The protest is at 567 West Lake, Friday, 5:30-6:30pm. More here.
Developers Miss 500 Affordable Units In Fulton Market
“The city made it a goal for new developments in the booming area of Fulton Market to include thirty percent affordable housing. But it hasn’t happened. ‘I feel bamboozled,’ Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. said,” reports Block Club. (Developers failed to follow through on applications for subsidies.)
DINING & DRINKING
Michelin Guide Lists Eight New Chicago Restaurants
Possible shortlist nominees for November, reports the Sun-Times: newly recommended restaurants for Chicago Michelin listings include Atelier, Boonie’s, Cellar Door Provisions, GG’s Chicken Shop, Itoko, Kyoten Next Door, Yao Yao and Obélix.
Landlord Offering Chicago Guinness Brewery Property For $20 Million
“A Guinness brewery that opened about two weeks ago in the Fulton Market district is for sale in a deal expected to top $20 million,” reports Ryan Ori at CoStar News. “Chicago developer Fred Latsko has hired JLL brokers to seek a buyer for the Guinness Open Gate Brewery… in a former railroad depot building at 901 West Kinzie… Latsko and JLL are billing the deal as a one-of-a-kind opportunity to own one of the Irish brewer’s properties… Guinness has a ten-year lease in a deal that generates more than $1 million in net operating income annually.”
Drinking Darkly For Spooky Season
What’s darker than the Chicago brewery’s fresh-poured Guinness? Wicker Park’s Machine: Engineered Dining & Drink has stirred up The Black Hearts Club (serves one to five, $49), a “tropical, tart cocktail with subtle bitter notes,” says beverage director and master mixologist Aneka Saxon. A communal cocktail made with Cihuatan jade rum, Stiggin’s fancy pineapple rum, pineapple-infused Campari, activated charcoal and lime makes for a macabre mix. More here.
Governor Salutes Eli’s Cheesecake Expansion
Governor Pritzker joined local and state leaders to celebrate the ribbon cutting of Eli’s Cheesecake expanded facility, relays the Governor’s office. “The $10 million investment and 42,000 square-foot expanded facility will increase space for packaging lines and bakery operations for the famous Chicago cheesecake company while creating fifty new jobs. ‘A family-owned bakery—three generations strong, Eli’s Cheesecake is an iconic Chicago staple,’ says Pritzker. ‘Thanks to a $10 million investment and competitive hiring incentives from our EDGE tax credit program, Eli’s Cheesecake was able to complete a 42,000 square foot expansion—bringing this facility size to a whopping 104,000 square feet. More jobs, more customers, more cake: it doesn’t get much better than that.'”
FILM & TELEVISION
Chicago Film Society And Block Cinema Present Projection Workshop
The Block Museum at Northwestern will host the Chicago Film Society for a free, two-day film projection workshop with Rebecca Lyon and Julian Antos from CFS. Analogue formats only! November 4-5, 10am-5pm each day. Today’s the last day for applications, accepted here.
Eight-Part “Chicago Stories” Continues On WTTW
WTTW’s latest eight-part season of “Chicago Stories” continues, “the only weekly documentary program dedicated to uncovering the sweeping history, rich diversity, and breadth of human experience that shaped this great American city.” Each Friday on WTTW and the “Chicago Stories” website, a fresh hour-long documentary debuts with its own website. New stories include “Angels Too Soon: The School Fire of ’58,” “The Race to Reverse the River” and “Pullman and the Railroad Rebellion,” with forthcoming installments, “The Boss and the Bulldozer,” “Jane Addams: Together We Rise,” “Candy Capital,” “The Outrage of Danny Sotomayor” and “The Rise and Fall of the Mail Order Giants.” More here.
