For the first time in the history of their franchise, the Lions were odds-on favorites to win the Super Bowl this season. That changed Sunday when the Bills beat them 48-42 and surged ahead of the Lions in championship odds.
The Lions’ bandwagon blew a tire on Sunday, fueled by even more injuries and giving up nearly half a hundred points in a home game.
Defensive tackle Alim McNeil tore his right knee in that game. Cornerback Carlton Davis broke his jaw. Both are out for the season, bringing the number of Lions defensive starters on the shelf to six. The Lions have 21 players on injured reserve — two more than the Packers, Vikings and Bears combined. That doesn’t count running back David Montgomery, whom the Lions hope can return from a knee injury if they go deep enough in the playoffs.
If.
When the Bears played the Lions on Thanksgiving, an NFC title seemed to be an inevitability. Now it feels like the Lions are just hanging on. Even though they have the best record in the conference, it’s the Vikings who control their own destiny. If they win out — and that includes beating the Lions — they’d be the team with the first-round bye.
The Lions, though, aren’t buying into the doom and gloom.
“We’re 12-2 and the sky’s falling?” Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn asked incredulously Thursday. “We’re going to the playoffs, we’re in the tournament. Why in the hell is the sky falling for us? Why do we have to sit back and be sad? … Why should we sit back and wallow and think the sky’s falling? It’s dumb.”
The Bears would love to have the sky fall the same way. In the almost 105-year history of the franchise, they’ve gone 12-2 or better through their first 14 games a whopping three times — most recently in 2006, their last Super Bowl season.
The rash of injuries is particularly gutting for a Lions franchise that until last year could boast just one playoff win since the midway point of the Eisenhower administration. Finally digging out of the muck two years ago began one of the most impressive feats in the NFL. From 2000-2021, only the Browns had fewer losses than the Lions. Since 2022, though, only the Chiefs, Eagles and Bills have more wins.
“Guys here have bought into the process,” cornerback Terrion Armstead told the Sun-Times. “We don’t want to go back to how things used to be.”
History says they won’t Sunday when they play the Bears, losers of eight in a row, at Soldier Field. The Lions haven’t lost two consecutive games since Weeks 7-8 of the 2022 season and have every motivation to not want to start now.
“Even though some teams do it a lot, it’s hard to win NFL games, no matter what team is in front of you, what coach is on the other sideline,” receiver Jameson Williams said. “We just try to make it big for us to bounce back.”
The weakened defense will stress the other side of the ball. After the loss to the Bills, offensive coordinator Ben Johnson — a Bears head coaching target — asked players how many points it would have taken to win. When they answered 49, he reminded the Lions they’d scored at least 50 points twice this season.
Injuries or not, the Lions still think they can find a way.
“You’re sad about your brother but at the end of the day you don’t dwell on it too much …” receiver Tim Patrick said. “We still got a job to do. It sounds bad, but we gotta move onto the next week.”
That speaks to leadership — both Johnson and Glenn will be popular head coaching targets next month — and also to the culture the players have built.
“We’re going to keep going, keep battling,” linebacker Jack Campbell said, “and keep this thing moving.”
Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
One of my favorite ways to find subjects for the Secret History of Chicago Music is to track down and interview an artist whose story isn’t published anywhere. Obviously this restricts me to living people, but the excitement of learning something that almost nobody else knows makes up for that. Even popular live bands can fall into the memory hole if they don’t release a recording, but sometimes they get as far as cutting demos. And when a music-history nerd like me can get his hands on those demos, it’s always a treat—especially when the tunes are as good as what I’ve heard from early-70s country-rock outfit JD, Foster & Eastman.
Drummer Steve Jones, whose last name occasionally got tacked onto that already unwieldy moniker, alerted me to the band’s existence. Born in 1950 and raised in Brooklyn, Jones later played in another 70s Chicago group that did well on the local concert circuit but never got a record out: Fawn, a Secret History subject in 2011. Jones helped me secure interviews with guitarists Larry Foster and George Eastman. I didn’t correspond directly with bassist JD Smith, but he met up with Eastman and Jones for lunch to help sort out the group’s story.
Foster has perhaps the most impressive musical CV of the group. He was born in Chicago on December 17, 1944, and in 1961 he joined his first band, the Coachmen. Their lineup included George Edwards (later of psychedelic outfit H.P. Lovecraft) and Skip Haynes (who recorded “Lake Shore Drive” in 1971 as part of Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah).
