Farnsworth Inaugural Fall Festival
Floating Museum Sets Burroughs Residency
Floating Museum has announced the Burroughs Residency Pilot: "Inspired by poet, printmaker, activist and advocate Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, the Burroughs Residency Pilot will develop a 'residency without walls' that leverages and reinforces cultural assets on the South Side, across Chicago and across the globe to connect and support artists and communities." More here .
The Farnsworth Fall Festival At Edith Farnsworth House This Weekend
The Edith Farnsworth House Historic Site launches the inaugural Farnsworth Fall Festival, Saturday, October 12, 1 pm-4pm. "The event will be an afternoon filled with family-friendly activities, local vendors, and access to the iconic mid-century modern house with museum guides available to answer questions. During the festival, attendees will have access to view the art exhibition 'Capisayo' by Beatriz Morales." Tickets ($10) and more here .
Metra Wants Permanent O'Hare-Loop Service
"Commuter rail agency Metra wants to permanently expand service between the Loop and O'Hare Airport," reports the Sun-Times . "Metra ran trains hourly between Union Station and O'Hare during the pilot, a major increase from the regular service of six daily weekday trains and none on the weekend. It was meant to offer an alternative to the CTA's Blue Line between O'Hare and downtown."
New Bridge Planned For Chicago River At Taylor Street
"CDOT is FINALLY moving forward with the Taylor Street bridge," relays a Skyscraper Page reader , along with drawings and a property acquisition authorization (pdf).
Sun-Times Looks At Kellogg School's $300 Million Evanston Lakefront Edifice
"Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management will demolish its James L. Allen Center to make way for a new $300 million building on Evanston's Lakefront," reports the Sun-Times . "The building will nearly double the number of classroom seats and house Kellogg's executive MBA and non-degree executive education programs."
Work Resumes On World's Tallest Tower In Jeddah, Designed By Chicago Architect Adrian Smith
"A Saudi Arabian firm backed by billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is resuming work on a tower that's set to soar to 1,000 meters when complete, making it the world's tallest skyscraper," writes Crain's . "Kingdom Holding, majority owned by Prince Alwaleed... will resume construction on the tower in Jeddah, more than a decade after the project was first conceived. Designed to imitate the contours of a sprouting desert plant, the building was the brainchild of Chicago architect Adrian Smith."
Completion "will take forty-two months, and sixty-three of 157 floors have been built... The building will top the... record-holder, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, also designed by Smith—which was unveiled in 2010 and stands at 2,700 feet."
Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize Emerging Practice Award Announced
The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize has gone to Community Production Center Las Tejedoras, designed by Natura Futura architect José Fernando Gómez and architect Juan Carlos Bamba, the fifth "MCHAP.emerge" award. The Center is a hub for local women artisans, providing them space to learn, create, and showcase handmade textiles. "The project, based in Chongón, Ecuador, is a community-centered design that incorporates traditional building practices while addressing sustainability and economic empowerment." More here .
A Closer Look At The Façades Of Maxwell Street
"Massive changes swept through this area in just a few decades," writes Dennis Rodkin at WBEZ . "A Maxwell Street block lined with well-preserved facades from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has plenty of designs: Art Deco, terra cotta, initials and owners' names embossed on the stone and a baroque doorway whose arch is held up by two carved cherubs... The area resembles a Hollywood backlot for shooting scenes set in a Chicago shopping district in the early twentieth century. And like a Hollywood backlot, it's just the facades."
DINING & DRINKING
Marge's Still In Old Town Is Chicago's Oldest Bar, Since 1885
Schaller's Pump, "the Bridgeport tavern and Daley hangout that dated back to 1881" was the city's oldest for years, "but when it closed in 2017, Marge's Still in Old Town inherited the title," chronicles Chicago magazine . "Marge's opened in 1885 as Victor Caruso's Soft Drinks, a combination bar and barbershop."
La Josie Named One Of America's Ten Best Mezcal Bars
"This stylish West Loop restaurant and bar pays homage to José Luis Barajas' Mexican roots," tallies Punch . "The chef and owner moved to the United States in 1988 and worked in family restaurants in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood before opening La Josie in the heart of Restaurant Row in 2017. The agave bible features more than a hundred spirits—both certified and not—organized by region and agave variety. With educational material baked into the menu, the range of options showcases the diversity of the category and offers 'a window into the heart and soul of a people and a living expression of hundreds of years of tradition.'"
FILM & TELEVISION
Marc Ribot Brings "Queen Of Mars" To Studebaker
WBEZ celebrates the hundredth anniversary of "Aelita: Queen of Mars" and seventy years of composer Marc Ribot, who will perform an original score for the film. At the Studebaker Theater on Sunday, October 20. Tickets ($30-$55) and more here .
Dual Pompidou Exhibitions For SAIC Grad Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul
"Cinema still excites me as much as it did when I was a child," says Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul [a 1998 SAIC graduate]. "The director, who is known for his dream-inspired films such as Palme d'Or winner 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives'... splits his schedule between being an independent auteur—who writes his own scripts and secures funding—and being a busy artist, hosting exhibitions around the world. This October sees two exhibitions open at the Centre Pompidou in Paris."