Diversity In Science Highlighted By Nonfiction Films Chosen By Sundance Institute And Sandbox Fund
Among the eight nonfiction projects chosen by the Sundance Institute | Sandbox Fund for 2023 is the development of “Untitled Scientist Project,” from director-producer Jiayan “Jenny” Shi (Newcity Film 50), whose memorable debut film, “Finding Yingying” was a Kartemquin co-production, distributed by MTV Documentary Films. “The Fund offers grants and mentorship for independent artists seeking to explore the intrinsic link between science and culture through innovative storytelling. The filmmakers will receive customized film support and join Sundance Institute’s year-round artist community, with meaningful opportunities to connect with Sundance’s network of alumni and creative advisors, as well as Sandbox Films’ roster of renowned scientists.”
LIT
Astrida Orle Tantillo Named President And Librarian Of Newberry
The Newberry Library has appointed Astrida Orle Tantillo as its tenth president and librarian. She joins the Newberry from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), where she served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) from 2012 to 2022 and is currently professor of Germanic studies and history. As dean, Tantillo oversaw a budget of $100 million, twenty-five academic departments and programs, approximately 700 tenure and non-tenure track faculty members, and more than 200 staff members. She was recruited to the Newberry’s board of trustees in 2022 due to her extensive experience in academic administration in Chicago. During her tenure, she raised $50 million as part of IGNITE: The Campaign for UIC, while strategically investing in faculty hiring, recruitment and retention, and expanding the number of endowed chairs and professorships. She strengthened and expanded collaborations with cultural institutions including the Field Museum and Chicago Humanities.
Anywhere And Afriware: Maywood Bookstore Goes To Hybrid Model
After an outpouring of support, Afriware Books in Maywood will adopt a hybrid model and go virtual on November 1, the bookstore relays. “We will move to a shared virtual artsy office space located in Oak Park called CrossFunction and do events-pop ups from there and around town,” writes owner Nzingha Nommo in a fundraiser note about saving the three-decade-old bookstore. “We will lean into our online offerings by continuing to upload our existing inventory and new titles.” Over the last six weeks, donors have shared more than $17,000. “The long-term goal is to reopen in a physical space, but for now we are stretching your dollars as far as possible and are significantly decreasing our greatest expense; the rent.” More here.
“That is all that is it,” the BLMChicago account (launched in February 2015, with nearly 60,000 followers, including Mayor Brandon Johnson) posted on X/Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, with the legend “I STAND WITH PALESTINE” accompanied by a drawing of a flag on the parachute of a man in a paraglider. Online reaction followed the rest of the day, as well as reports from The New York Post and U.K. version of The Daily Mail; neither report sought comment from or identified the holders of the account, which has recently posted similar content. (The bio reads, in part, “Formed from Ferguson Freedom Rides… We work for a better city for Black folks.”) The original tweet bears the note, “On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists in paragliders attacked a music festival in Israel, killing over 260 people.”
Washington Post, Owned By World’s Third Wealthiest Man, Jeff Bezos, Who Is Worth Over $152 Billion, To Eliminate 240 Employees; Who Could Save It?
“The Washington Post is cutting about 240 jobs across the organization as it tries to offset challenges with digital subscriptions and advertising,” tallies the New York Times. “Patty Stonesifer, the interim chief executive officer, said in [an] email to Post employees that the company hoped to achieve the cuts through voluntary buyouts. The buyouts will be offered to staff members this week. The company has about 2,600 employees in total, with more than 1,000 in its newsroom. The company declined to comment on how many jobs in the newsroom would be eliminated… The company, which is owned by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is on track to lose roughly $100 million this year.”
“The Washington Post is in a death spiral again,”writes Dan Froomkin at Press Watch. “The last one, with its wave after wave of crippling layoffs and buyouts by the skinflint Graham family, ended in 2013 when Amazon bazillionaire Bezos took the Post off their hands for a paltry $250 million and promised to take good care of it. The Post went on a hiring spree and seemed poised for a great future. It became a bigger, happier version of itself, with better technology. But now, Bezos has installed his own lickspittle publisher, editor and editorial editor, none of whom seem to have any vision of where to take the place.”
