Best Vintage Neon Sign: Lem’s Bar-B-Q Best New Catalyst for the Arts: Nine 3 Studio Best Underground Afrocentric Bookstore: The Underground Bookstore Best Customized Ibuprofen: 200 Pharmacy Best Park Family: Avalon Park Best Vintage Neon Sign Lem’s Bar-B-Q It’s bright, angular, orange, and green with dozens of round, golden-white light bulbs. It’s futuristic in a […]
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Posted inArcher Heights
Best of the South Side In Memoriam 2020
Archer Heights & West Elsdon: Jan Kopec Archer Heights & West Elsdon: Mind + Hand Avalon Park & Calumet Heights: Taurus Flavors Bridgeport: Johnny O’s Chatham: Mather’s—More Than a Café Chinatown: Chinese-language newspapers Clearing & Garfield Ridge: St. Camillus La Villita: Raspa Man Don Lupillo Roseland: Argus Brewery South Chicago: Carlos Rosas of Calumet Fisheries […]
Posted inBest of the South Side
Best of Chatham 2020
Best Re-Education Best Fish (Not Fried) Best Hungry Man Breakfast In Memoriam: Mather’s—More Than a Café he bones of the dream of Black economic sovereignty still mark the corridors of Chatham. Lining 87th, 79th, and 75th Streets going from east to west, and State Street, King Drive, and Cottage Grove Ave heading from north to […]
Posted inUncategorized
Dr. Whirlwind: Poet, Editor, and Educator Dr. Tara Betts Speaks Her Truth
It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud. Nevertheless, live. Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind. –Gwendolyn Brooks r. Tara Betts has one of the most enviable heads of hair of any living writer. Her crown is streaked with ferocious shocks of brilliant white. For […]
Posted inLit
Sestina for the Looting of the Black Body
GAIN the police killed a Black man. And again Sharpton dressed sharply is making sharp points in a eulogy. Think of it as an act of self-immolation— the dragging of the politic of this Black body— to the town square of the street corner and strip mall. The burning of flesh. The looting of her […]
Posted inArt
Krista Franklin Is Real AF
first met the artist, writer, bibliophile, and shapeshifter most commonly known as Krista Franklin in January of 2019. We were gathered in celebration, about twenty or so of us, at a tapas bar in the West Loop after the opening of a mutual friend’s exhibition. I’d arrived just shy of being late. As I was […]
Posted inBusiness
Mission Complicated
t’s October of 2019, and to catalog the rollout of recreational marijuana legalization in Illinois, I’m at 8554 S. Commercial Ave. This is the site of 4Front Ventures’ newest project: the Mission South Shore dispensary, where I’m getting a tour and talking with the dispensary’s general manager about how Mission — the only marijuana dispensary […]
Posted inBusiness
Mission Accomplished
anuary 1, 5:30am. The first day of legal recreational sales in the state of Illinois. The night is sheer black at this hour, but South Commercial Avenue between 85th and 86th is unusually bright, lit by a row of large floodlights on the side of the Mission South Shore dispensary—now selling both medicinal and recreational […]
Posted inFood
Ode to the Shrimp Tease
he air in the Dock’s at 87th and State is thick with wafts of today’s well-seasoned grease. Not old grease—I can tell because old deep-fryer grease weighs down the air around it; weighs down the food cooked in it; turns light yellow cornmeal into coffee brown and sends the dregs of last week’s fried chicken […]
Posted inBusiness
Green Jobs
Gaby FeBland’s illustration for this story was a finalist for the 2019 “Best Illustration” in a non-daily newspaper or magazine Peter Lisagor award from the Chicago Headline Club ost cannabis-focused events in Chicago seem to be one of two things: incredibly expensive, or not even in Chicago at all. This made the Cannabis Industry Expo, […]