In college at Purdue University in the early 60s, Foster met Mickey Clark, and with Edwards they formed a trio in Chicago called the Village Singers. “We traveled the folk circuit, Chicago down to Fort Lauderdale, for spring break in 1964,” Foster says. “When we returned to Chicago, George went to California, but Mickey and I kept touring.”
The duo met singer-songwriter Marita Crites (who became Marita Foster when she and Larry married in ’66) and formed the New Village Singers, who played the midwest and east coast. They made a lucky connection at a gig in New York in 1965. “We were seen at an open mike at the Bitter End and signed by Barbra Streisand’s management company in 1965,” Foster says.
Renamed the Three of Us, the group also released a few singles on Kapp Records. They played on a wide range of impressive bills, sharing stages with folkies (Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot), soulful groups (the Four Tops, the Coasters), and garagey New York bands (the Blues Magoos, the Magicians).
The trio’s promising career was derailed when Foster was drafted in 1966. “Even Streisand’s lawyers can’t keep me out, so I go in and serve my time,” Foster says. “End up in Korea for 13 months, doing codes and crypto on remote radio rigs.” After he was discharged in ’68, the budding singer-songwriter used G.I. Bill benefits to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he met George Eastman and Steve Jones.
Eastman was born on Christmas Day in the late 40s (he prefers to keep the year “squishy”) and grew up in New York City. He came to Chicago in 1967 to study photography at IIT’s Institute of Design. “The band was born out of a regular Thursday-night get-together to play, write, and record music at a Columbia College studio,” Eastman recalls. “I joined those sessions in late 1972 or early 1973.” Unfortunately, the tapes from those gatherings have been lost.
JD Smith had been in a band called Franny and Zooey, named after the 1961 J.D. Salinger book. “That’s when he got the nickname ‘JD,’” Jones says. “He was approached by George to join him and Larry in 1973. I was added in the summer of ’73.”
“Steve joined after we had started at some smaller venues and decided to create a bigger sound and play some larger and louder venues,” Eastman says. “Music of the day demanded a more rock ’n’ roll–infused sound (also my leaning), not entirely different from the Eagles’ journey at around the same time. . . . That said, our trip turned out a bit differently.”
“Breaking With Honor” from JD, Foster & Eastman’s 1974 demo sessions
JD, Foster & Eastman originally had a folk-rock sound a la Crosby, Stills & Nash, but their only formal recording session documents a sublimely twangy country-rock outfit. They cut the demos I’ve mentioned at Streeterville Studios on Grand Avenue, working with Gary Loizzo (front man of the American Breed and longtime producer for Styx). The results are easily on par with Poco, Pure Prairie League, and the Flying Burrito Brothers.
When I first heard the arrestingly hooky “Breaking With Honor,” I was almost taken aback by the gorgeousness of the breezy vocal harmonies, delicately rootsy piano, and chiming guitars. “Black Sheep,” with molten leads from Eastman, is a top-shelf bar-band boogie that sounds like a roadhouse brawl between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Jerry Jeff Walker.
“Our primary regular monthly gigs rotated between the Bulls and Ratso’s (both in Lincoln Park), and we played many other clubs and gigs around town, not many of which I remember,” Eastman says. In rock ’n’ roll, folks like to say that if you can remember it, you weren’t there, but the passage of 50 years can have a similar effect.
“Steve, JD, and myself had lunch last week, and I heard some stories of which I have absolutely no memory,” Eastman laments. “Not even a vague recollection. Steve and JD say that we opened for Willie Dixon once—boy, I would like to remember that. JD recalled seeing me doing a hotel gig where Chaka Khan was the singer. Ditto to that.”
JD, Foster & Eastman’s “Black Sheep” features George Eastman on lead guitar.
JD, Foster & Eastman replaced Jones on drums in early 1974, and Foster moved out of Chicago that same year. “After adding a conga player (for no real reason) and switching drummers (worst move we ever made), the band was not going anywhere I was interested in going,” Foster recalls. “I left for California soon after the Aragon gig.”