New York Times Tripled Size Of Combative Comment Section Since 2017
“Globally, the New York Times opinion section employs some 150 people, triple its size in 2017 when Kathleen Kingsbury joined The New York Times as deputy editorial page editor,” relays Press Gazette in an interview with her. “The opinion section’s content is… good for reader engagement: ‘It’ll be no surprise that our opinion pieces get the most comments at the Times,’ Kingsbury said, but she would hesitate to suggest there’s a direct correlation between revenue and opinion journalism… ‘It’s just another form of journalism that really does resonate with readers… Our role is to help our audience understand the forces in the world and help them develop their own opinions, clarify their thinking and in some cases, help them understand how they should feel about the news.'”
MUSIC
SXSW Names First Round Of Artists
The South by Southwest Music Festival has announced the first round of Showcasing Artists invited to perform at the thirty-eighth annual event. Chicago artists include Neptune’s Core, Sen Morimoto and Smut. The complete list is here.
Bandcamp Workers Locked Out Of Site Without Warning
“After work hours on September 27, employees of Fortnite maker Epic Games received a calendar invite informing them of a mandatory meeting the next morning,” reports WIRED. “Just before the surprise all-hands was scheduled to begin, employees of the online record store Bandcamp, which Epic bought in March 2022, received another email… Epic was laying off 830 people—around sixteen percent of the company’s workforce—and selling Bandcamp to audio licensing company Songtradr. Bandcamp employees were stunned to learn that some of them would not be receiving job offers from Songtradr. That day, the acquisition was announced publicly, and multiple Bandcamp employees say they began losing access to many of the systems needed to do their jobs, leaving the platform operating with limited oversight.”
STAGE
“House Of The Exquisite Corpse III” From Rough House Theater Relocates To Steppenwolf Merle Reskin Garage Space
“The scaring begins Friday the 13th for Chicago’s only immersive puppet haunted house,” spooks Rough House Theater of Chicago, which is relocating its annual Halloween haunt to Steppenwolf’s Merle Reskin Garage Space. Chicago’s one-and-only immersive puppet haunted house will offer an all-new program of immersive acts of puppet horror. Friday the 13th is opening night. This year’s peepshow-puppet theater anthology is inspired by “Our Homes and How to Keep Them Healthy,” published in 1883 by Robert Brudenell Carter. Top Chicago puppet theater artists have selected chapters including “The Difficulty of Proof in Cases of Arsenic Poisoning,” “The Dangers of Rebreathed Air” and “Advantages of the Removal of The Sick” to unleash dark creative impulses. Tickets and more here.
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
Online Discussion Today Of The Chicago Arts And Culture Report
Join the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and SMU DataArts for a presentation of research and key findings from the just-released “Navigating Recovery: Arts and Culture Financial and Operating Trends in Chicago.” The report “is a first look at the health of many of the city’s arts and cultural organizations before, during, and emerging from the pandemic. Learn about key findings from this analysis of Chicago trends from 2019-2022 and how they illuminate current challenges and bright spots, many of which resonate nationally.” The presenters will be Zannie Voss, director, SMU DataArts; Erin Harkey, commissioner, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; and Jamey Lundblad, deputy commissioner for marketing and development, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.” More information and registration for the 3pm session here.
Wisconsin Will “Rebrand” Its Thirteen Schools
“The University of Wisconsin System will rebrand itself over the coming months to ‘Universities of Wisconsin’ as it looks to strengthen the ‘UW’ reputation across all thirteen schools, not just UW-Madison,” reports Wisconsin State Journal. “‘University of Wisconsin System’ will remain the legal name for the institution, but officials will start referring to the thirteen universities by the revised ‘Universities of Wisconsin’ name… By early 2024, UW will [revise] its webpages and written materials to reflect the new identity.”
