Salem Collo-Julin

Chicago

Editor-In-Chief at Chicago Reader

Editor in chief @Chicago_Reader | she/they | 📨 [email protected] | 📸 by @GlitterGutsy | #Chicago

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Articles

Green season: cannabis events

1 week ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin |Salem Collo-Julin

We couldn’t miss giving you a 4/20 edition! Many dispensaries, smoke lounges, and CBD shops are running sales this month with special deals on items like prerolls, topicals, and accessories. Here are some cannabis-related events to check out. Some are meant to make you get in the door and shop, and some are just ganja-inspired, but be warned: none of these are family-friendly, and most are 21+ only (assume adults only unless we note differently below). Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
Radiance despite gray weather

1 week ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin

The vernal equinox has happened for 2025, which means that spring has finally arrived. However, we could call it a “technical spring” so far because we’ve only had fleeting glimpses of the warmth and new growth yet to come. Right now is the time of year when Chicagoans crave color. While nature will take its own time to dazzle us, we can always choose to wear clothes for the season we want to be living in.
Besties - Chicago Reader

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin |Salem Collo-Julin

Last year around this time we were standing in the middle of Lincoln Park Zoo with some of you, watching two of the female lions remind us that they’re actual wild animals by grabbing two ducks from the air and chowed down on them, right there in the lion enclosure. It was the Best of Chicago’s Animal Kingdom, a fitting if unscripted moment for our Best of Chicago party that night.
Lady Bunny, National Public Housing Museum, and more

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin |Salem Collo-Julin

It’s the time of year for birds to start gathering nesting materials and squirrels popping out of their tree hideaways. Tonight, a bunny will show up in Schaumburg, but be wary of getting too close—this one definitely has a bite.
Vintage, experimental, and more

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin |Salem Collo-Julin

Check out these upcoming events, exhibitions, screenings, and other activities to kick off April. You can’t throw a pair of original Nike Air Jordans without hitting a vintage vendors pop-up these days (and we really don’t recommend that you throw your shoes around anyhow). The Magnificent Mile is the latest spot where you’ll find a special grouping of clothing, jewelry, and accessories sellers purveying their retro wares for a limited amount of time.
Banning paper from prisons is a bad idea

1 month ago | chicagoreader.com | Anthony Ehlers |Salem Collo-Julin

This spring, the Illinois House is set to take up a bill that would make all prisons in the state paperless. This legislation is sponsored by Republican lawmakers and supported by American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31, the public-sector employee union that represents corrections officers. If it passes, new rules will ban all mail to prisoners until it is digitized, as well as books and newspapers. Why would they do this?
Charter fight sparks parent leadership

1 month ago | chicagoreader.com | Maureen Kelleher |Salem Collo-Julin

On Thursday, February 27, Lucy Salgado, mom of two students at Rufino Tamayo Acero School, a charter elementary school in Gage Park, knelt before the Chicago Board of Education and asked them not to close her children’s school. “I am begging you, hear me! . . . Don’t take their education away,” she told the board. Salgado was speaking off the cuff at the meeting. Over the last few months she’s had a lot of practice speaking to the board.
Flesh of Fruit use woodwinds and cast graphite records to conjure Afrofuturistic visions

1 month ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin |Salem Collo-Julin

Flesh of Fruit make experiential experimental compositions. The duo of local sound artists Allen Moore and Hunter Diamond have been creating sounds together for the past five years. Diamond, a multi-instrumentalist who centers his work on the saxophone, plays in improvisational settings and more traditionally structured ensembles, including jazz quartet Black Diamond (which he leads with saxophonist Artie Black) and Ethiopian-inspired psychedelic funk group Radio Outernational.
Drama in the lobby

1 month ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin

“At the opera, we are used to drama,” says Michael Solomon, director of media relations at Lyric Opera of Chicago. And drama is what many audience members serve with their attire, be it classic, modern, casual, or formal. “I have [received] quite the fashion education by going to the opera,” says Solomon. “Because the opera is a safe place to experiment, I have seen some wild and wonderful looks.”Sometimes the details in audience member’s outfits are inspired by the performance itself.
Switzerland’s Coroner bring their intricate old-school thrash to Chicago

1 month ago | chicagoreader.com | Salem Collo-Julin |Salem Collo-Julin

Zurich thrash-metal trio Coroner emerged in the early 1980s out of a Swiss scene that included pioneering extreme-metal outfit Celtic Frost. After some big changes in personnel and sound, in 1985 they settled on the trio lineup that would earn the loyalty of metalheads across Europe: guitarist Tommy Vetterli, bassist Ron Broder, and drummer Marky Edelmann. Members of Coroner had roadied on Celtic Frost’s early tours, and the band invited Celtic Frost front man Tom G.