A recording survives of that show at the Aragon, which happened in 1974, and you can indeed hear an inappropriately busy hand percussionist. Jones tells a slightly different story of the band’s demise. “From my perspective, we got a manager, and according to JD that was the beginning of the end,” he says. “I was let go around February or March of 1974, and the band went on with a new drummer for a few months, max. JD says that he couldn’t continue with the way things were going, so he quit—the end.”
In the years that followed, Jones went into film. He’s directed commercials for the likes of Quaker Oats and Cap’n Crunch and music videos for bands as big as Styx. He’s been involved in lots of feature films, perhaps most notably the infamous locally shot 1986 indie Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer—he’s credited as a producer and as one of three composers of its score.
Until last year, Jones taught and served as a producer in residence at DePaul University. His other coproductions include Mad Dog and Glory (1993) with Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, and Bill Murray; Wild Things (1998) with Neve Campbell and Denise Richards; Speaking of Sex (2001) with James Spader, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Catherine O’Hara; and Drunkboat (2010) with John Malkovich, John Goodman, and Dana Delany.
Foster’s sons, Evan and Erik, own a recording studio called No-Count in Seattle. They also play rock ’n’ roll in touring and recording bands: they’re both in Dirty Sidewalks, and Evan is a guitarist in the Boss Martians and a touring musician with legendary garage rockers the Sonics. “They also have a record label, which is releasing a four-song EP of my songs that we recorded in LA and Seattle,” Foster says. On that EP, Pete Thomas (from Elvis Costello & the Attractions) plays drums, and Evan, Erik, and Larry sing and play everything else.
Foster still thinks highly of his old bandmates. “Over the years, I’ve used top studio players, but George Eastman was the most melodic guitar soloist I ever played with, and Steve Jones was the best singing drummer I ever had.”
All four members are still alive, and they’ve got some great songs that almost nobody younger than 70 has heard. So I’m not going too far out on a limb to hope they reunite and treat us to more JD, Foster & Eastman (plus Jones). And maybe leave the congas at home this time, guys!
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.
With uncertainty and anxiety all around us, it’s comforting to think that Pegasus Theatre Chicago’s Young Playwrights Festival perseveres. Now in its 38th season of recognizing original work for the stage created by Chicago high school students, the festival has, for many years, been the first show out of the gate in the new year. (This year’s festival begins previews January 2.) For 2025, the three young playwrights receiving full productions are all young women: Lily Zhang, Carolina Boss, and Lydia Vodopic.
38th Annual Young Playwrights Festival 1/2-1/26: previews Thu–Sat 1/2-1/4 7 PM; opens Sun 1/5 2:30 PM; regular run Fri 7 PM and Sat 2:30 and 7 PM; Chicago Dramatists, 798 N. Aberdeen, pegasustheatrechicago.org, $30 ($25 seniors, $15 students)
Unlike last year, where the winning entries were by young writers who had moved on to college by the time of the festival, the three writers this year are still in high school. Zhang and Boss both attend Whitney Young, and Vodopic is at Lane Tech. They were chosen out of nearly 300 submissions crafted by students in writing and theater classes with assistance from Pegasus’s teaching artists. The winning entries, selected by a panel of theater professionals, then received revision workshops with other professional theater artists leading up to the full productions.
The company began as Pegasus Players in 1978 (formally incorporating the following year) as a place for fostering work created in City Colleges of Chicago. They also toured shows to underserved communities, particularly in Uptown, and were in residence for many years under the leadership of founding executive director Arlene Crewdson in the O’Rourke Center at Truman College. There they produced many award-winning musicals (resurrecting less familiar work by Stephen Sondheim was a particular strength, and the composer himself became a financial supporter) as well as straight plays, earning 77 Joseph Jefferson Citations (the earlier name for the Non-Equity Jeff Awards) along the way.
But the Young Playwrights Festival has always been a cornerstone of their mission, even after they moved out of their longtime Uptown space, restructured, and renamed themselves Pegasus Theatre Chicago. They’re now under the leadership of producing artistic director ILesa Duncan (who was also artistic director for Lifeline Theatre in Rogers Park, until a fiscal shortfall led to the company returning to an all-volunteer leadership structure). Under her direction, the company persevered with offering digital versions of the festival during the pandemic shutdown, and has expanded support for revision and further development for the winning entries.
The three plays chosen this year differ wildly in settings and stories, but the connective tissue is, well, connection. In Zhang’s Love & Gyros (directed by Reshmi Hazra Rustebakke), a pair of former high school sweethearts meet by chance in Greece many years later, and wonder what might have been—and what could still be. In Vodopic’s Family Fishing Trip (directed by Ruben Carrazana), two nerdy kids unenthusiastically accompany their blue-collar dad onto a rusty boat in Michigan. Boss’s Superheroes Anonymous (directed by Duncan) finds a group of dysfunctional folks with names like “Kark Clent,” “Patrick Poker,” and “Bryce Wax” trying to open up about their feelings in a makeshift support group in the basement of a Pump It Up party emporium.
For Boss, playwriting itself marked a departure from what she usually does. “My go-to is novels. And plays happen so much faster than that. And there’s so much fast-paced action. So I had a really hard time at first with like, trying to figure out the difference between the two because my instinct was to slowly get into it and slowly explain it.” In her play, the conflicts among the self-doubting superheroes develop quickly, with the signature backstories and personality quirks of the icons they’re spoofing coming through clearly. (As if to underscore the exhaustive explorations of Batman’s brooding psyche in pop culture, Wax repeatedly notes how “dark and twisted” the other superheroes’ stories are.)
Zhang, like her Whitney Young classmate, also had focused more on poetry and novels. “The difference between those and playwriting, what you can depict through the stage, is very different. You have to keep that in mind, which was a bit of a struggle for me.” Zhang’s play, like Boss’s, unfolds in real-time (the plays are all around 20-30 minutes) at a Greek restaurant, where James and Cecelia meet by accident and quickly pick up where their romance left off years earlier. But their past regrets and history are the other guests at the outdoor table with them, and their future is far from certain at play’s end.
Vodopic does have more background in theater than her fellow festival winners. “At my school, we have theater performance club where we perform short plays and skits. So I guess writing it came from ‘What would I want to see during club?’ I thought about what I would want to perform in, or what a performer would think is fun to do. So I think that had a larger influence on it.” Aside from teenage Patrick in Boss’s play, Vodopic’s Family Fishing Trip is the only script to feature adolescent characters. Over the years, I’ve often noted that young playwrights don’t feel always bound to follow the “write what you know” dictum in creating stories tied to teenage drama.
Vodopic’s play is mostly a comedy, but there are wistful touches of how hard it can be for young people who have little in common with their parents to communicate. She says, “When I was first brainstorming, I was going back and forth between if I wanted to do a dramatic play or a comedy. I landed on comedy just ’cause it’s like the most fun to write. I would say that there’s a couple twists and turns in it and that just kind of came out when I was writing as like, ‘Oh, what if this random weird thing happened?’ But in my class, the instruction was just write a 30-minute play about whatever you want. So I enjoyed not having to follow a structure.”
Zhang’s play, like the other two pieces, also shows people outside of their usual comfort zones, which forces them to confront parts of their past. She says, “I feel like I’ve always gravitated more towards like romance or like realistic drama. I actually went to Greece and I went to the island that I set my play at. And it was just such a new setting to me and in a way I guess that really stayed with me, until I decided to keep that setting and start from there.”
Boss took a long route to her superhero tale. “Playwriting was very new to me, so at first I was gonna make it this like, deep memoir about my neighbors and how close we all are. And then I was like, ‘There’s not enough time to get eight years’ worth of history in the 30 minutes.’ So I resorted to writing what I knew, which was superheroes, thanks to my dad and my brother. I pretty much found the most ridiculous idea I could—a support group for superheroes.” (The unseen archvillain in Boss’s piece may or may not remind you of an unelected billionaire currently trying to dictate the course of the incoming administration.) Boss adds, “I think all our pieces are all very character-driven and I think that might be the common thread.”
For Duncan, one of the joys of doing the festival is “I get to stay tuned with what young people are thinking—what the students are thinking, what they’re writing about. Sometimes it’s very clear that everybody had a reading assignment and a lot of ’em were based on books. But there’s always a surprise in terms of the approach and I just get excited about helping young people shape their work or just inspire them to continue writing.” Duncan points out that an early alum of the festival, Marvin McAllister (who was in the 1988 festival), has become a distinguished professor of theater and was the first literary manager for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.
Whether the young women participating in this year’s Young Playwrights Festival will stick with theater professionally remains an open question, but they all plan to continue writing. Vodopic notes of her playwriting experience, “It’s like a great combination of writing and theater, which are two things I’m very passionate about. It was so enjoyable to write. I would look forward to writing and editing my play every day.”
Zhang says, “Being a part of this, it really gave me a push of confidence in my own work that I didn’t really have before.”
For Boss, finding out that she could add playwriting to her existing tool kit as an emerging writer was also a happy discovery. “When I wrote it, it was something that I never expected would go this far. It was such a different experience to hear people read it aloud. Because in the months or so that they were deciding on the plays, I had read it over so many times, I was convinced it wasn’t funny and it wasn’t good. It got repetitive for me. And so the effect was totally lost. But then seeing people act it out and perform it and having them laugh at my own jokes—I felt for the first time, ‘I’ve actually created something that was worth something.ʼ”
Reader Recommends: THEATER & DANCE
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Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol translates well on the Studebaker stage.
Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer returns after several years in hibernation.
Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day shows us how we got here.
The Totality of All Things examines the national divide through a high school hate crime.
Lauren Gunderson’s Little Women premieres at Northlight.
Trap Door’s Fraudulent LLC hits almost too close to home.
Muralist Mark McKenzie sees the mural on the wall at the Sleeping Village music venue in Avondale as a black-and-white, psychedelic tribute to music.
“It’s a comic-esque visualization of cosmic and universal connection,” says McKenzie of Logan Square, who goes by the artist name Mac Blackout and painted the 100-foot-long, one-story tall mural in 2018.
Eyeballs, noses, feet and hands all seem to explode across the wall in an existential soup. Half the mural features thick black lines on a white background, which shift as you look down the wall to white lines on a black background. Whimsical details include stars, lightning bolts, stripes, the Chicago skyline and more. Still, somehow, the energy of the mural at North Ridgeway and West Belmont avenues guides patrons to the door — which is what McKenzie expected.
This mural by artist Mac Blackout can be found on the side of Sleeping Village music venue, 3734 W. Belmont Ave., Avondale.
“It’s supposed to be very musical and improvised but I have referential elements like hands and noses and eyes flying around,” McKenzie says, noting that “I love to anthropomorphize things.”
Other McKenzie murals also reflect his musical passion. His works have appeared on an alley at Lincoln Hall in Lincoln Park and inside Bric-a-Brac Records in Logan Square, among other locations. His portrait of Herbie Hancock can be found on a wall in Pilsen.
“I’ve done a ton of work all over the city, but the music venues and the record stores are always a special thing,” he says.
McKenzie has two upcoming albums of his own with Chicago record store and label Torn Light Records. One is a solo album due out in January. The other is a trio with McKenzie and musicians Landon Caldwell and Nicholas Yeck-Stauffer on an album titled “Between Infinities,” due out this month.
The black and white design at Sleeping Village almost had a written music quality, with an improvisational feel, McKenzie says. While he typically works with bold and outrageous colors, the muted palette was a better fit for the smaller venue in a quieter neighborhood.
McKenzie says he is inspired by Spanish artist Victor Moscoso, who was one of the first to design the iconic psychedelic band art of the 1960s. His designs grew popular on magazines, billboards and album covers for artists including Hancock and Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir.
“I’ve been part of the music community for a long time. Doing stuff with the music community is really important to me,” McKenzie says. “It was awesome to be able to do that. I probably need to go over there and touch it up soon.”
McKenzie’s latest work can be found on Lawrence Avenue at Ravenswood Avenue under the Ravenswood Metra stop, where “Ravenswood Walls of Togetherness” was completed in October.
For that mural, McKenzie says he was inspired by the sense of everyone coming together after the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic: “It’s really a celebration.”
Mark McKenzie’s latest work is this mural under the Ravenswood Metra stop. It was completed in October.
The rap group “baptized me into hip-hop music and culture,” the artist says, with lyrics that helped instill in her “the spirit of activism and being able to question things.”
Debbie Peterson used the band’s signature lips logo and other images associated with the Stones on a building she co-owns because she loves their music: “They’re like family.”
Painted in May, the work by artist Richard Wilson includes lyrics written by a Hathaway friend for him as a show of support as he struggled with mental illness.
Lucy Holloway’s artwork was transformed into a mural about 20 feet high and 100 feet across as the top prize in a student art contest sponsored by the Sun-Times, WBEZ and Vocalo.
The city Department of Streets and Sanitation says it didn’t paint over the murals. The man overseeing the murals says City Hall should have protected them.
It’s about an artist, Wesley Kramer, her brother, who died in the 1990s. Parod worked with his daughter to re-create one of his prints — “keeping the art going to the next generation.”
We asked where you go to feel festive for the holidays. Here’s what you said, lightly edited for clarity:
“The ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ screening at the Music Box.” —Matthew Byrd, 29
“When my kids were little, we’d take them to see Santa at Macy’s and then stop at Christkindlemarket for a mug of glühwein on our way to our dinner reservations at Italian Village. Great tradition!” —Scott Barliant
“Le Sud in Roscoe Village. Every space where a decoration could be placed was used. Liked the parachuting Santas.” —JR Green
“Maggie Daley ice skating ribbon.” —Jules C. Robinson
“Last year, I went to the Museum of Science and Industry. … It was very festive.” —Jan Tee Cra
Museum of Science and Industry Christmas decorations
“The Berghoff.” —Lori Ellen
“I get a festive holiday lift if I stop into Butch Maguire’s pub with its over-the-top holiday decorations.” —Mike O’Connor, Glenview
“Macy’s on State Street as they have really been keeping up the Marshall Field’s Christmas traditions of decorating their windows and the Christmas tree on the seventh floor in the Walnut Room, including a fairy princess.” —Lynda Garbutt
Macy’s lights up its Christmas tree in 2018.
“Chicago Athletic Association’s Happy’s bar. It’s fun and cozy, like hanging out in your parents’ basement.” —Alana, 44
“I haven’t been inside yet but walking by Double Bubble in Edgewater looked like the epitome of Christmas. Classic wreath and lights.” —Daxon Greystone
“The best decorations I’ve ever seen are at The Shanty, Highway 41 and Wadsworth Road, in Wadsworth. Giant tree, green garlands, lights and good neighborhood atmosphere. Can’t be beat.” —Susan Zingle
Swedish police said Friday a man had been shot dead in a parking garage in the city of Norrkoping, with media identifying the victim as the rapper Gaboro, who reportedly had links to criminal gangs.
A video purporting to show the killing quickly spread on social networks. In the video, seemingly filmed with a camera worn by the shooter, a person carrying a handgun can be seen firing multiple shots in a car garage.
Police said they were aware of the video and that it was part of their investigation.
They said a man in his 20s, who had been found injured at the scene on Thursday morning, was later pronounced dead in hospital.
Police said in a statement that they were seeking information about a silver station wagon that may be connected to the case.
A police car stands near a parking garage where rapper Gaboro was shot dead on Thursday evening, in central Norrkoping, Sweden, Dec. 19, 2024.
Anders Wiklund/TT via Reuters
“The police are still working very intensively on the case, which is classified as murder,” the statement said.
Multiple media outlets reported that the man was the rapper Gaboro, whose songs have been streamed millions of times on Swedish music streaming giant Spotify.
Sweden has seen a rise in gang shootings and bombings linked to score-settling between rival groups, with police struggling to control the illicit drug market.
Several high-profile artists have previously been victims of the violence.
In June, 26-year-old rapper C.Gambino — whose real name is Karar Ramadan and is not to be confused with American rapper Childish Gambino — was killed in a shooting. He had been named the country’s hip-hop artist of the year the month before.
Another award-winning Swedish rapper, Einar, was shot and killed in Stockholm in a gang conflict in October 2021.
Nevertheless, police told Reuters this week that they were making headway in their effort to curb. deadly gang violence, resulting in fewer shootings and shooting deaths.
“This is the first time we have seen the trend pointing clearly downwards over an extended period of time,” Police National Operations Department head Johan Olsson told Reuters.
Last year, 53 people died in 363 shootings, which often took place in public and sometimes claimed the lives of innocent victims and passers-by.
Flowers are placed near a parking garage where the rapper Gaboro was shot dead on Thursday evening, in Norrkoping, Sweden, Dec. 19, 2024.
New York City rapper Dave East delivers verses like a freight train—just as a train is unassuming and familiar in its bulk and speed, his performances have a powerful momentum that’s belied by his restrained persona and low-humming voice. He’s understated on the mike. Though he isn’t one to raise his voice, he can still give every syllable sharp definition, and his light rasp lends gravitas to his straightforward lyrics. East is often most effective when he’s most blunt: “Them homicides left me traumatized / Seen mamas cry / Still surprised, asked how I’m alive,” he raps as a parting thought on “Can’t Even Know.” That track appears on the May release Apt 6E, an album that pairs him with Los Angeles beat makers Mike & Keys—one of three full-length collaborations East issued in 2024. He sandwiched Apt 6E between February’s For the Love (where he worked with New York DJ and producer Scram Jones) and November’s Living Proof (a collaboration with Rhode Island–based producer AraabMuzik). The alluring, menacing nighttime glamor of Living Proof casts East’s hard-won grit in sharp relief, and the contrast makes him sound bigger and bolder—even though he hasn’t changed lanes himself.
Dave East DJ Mustafa Rocks spins. Fri 12/27, 10 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. West, $40, $50 table seating, $100 meet and greet, 21+
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Leor Galil (he/him) started writing for the Chicago Reader in 2010. He joined the staff in 2012 and became a senior staff writer in 2020.
Galil mainly covers music, with a singular focus on Chicago artists, scenes, and phenomena.
He’s won a handful of journalism awards; he’s won two first-place awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (for music writing in 2020 and arts feature in 2022) and a Peter Lisagor award (for Best Arts Reporting and Criticism in 2022).
Galil lives in Chicago. He speaks English and can be contacted at [email protected].
A year after rejecting ComEd’s clean energy plan, state regulators have approved a revised approach that will hike electricity rates by $606 million over the next four years, hitting Chicago area customers’ bills slightly less than the utility had sought.
The Illinois Commerce Commission on Thursday lowered ComEd’s requested rate increase by 11% in a unanimous decision that drew measured optimism from the utility, which is shouldering the brunt of the state’s clean energy transition — and from consumer advocates who have accused the company of wasteful spending.
Commissioners signed off on spending $1.5 billion through 2027 to bolster the grid in pursuit of ambitious goals outlined in the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act that was signed by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2021. The state is aiming to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2030 while weaning the state off fossil fuels in favor of renewable sources by 2050.
Last year, the commission rejected the initial grid plan filed by ComEd for failing to “sufficiently consider affordability,” but approved a four-year, $506 million hike. This week’s ruling sets the overall increase on ComEd’s 4 million customers at roughly more than $1 billion.
ComEd, which is owned by the publicly traded Exelon Corp., previously asked regulators to increase its profit rate up to about 10.7%, but the commission kept their return on equity at 8.9%.
The impact on household bills, which will see adjustments in the next few weeks, “will vary based on service class and energy usage,” according to the commission.
Commission chairman Doug Scott said the plan gives ComEd “the tools necessary to make needed investments to drive the clean energy transition and continue modernizing Illinois’ electric grid.
“These plans are a key component to meeting the goals of CEJA and represent significant improvement in meeting its requirements. The investments approved today will deliver significant benefits to the utilities’ customers in an affordable, cost-effective manner,” Scott said in a statement.
ComEd spokesman John Schoen said the decision “appears to provide us with the necessary direction and certainty needed for critical grid investments and to enable Illinois’ ambitious clean energy and economic development goals.”
“We are reviewing the order to ensure a comprehensive understanding of its findings and their implications,” Schoen said in an email.
Citizens Utility Board executive director Sarah Moskowitz called it “a step in the right direction that the ICC has cut ComEd’s wasteful spending by hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Of course, an increase of any kind will be difficult to bear for far too many customers who have been hit with multiple rate hikes from a scandal-plagued utility over the last decade. We still have a lot of work to do to secure a clean, affordable energy future for ComEd customers,” Moskowitz said in a statement.
Last year, two former ComEd executives and two former consultants were convicted of a nearly decadelong conspiracy to bribe former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to pass legislation favorable to ComEd.
Madigan is on trial for federal racketeering charges, including some stemming from the ComEd case.
The utility paid a $200 million fine and agreed to cooperate with federal investigators’ wide-ranging public corruption probe under a deferred prosecution agreement in 2020.
Workers at Starbucks stores started a five-day strike Friday in three U.S. cities, including Chicago, to protest lack of progress in contract negotiations with the company.
The stores affected were not immediately available, but according to the X feed of 48th Ward Neighbors for Justice, an Edgewater store at North Clark Street and North Ridge Avenue is among the ones where workers are striking. And protesters were in front of a Bucktown store at West Armitage and North Hoyne avenues.
As of April, 23 stores in Illinois had organized. There were nine organized in Chicago, according to the pro-labor group More Perfect Union. But four have rejected the move to unionize, including the world’s largest branch, Chicago Reserve Roastery, 646 N. Michigan Ave. Workers there voted against unionizing last year, in a major setback for organizers.
The strikes also were expected in Los Angeles and Seattle and could spread to hundreds of stores across the country by Christmas Eve.
Starbucks Workers United, the union that has organized workers at 535 company-owned U.S. stores since 2021, said Starbucks has failed to honor a commitment made in February to reach a labor agreement this year. The union also wants the company to resolve outstanding legal issues, including hundreds of unfair labor practice charges that workers have filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
The union noted that Starbucks’ new Chairman and CEO Brian Niccol, who started in September, could make more than $100 million in his first year on the job. But the company recently proposed an economic package with no new wage increases for unionized baristas now and a 1.5% increase in future years, the union said.
“Union baristas know their value, and they’re not going to accept a proposal that doesn’t treat them as true partners,” said Lynne Fox, president of Workers United.
Seattle-based Starbucks said Workers United prematurely ended a bargaining session this week. Starbucks has nearly 10,000 company-owned stores in the U.S.
“We are ready to continue negotiations to reach agreements. We need the union to return to the table,” Starbucks said in a statement.
Starbucks said it already offers pay and benefits — including free college tuition and paid family leave — worth $30 per hour for baristas who work at least 20 hours per week.
The strikes aren’t the first during Starbucks’ busy holiday season. In November 2023, thousands of workers at more than 200 stores walked out on Red Cup Day, a day when the company usually gives away thousands of reusable cups. Hundreds of workers also went on strike in June 2023 to protest after the union said Starbucks banned Pride displays at some stores.
The union and the company struck a different tone early this year, when they returned to the bargaining table and pledged to reach an agreement. Starbucks said it has held nine bargaining sessions with the union since April, and has reached more than 30 agreements with the union.
It is a costly affair. The American Dream is a pact with the devil, and, of course, opportunity comes at a price. Time and time again, sprawling American epics from The Godfather (1972) to There Will Be Blood (2007)have nailed in the same sinister motifs, so The Brutalist isn’t necessarily digging up earth-shattering revelations. That said, director Brady Corbet probes the foundation of the dream, particularly how this idea is concretized in postwar America. And what’s truly shocking about The Brutalist is not that it teaches us something new, but that it presents an America we recognize—hollowed out yet standing on the same eroded foundations.
Its three-and-a-half-hour runtime is dedicated to an atmospheric exploration of American life—family, legacy, success, you name it—rather than anything concise. It does, however, set the tone immediately, commencing with a disorienting, upside-down shot of Lady Liberty as Adrien Brody’s László Tóth arrives in the United States from the ruins of WWII.
A Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor, Tóth arrives destitute. He is only welcomed by his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola)—who had Americanized not just his name but his business and his principles. Given a second chance, Tóth is helped by Attila to secure a job redesigning the library of Harrison Van Buren, a wealthy plutocrat played with a nefarious edge by Guy Pearce.
Van Buren is initially furious at the two men hired by his foolish son, Harry (Joe Alwyn). However, after researching Tóth’s esteemed European background, he has a change of heart. Van Buren proposes Tóth’s deal with the devil: Tóth will design a monumental community center featuring a church, library, gymnasium, and auditorium atop a hill in Pennsylvania.
This colossus costs Tóth everything as he battles for his art form against every odd: a volatile capitalist, drug addiction, and the uphill revival of his legacy. Like any quintessential American epic, the relentless pursuit comes at a steep cost to family, unraveling as his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and orphaned niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), finally set foot in America.
The Brutalist is Corbet’s colossus: it’s a massive American epic that damns the ground we stand on. Corbet achieves this without leaning too heavily on his predecessors, instead forging a myth from the bedrock of this country’s brutal psyche. 215 min.
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