From: chiletter@newcity.com
Subject: Newcity: Exploring the Googieverse; Senegal Café; Silent Disco
Date: February 5, 2009 1:13:58 PM CST
To: brian@newcity.com

Exploring the Googieverse: In search of Chicago’s vanishing architecture of the future
It’s Frank Lloyd Wright meets George Jetson. Born out of the same post-World War II energy that spawned the swirling, splayed chaos of Jackson Pollock’s paintings, Googie architecture celebrated the ascension of America and the atomic age. No longer was great architecture limited to banks, opera houses, mansions and downtown structures. Instead, Googie, which is also known as RayGun Gothic, Populuxe and Doo-Wop, transformed buildings like coffee shops, motels, gas stations and dry cleaners from simple boxes to giant, saucer-shaped structures with oversized signs splashing bold, pastel colors.

http://newcity.com/2009/02/03/exploring-the-googieverse-in-search-of-chicagos-vanishing-architecture-of-the-future/

Sweet on Senegal: Café Senegal brings West African cuisine to Chicago
I don’t know if Diaw Sow, owner/chef of Café Senegal in Rogers Park, has seen “Field of Dreams,” but she clearly doesn’t agree with the movie’s tagline that if you build it, they will come. Or, rather: if you cook it, they will come. Because the restaurant is so new and because of her concern for freshness, she’s waiting for customer traffic to increase before she expands her selection http://newcity.com/2009/02/03/sweet-on-senegal-cafe-senegal-brings-west-african-cuisine-to-chicago/

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FIRST FRIDAYS at the MCA
February 6, 6 to 10pm

TEMPTATION
Join us for Temptation First Fridays. This swoon-worthy party has something for everybody. Be the first to view the latest UBS 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work exhibition featuring the manipulated photographs of Chicago-based artist Curtis Mann. Learn about the art of seduction on a scavenger hunt through the galleries. Get a mini-makeover from Christian Dior Cosmetics. Invoke the muses at our Valentine’s Day card creation station.

DJ Diskokitty brings the beats as you sample a Wink-tini or Come-hither cosmo and enjoy complimentary Wolfgang Puck’s appetizers.

First Fridays tickets, which include museum admission, live entertainment, and complimentary Wolfgang Puck hors d’oeuvres, are $15 ($7 for MCA members). Advance tickets are available for $10 ($7 MCA members) by 3pm on the day of the event. Please call the MCA box office at 312.397.4010 or visit www.mcachicago.org. Doors are open from 6 to 10 pm with a cash bar until 9:30 pm. Guests must be 21 or older to enter. 220 East Chicago Avenue.

SEE THE MUSEUM AFTER DARK

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Keep Quiet: All aboard the Silent Disco
A small crowd of eight gathers at Jackson’s Red Line stop. With excitement, they pull MP3 players and headphones from their pockets and wait for a northbound train to zoom up to the platform for them to board. Once they board the train, with a crowd of passengers gazing on, they press play almost in unison and shuffle their feet. They dance, all to different tunes streaming into their ears with wide and bright smiles on their faces. http://newcity.com/2009/02/03/keep-quiet-all-aboard-the-silent-disco/

Goodbye, Updike: Bidding adieu to one of America’s great novelists
In an era of specialists, he stood alone as America’s last great man of letters. In addition to his nearly two-dozen novels, story collections and a shelf-full of poetry, he wrote on American presidents, the cosmos, science and gadgets. In an era of identity politics, he refused the limitations of skin. Fifty years after he published his debut novel, John Updike—America’s most gifted twentieth-century observer of the currents of this country—is gone. http://newcity.com/2009/02/03/goodbye-updike-bidding-adieu-to-one-of-america%E2%80%99s-great-novelists/

Between the Walls: Taking “The Class” with director Laurent Cantet
The original French title of Laurent Cantet’s richly observed, masterful “The Class,” “Entre les murs,” or “Between The Walls,” is philosophically just right, but didn’t sound right in English. But what happens in schools is seldom considered by outsiders beyond those walls, the oppressiveness felt by those within their confines, by adults who have escaped that confinement and moved on to thoughts caught between the walls of their own heads

http://newcityfilm.com/2009/02/03/between-the-walls-taking-the-class-with-director-laurent-cantet/

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JOHN FLUEVOG’S
BUY BETTER, BUY LESS
SALE

Up To 60% Off!