Amazon Prime Video Aims For Even More Ads In 2025
"Subscribers to Prime Video's ad tier will start seeing more commercials next year, further testing how much advertising streamers will tolerate," reports Ars Technica . Presently, "Prime Video with ads [is] given a 'very light ad load,' providing subscribers with a 'gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers' expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like.' The executive pointed out that Prime Video with ads doesn't show commercials in the middle of content. That could change next year."
Why Can't Students Entering Elite Colleges Read Books?
"Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels different... Students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester... Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books," reports the Atlantic .
Federal Judge Orders Arkansas Library To Stop Segregating Books
"In yet another major win for freedom-to-read advocates, a federal judge has ordered the Crawford County Public Library in Arkansas to stop segregating books deemed inappropriate by some local residents into special 'social sections,' and to return the books to general circulation," reports Publishers Weekly . "U.S. district court judge P.K. Holmes III held that 'it is indisputable' that the creation and maintenance of the library's so-called social sections 'was motivated in substantial part by a desire to impede users' access to books containing viewpoints that are unpopular or controversial in Crawford County.'"
Audacy, Owner Of NewsRadio 78, WXRT, B-96, Exits Bankruptcy To Go Private
"With approval of its restructuring plan now in hand from the FCC, Audacy has emerged from bankruptcy with eighty percent of its debt wiped away. The second largest radio group in the country now plans to go private," reports Inside Radio . "Audacy owns more than 220 radio stations in forty-five markets."
Dean Richards On His Decades At WGN-TV And Its Morning Show
Illinois Entertainer profiles WGN's entertainment baritone on how he came to television, and the time Mel Gibson called him an "asshole."
An Oral History Of The Most Notorious American Newspaper Headlines
A subject close to the heart of this column: the carefully crafted and wholly satisfying headline. The New York Post's unparalleled tradition is chronicled in a diverting oral history at Esquire . "Beginning in the late 1970s, headlines came to define the New York Post—and still do—particularly the front page, or wood, which roared, brawled, and punned its way into the fabric of a city on the rebound after its near bankruptcy. The period in which the Post began to dominate newsstands, with eight editions, six days a week, was a golden age for Rupert Murdoch's Post. Like it or not, the paper demanded attention... Post staffers take us inside the making of the tabloid's unforgettable, in-your-face headlines," including the immortal "Headless Body In Topless Bar."
Gramaphone Records' Michael Serafini Recovering After Fall
"In less than a week, the Chicago music community has raised over $47,000 to help pay for Michael Serafini's medical bills" after a damaging fall inside a house under construction, reports Block Club . "He fell through a hole in the floor and landed on concrete in the basement. He suffered multiple rib fractures, spinal fractures and a lacerated skull that required ten staples. After weeks in the hospital and extensive physical therapy, the medical bills and medication costs added up... In just one week, friends in the Chicago music scene, regular customers of the record store and others have raised over $47,000 to help Serafini."
Drummer Artie Baldacci, Seventy-Three, From Chicago Band Heartsfield
"As a drummer, Artie Baldacci was the throbbing heart of Heartsfield, a band formed by a group of South Side rockers in 1970 that opened for some of the biggest names in music, including Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, the Doobie Brothers, the Charlie Daniels Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Waylon Jennings, Kiss and the Marshall Tucker Band," reports the Sun-Times .
Crowdsurfing With Jesus Lizard
"Jesus Lizard has returned with its first album in twenty-six years," writes Christopher Borrelli at the Trib , "and in many ways, it's like no time has passed at all. The title, 'Rack,' continues the band's tradition of four-letter titles—'Goat' (1991), 'Liar' (1992)—and the sound remains the sound of an old train chug-chug-chugging its way up a mountain of gravel, exploding into speed, then grinding to a noisy stop."
Jesus Lizard "were, in many ways, a quintessential nineties act: They played on the earliest iteration of Lollapalooza; they split a single with Nirvana; they had a song on the 'Clerks' soundtrack ('Panic in Cicero'); they worked closely with nineties producer Steve Albini; they left one hipster paradise (Austin) for another (early nineties Chicago); they signed to Chicago's great indie label Touch and Go, only to be lured to the big leagues (Capitol Records), flounder and crumble."
Says David Yow, "We have done five shows since recording this record and at each, I jumped into the audience. Once we knew we would be touring I hired a personal trainer and three times a week I train for an hour and he puts me through sheer hell. It's helped with endurance and stamina, otherwise I really doubt I could do a ninety-minute show."
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
South Works Quantum Campus Will Be Size Of Four Lincoln Yards
"Developer Related Midwest has unveiled the scale of its vision to transform the long-fallow 440-acre Lakefront property," reports Crain's . "The quantum computing research-anchored campus [planned] for the former U.S. Steel South Works site could eventually be bigger than all of the proposed megaprojects in the city combined."
Illinois Taxpayers Will Be Among Those In Twenty-Six States Who Can't File Directly With The IRS
"The IRS is expanding its program that allows people to file their taxes directly with the agency for free," reports the Tribune . "The federal tax collector's Direct File program, which allows taxpayers to calculate and submit their returns to the government directly without using commercial tax preparation software, will be open to more than thirty million people in twenty-four states in the 2025 filing season." (Illinois is not among them.)
