Summer arts 2025: All you need to know for movies, concerts, food festivals and more
What's on Chicago stages this summer? Our list also includes 'Billie Jean' at Chicago Shakespeare and a new play by Kristofer Diaz. Read more from Chris Jones here.
Experiences, not exhibitions, are coaxing folks off their couches and into cultural institutions. Read more from Hannah Edgar here.
The Art Institute has a big summer show on Gustave Caillebotte, the Intuit Art Museum has reopened and 'The First Homosexuals' at Wrightwood 659 is not to be missed. That's just for starters. Read more from Lori Waxman here.
A look at 15 shows on tap in the summer months, when streaming is your best bet for new and returning series. Read more from Nina Metz here.
A new 'Superman,' a new 'Jurassic Park' sequel, plus a few genuinely new un-franchised hopefuls fill the summer 2025 movie calendar. Read more from Michael Phillips here.
Chicago summer looks to be as busy as ever, with classical and jazz programming packed with blockbusters. Read more from Hannah Edgar here.
There's also Cerqua Rivera, a weekend for emerging choreographers and the annual Dance for Life gala. Most of our selections are indoors, though you can find dance in the open air. Read more from Lauren Warnecke here.
'Someday, when I open a bookstore and the big bucks roll in, I'll display titles in narrow categories, ensuring no one finds anything and has to wander,' Christopher Borrelli writes. 'This summer survey will be my trial run.' Read more here.
Our picks for live music have the boldface names — Beyoncé, AC/DC, Lady Gaga and Oasis — as well as club dates and music festivals. Read the full list here.
Festivals are one of the best parts of summer in Chicago, ranging from blowout concerts to small neighborhood parties. Read more from Samantha Nelson here.
The Tribune Food team dives into patios across the city that are worth exploring, from recently opened spots to patios featuring pizza under sparkling lights. Read the full list here.
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Chicago Tribune
18 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: Pablo Picasso's steel sculpture — ‘a cow sticking out its tongue' — unveiled
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 15, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) 1812: Some 500 Potawatomi and their allies encircled 110 men, women and children who had marched out of Fort Dearborn at the mouth of the Chicago River, heading for Fort Wayne in Indiana Territory. Soldiers from the garrison formed a line and advanced on the Native Americans. Sixty-eight of the Fort Dearborn contingent lost their lives in the fighting and its aftermath. The Potawatomi losses are unknown but were certainly far fewer. The next day, the Indians burned Fort Dearborn. It wasn't the Fort Dearborn Massacre Though the bloody clash took place somewhere between what's now Roosevelt Road and 18th Street, it was traditionally known as the Fort Dearborn Massacre. Recently it was renamed the Battle of Fort Dearborn, acknowledging that both sides committed atrocities in the centuries-long struggle between Native Americans and European colonizers for control of what became the United States. Already in 1899, Simon Pokagon, a Potawatomi writer, observed, 'When whites are killed, it is a massacre; when Indians are killed, it is a fight.' 1967: Pablo Picasso — who never visited Chicago — presented a 'gift' to the city. The octogenarian Spanish artist had been wooed by architects of the Civic Center (now named for Daley) to create a focal point for its plaza. After a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a poetic tribute recited by Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks, about 50,000 Chicagoans got their first glimpse of Picasso's present. 'Although we were willing to experiment along many lines in other situations, we wanted the sculpture to be the work of the greatest master alive,' said William E. Hartmann, senior partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, in 1967. 'Oh mommy, it's terrible,' a young Bob Wadell told his mother. 'I hope it's a phoenix,' she responded. Vintage Chicago Tribune: 10 biggest bummers in 100 years of city history'It's hideous, it means nothing, it's like a cow sticking out its tongue at Chicago,' an elderly woman told everyone within earshot. Others suggested the 50-foot steel sculpture was a bird, a horse, a Viking ship, a baboon or a modernistic representation of Picasso's dog. Nobody really had an answer — especially since Picasso himself didn't show up for the ceremony. The Tribune summed up the untitled masterpiece like this: 'For decades, possibly for generations, Chicagoans will dispute about this huge semi-abstract head of a woman — or is it something else? — which will be like a brooding presence in the center of the city. It will be derided, defended, laughed at, and — who knows? — maybe eventually loved.' 2006: Ordered to be deported, Elvira Arellano and her U.S.-born son took refuge inside Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. Arellano had been arrested in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, sweep of O'Hare International Airport, where she was working as a cleaner. Authorities discovered she had been using a fake Social Security number and had been previously deported to Mexico. Arellano would spend a year living in the church with her story receiving national attention. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Chicago Tribune
