Article/Interview Eater.com October 2012 Link There are neighborhood bars—somewhere you don’t have to work to get a seat or the bartender’s attention, a dive that you like in a non-ironic way. And then there are bars that define a neighborhood. While the personality of Wicker Park seems malleable, as aspiring hotspots dilute the bohemian character […]
Article/Interview Eater.com June 2012 Link In a city of divided loyalties, a bar that counted both Cubs announcer Harry Caray and White Sox owner Bill Veeck as regulars must be on to something. Miller’s Pub, a longtime Loop fixture at 134 S. Wabash, has the warm patina of Old Chicago, with a wooden bar worn […]
Article/Interview Eater.com April 2012 Link Photo by Grant Kessler For many Chicagoans, their love affair with Belgian beer was first consummated at the Hopleaf, the Andersonville beer mecca started by husband-and-wife owners Michael Roper and Louise Molnar. Named after a brew from Malta, the origin of those red hopleaf signs decorating the bar, this Far […]
Feature Wax Poetics Issue 48 Link Always honored to have a piece in Wax Poetics. My interview with Michael Rother is in the latest issue — buy it where they still sell printed materials now.
Article Metromix January 2011 Link Whether it’s fast-food purgatory or a brainless post on the retail frontlines, your first job tends to be a not-so-glamorous introduction to the working world. While the source of your first paycheck probably isn’t occupying prime space on your resume, for some it’s an unlikely start on a winding career […]
Article Chicago Magazine January 2011 Link It’s fitting that a website about arguments emerged from one. In the fall of 2009, the Chicago tech entrepreneurs Kevin Wielgus and Angelo Rago were at the Improv in Schaumburg when Rago’s then-girlfriend, whom he’d been dating for only a few weeks, received a phone call: Her parents were […]
Feature EQ January 2011 Link Last October, Gang of Four guitarist and producer Andy Gill delivered a lecture on recording to students at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The influential post-punk guitarist wasn’t afraid to be self-effacing: He played one of his band’s lesser-known songs, an early ’90s cover of Bob Marley’s “Soul Rebel,” […]
Interview Nylon Guys December/January It’s early in the afternoon and Cullen Omori is sitting behind a small table at Intelligentsia, a coffee shop in Chicago’s Loop business district, sipping a cup of black coffee and occasionally brushing back his long, dark hair like Mitch Kramer from Dazed and Confused. His bandmates in Smith Westerns— his […]
Feature EQ Magazine December 2010 Link A bedrock element of Stereolab’s continental cool, Laetitia Sadier’s voice is unmistakable. Hearing its breadth of variation on The Trip, from the “grey disco” of her “Un Soir, Un Chien” cover to the languid “Natural Child,” reveals the depth and fluidity that can be uncovered in a new context. […]
Review Pitchfork December 3, 2010 Link 7.1 Reissue releases usually oversell the now-clichéd story of a misunderstood musical genius. Farad, Stones Throw’s retrospective of electronic music eccentric Bruce Haack, does peddle that tale to a certain degree, much like the 2004 documentary Haack: The King of Techno. But the real pleasure of the disc, covering […]