John Fluevog Shoes Chicago
1539-41 N. Milwaukee Avenue

http://www.fluevog.com

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Disorienting: Japan Dance Now presents meditations in motion
The first experience watching contemporary Japanese dance can elicit a gorgeous, magical bewilderment as the western mind churns to decode temporally elastic, slow-to-near-imperceptible movements or sustained, balls-out tantrums—transformative meditations on the grotesque and transcendent. http://newcitystage.com/2009/02/02/japan-dance-now-three-companies-present-meditations-in-motion/

Beautiful Doom: Welsh indie-pop group Los Campesinos! remains realistic
Welsh indie-pop septet Los Campesinos! has a bit of a reputation for being a juvenile, cheery band full of potty-mouth undergrad pranksters, and for pretty good reason. Nearly each Campesinos song pulses with teenage energy, bustling with violin riffs and catchy hysterics, and lyrics usually either dwell on deteriorating relationships, high-school-diary style (“I cherish with fondness the day before I met you”), or grammar-based metaphors (“And for each correctly used apostrophe, I could feel my heart sink inside my chest in front of me”). Song titles like “This is How You Spell. ‘HAHAHA, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics’” are in serious need of an editor. And that exclamation point at the end of the name—you know that’s trouble. http://music.newcity.com/2009/02/03/beautiful-doom-welsh-indie-pop-group-los-campesinos-remain-realistic/

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FEBRERO FLAMENCO
Flamenco Performance
“Con tres senti_os” by Yolanda Osuna and her group
The Purest Flamenco from Spain!

February 18 & 19, SOLD OUT
February 20 & 21, tickets still available
Performances at 7pm
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New course offerings!
Flamenco dance classes
Intensive Spanish classes
Registration now open
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For more information.
Instituto Cervantes
31 W. Ohio
312.335.1996

http://chicago.cervantes.es

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Eye Exam: Indoor Voices
Recently, in conversation with a painting and drawing professor, the subject of skill, and the long quiet hours required to refine those skills, arose. Woe to he who pursues art for monetary gain, said the professor with his usual dramatic flair; it’s rather like a monastic pursuit, he said, extending forefinger skyward for oratorical emphasis. http://art.newcity.com/2009/02/02/eye-exam-indoor-voices/

Shakespeare’s Force: From Hamlet to Jedi with Michael Pennington
“Here’s the story. I’d been playing Hamlet for the RSC [The Royal Shakespeare Company] for two years and I had finished it. And when you do something like that people ask you very, very serious questions. ‘Now, what’s the next great mountain you’re going to scale? What’s the next great role?’ And the first thing I was offered was five days—it might have just been four—on this new ‘Star Wars’ movie. http://newcitystage.com/2009/02/02/shakespeares-force-from-hamlet-to-jedi-with-michael-pennington/

Soundcheck: Youthful Contradiction
Swedish indie chanteuse Lykke Li’s debut album might seem profoundly familiar in its musical formula, but there are contradictions that set “Youth Novels” apart from being just another pop-centric indie-fluff flash-in-the-pan.

http://music.newcity.com/2009/02/03/soundcheck-youthful-contradiction/

Best of Chicago
The legendary issue is back. Best Barack Obama moment? Best pork belly? Best thing about the Cubs season? We’ve got them all, and hundreds more… http://best.newcity.com/

Boutiqueville: Guide to the retail wonderland
Have you visited the new Web site?

http://www.boutiqueville.com

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