Vintage Chicago Tribune: For your amusement — pleasure parks of bygone summers
As summer days get shorter and school supplies are added to the shopping list, we know Chicago prepares to enter a new season — fall. But before these hot, humid days are gone for good, let's step back and think about how previous generations spent their leisurely days or nights with friends or family. For many, it was a good excuse to get to an amusement park. Here's a look back at some of the parks, rides and attractions that brought visitors to the ticket stands. Remembering the Chicago amusement parks that filled summertime with thrills and spills and waterBoyton (whose last name is sometimes spelled as Boynton) was a strong swimmer who traveled the world performing feats of endurance and also organized in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a monumental lifesaving service — of which he served as captain — according to the International Swimming Hall of Fame. The imaginative Pennsylvania native also publicized the use of a rubber suit that kept him dry while he swam the English Channel in 1875, and floated down the Mississippi River in 1879. The showman's biggest contribution to pop culture, however, may be his 'shoot the chutes' ride. Originally produced for a London show, the concept was simple. With the purchase of a ticket, riders climbed aboard a flat-bottomed boat that was transported on a track to the top of a 60-foot ramp. The boat then descended down a 300-foot chute, which was essentially a water slide, before it splashed down into an artificial lake. An eight-person boat took on riders for the first time on July 3, 1894. Admission was 25 cents. Just a few years later — relocated to the West Side — about 20,000 people visited Boyton's chutes in one day to partake in or watch the slide ride. The park lost its lease in 1907, and everything within it was sold at auction. By then, competing Chicago amusement parks had their own versions of the ride. Billings Hospital opened on the park's original site in Boyton's chutes ended, Forest Park began. Operators of the new amusement park — claiming to be the biggest and brightest in the area — purchased the 'Chutes' ride at auction. Yet not everyone was happy about the park's placement next to cemeteries. Several Lutheran congregations opposed it with one local pastor calling it 'a sacrilege that such a thing should be attempted within the hearing of those mourning their dead,' the Tribune reported. Issues mounted before the park opened its doors to the public. A violent storm destroyed a chunk of the park in late May 1908. Temporary electrical lines that illuminated the park were mysteriously cut the night of its formal opening, leading then-president of the Chicago Sanitary District and future Tribune editor/publisher Col. Robert R. McCormick to offer a reward for information leading to the suspects. Just weeks later, visitors packed Forest Park to catch a ride on its pneumatic tube that supposedly 'shot (passengers) through a tunnel three-quarters of a mile long at the rate of a thousand miles or more a minute,' the Tribune reported. The Giant Safety Coaster and Grand Canyon rides followed, according to the Historical Society of Forest Park. The park closed in 1922, and many of its fixtures were sold off in 1929, Arthur Fritz lost his contracting business to the Depression. Putting together whatever money he could, he and his wife, Ann, bought six ponies for children to ride. Within two years they were able to open the County Fair Pony Track. Later they added some little cars, a merry-go-round, and a Ferris wheel, and Kiddieland was born. By the 1960s and 1970s, according to the village of Melrose Park, the ponies were gone and the park had added a Tilt-A-Whirl, The Whip, German carousel, log flume ride and swinging pirate ship. As many as 600,000 people visited Kiddieland by 2008. A dispute among descendants of the 17-acre park's founder, however, forced Kiddieland to close in September 2009. Four rides went to Santa's Village Amusement & Water Park in East Dundee while Great America in Gurnee got the Little Dipper, Kiddieland's old roller coaster. The old miniature steam engine train that would pull passengers around the park has found new life as well, at the Hesston Steam Museum in LaPorte, Indiana. Kiddieland rides: Where are they now?The longtime amusement park was demolished and replaced by a Costco, but its memorable sign is still displayed outside the Melrose Park Public Library, 801 N. Broadway Thompson used his experience managing exhibits at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition to build Luna Park with business partner Elmer 'Skip' Dundy at Coney Island in New York in 1903. He opened a park with the same name here in 1907. 'Nearly 800 willow shade trees will make Luna cool on hot midsummer days, while at night myriads of vari-colored electric lights will festoon and entwine the boughs,' the Tribune wrote in its roundup of 'summer gardens.' Among its attractions for the 10-cent cost of admission were 'a roller skating rink, an auto-ride coaster, the 'rube fire show,' the Razzle-Dazzle, the electric theater,' the Tribune reported just before the park's May 11, 1907, grand opening. Just one month later, Thompson brought his successful production of 'Brewster's Millions' — the story eventually became the 1985 film starring Richard Pryor and John Candy — to Chicago's Colonial Theatre. The Tribune loved its 'masterly stagecraft' and and called its 'dramatic flare' — 'light and frivolous and accordingly admirably suited to the requirements of the summer season.' James 'Big Jim' O'Leary — son of Catherine O'Leary of the Great Chicago Fire fame and owner of a gambling establishment near the Union Stockyards — bought Luna Park in 1908, and immediately slashed admission to five cents. 'I'm going to make it into a high-class amusement resort,' O'Leary said. 'Nothing disorderly will be permitted.' O'Leary shut the park down after the 1912 season with plans to transform the site into a marketplace for meat, vegetables and themed Old Chicago amusement park/shopping center — the first enclosed one in the United States — opened in Bolingbrook. It went bankrupt and closed in March 1980. Amazon purchased the site in early 2020, for $50 was something special. Tribune columnist Rick Kogan summed it up best in 2017: A great deal of life is about loss, of people and things. Most landmarks of our youth have vanished. So much of the city and the suburbs have been razed, paved over, obliterated. Still, some gone things remain so memorable that they stay with us, as if snuggled up with our DNA. Riverview is such a place, and I think the reason is that it disappeared without warning. After its 1967 summer season, it was bought by an investment firm and promptly demolished: a death without wake or funeral or proper goodbye. But, oh Riverview — a place like something from a colorful dream. It was a melding of heaven and hell, seedy and serene, glitzy and garish. But for all its blemishes and, indeed, because of many of them, it maintains a special place in the minds of Chicagoans. It always opened on the second Friday in May and so there you would be rushing through its tall gates and into the tasty terror of the Bobs, that massive wooden roller coaster, and the Pair-O-Chutes, that free-fall simulation on rickety seats; the wildly ornate, 70-horse carousel; the Tilt-a-Whirl; the Flying Turns; Aladdin's Castle, that walk-through fun house, and on and on and on. This crafty concoction was on the banks of the north branch of the Chicago River near the corner of Belmont and Western avenues. Its roots went back to a private skeet shooting club run by the William Schmidt family in the 1880s. Later, some swings and rides and a merry-go-round were added to entertain the wives and children of the shooters. Eventually, on July 2, 1904, it formally opened to the public, 76 acres along with Schmidt's promise of 'an avalanche of novelties, a whirlwind of surprises.' He came through and Riverview eventually could claim the title of the 'world's largest amusement park,' its area and number of rides far outnumbering those at the more famous and sprawling four-park setup at Coney Island, N.Y., and of such rival local playgrounds as White City or Joyland on the South Side. Its slogan was simple — 'Laugh Your Troubles Away' — and through world wars and a Great Depression, through divorces and deaths that's what people 'without worry' in French, Sans Souci Park was opened by operator W.H. Carter on May 27, 1899. Vaudeville entertainers appeared in the afternoons and evenings. The grounds included an electric fountain, Japanese tea garden, an illuminated arcade and drinks served inside the park's seven buildings. A large roller skating rink and beer garden were other features. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned in 1914 — the same year Sans Souci closed — to construct a half-million-dollar 'winter garden' on the site. Midway Gardens, as it became known, included a ballroom, restaurant and outdoor theater. But the fancy venue was never a financial success. It changed ownership several times before shutting down completely. The building — which was practically one giant block of concrete — was a beast to deconstruct when it was demolished in centerpiece of White City was a 300-foot tower, dubbed 'babylonic' by the Tribune. Lined with 20,000 light bulbs that gave the park its name, the tower could be seen from a distance of 15 miles. A ballroom accommodated 1,000 dancers, and the College Inn, a German restaurant, seated 2,500 diners. Dramatization of the Chicago Fire was staged by 2,000 performers. Real horse-drawn fire engines extinguished blazes set in model buildings. Flashback: White City, Chicago's first amusement park, mixed family-friendly joys with sensationalismThe Tribune's movie reviewer, writing under the pen name Mae Tinee, described White City's offerings on a summer evening in 1913. 'For a purely nominal price you may be whisked through the clouds; scooted down the chutes; tumbled through a woozy maelstrom; or skillfully 'canoed' amongst the Thousand Islands,' she wrote. 'There are constant lures to things which tip and things which go sideways and all around.' The critic didn't know what to make of the park's most widely advertised exhibit, a working model of the Panama Canal. The Great Depression hit White City's customers hard, causing revenues to tank. The park could no longer mount the elaborate spectacles that were its signature. Bankruptcy was declared in 1933, and the park was put up for sale. After a 1959 fire destroyed the roller skating rink and other remnants, the White City site became home to a Black residential development. A Tribune reporter offered a final tribute following its blazing end: 'White City in its heyday was like an unruly, impulsive movie queen who was often in trouble,' Jean Bond wrote. 'No one objected to her flings because, most of all, she was never dull.' Thanks for reading! Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Taylor Swift Arguably Endured The Worst Possible Houseguests When She Let Zoë Kravitz And Her Mom, Lisa Bonet, Stay In Her Home Amid The LA Wildfires
Taylor Swift has proven to be a pretty chill friend, with the star remaining seriously nonchalant when Zoë Kravitz destroyed her bathroom after losing a snake in one of her homes. And yes, you read that correctly. For context, Taylor was kind enough to let Zoë and her mom, Lisa Bonet, stay in her home after they were forced to evacuate during the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year. Related: All was going well until Zoë was packing up to leave after two weeks, and while she intended to leave her friend's home looking as though nobody had ever been there, Lisa's pet snake, Orpheus, had other ideas. During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Zoë explained: '[Taylor] was kind enough to let me stay at her house, my mom lives in Topanga Canyon, so I said: 'No, that's a dangerous place to be. Come [here].' And my mom has a pet snake, and so she has her evacuation stuff; she came over with the snake. We ended up having to stay there for maybe about two weeks, and Taylor has this very beautiful house. I think it's from the '30s, like it's a beautiful house, something you want to preserve and take care of.' 'I was gonna leave. My mom was actually gonna stay longer, I had to leave for work,' Zoë continued. 'I was kind of packing up my things, and I was saying to my mom: 'I really wanna be a good house guest. I like to leave places better than I found them. I don't want [Taylor] to even know we were here.' So I was kind of going around and cleaning up, and I'm downstairs and she's upstairs, and my phone rings, and it's my mom.' Zoë immediately noticed how 'high' her mom's voice was, with Lisa telling her daughter: 'I'm in a little bit of a pickle. Can you come upstairs?' When the actor went up, she found the bathroom door closed, and when she opened it, Lisa was 'crouched in the corner in a weird way' and explained that she was holding Orpheus but 'just put her down for a second' to wash her face, and the snake had instantly found a 'little hole in the corner.' Zoë detailed how her mom was still holding onto the snake's tail, explaining: 'They're all muscle and very, very strong.' She noticed that the hole was next to a built-in banquette, and wondered if it led to the drawers, but when she took the drawers out, she was dismayed to learn that this was not the case. At this point, Zoë admitted that she 'started to panic' as the snake was getting 'further and further' into the hole. She recalled: 'It's like that scene in Jurassic Park when they're in the car and the branches breaking every time they move. I was panicking so much that my mom likes to say: 'If I had both hands, I would have slapped you,' just to get it together. I was freaking out.' Zoë called her assistant, who also didn't know what to do, and eventually, Taylor's house manager appeared. After he'd processed that there was a snake loose in the bathroom, he got a crowbar and started to 'tear apart' the banquette. Related: 'We're ripping up the tile, we're scratching the walls, we destroyed her bathroom,' Zoë confessed. "I was like: 'Either we destroy her bathroom, or I have to tell her that there's a snake somewhere in her house.'' And I think that we can all agree that while these are both bad options, the snake in the house is definitely way worse. After they safely retrieved Orpheus, and ruined Taylor's bathroom in the process, Zoë recalled: 'So we destroyed the bathroom and I said to her house manager, 'Obviously I'm gonna pay for everything to be fixed. Please just don't say anything until it's fixed, so I could just say everything's fine.'' Related: However, the house manager was loyal to Taylor, and the star knew all about what had happened when Zoë braved calling her up later on. "I remember calling her saying: 'Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something…' And she was like: 'Is it the fact that you almost lost a snake in my house and destroyed my bathroom?'' Zoë recalled. Thankfully, it seems like Taylor was able to shake the whole ordeal off like a pro. Related: You can watch the full clip of Zoë's Seth Meyers anecdote below — be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments! More on this After Calling Off Their Engagement Last Year, Zoë Kravitz Spoke About Her Feelings Toward Channing TatumNatasha Jokic · Feb. 25, 2025 Here's Everything We Know So Far About Taylor Swift's 12th Album, 'The Life Of A Showgirl'Stephanie Soteriou · Aug. 12, 2025 Travis Kelce Just Lifted The Lid On His And Taylor Swift's Relationship, And It's Seriously WholesomeStephanie Soteriou · Aug. 12, 2025 Also in Celebrity: Also in Celebrity: Also in Celebrity:
