What to do in Chicago for Fourth of July weekend: Wu-Tang Clan, patriotic music in Grant Park and fireworks at Navy Pier
It's Independence Day weekend, and Chicagoland offers no shortage of ways to celebrate. If you're looking for just one recommendation, though, consider heading to Hyde Park for The 4th on 53rd. The grassroots efforts of a small group of neighbors has blossomed over 30 years into an ideal version of American patriotism: an inclusive parade where 'everyone marches,' children decorate bikes, and families gather for a fun festival highlighting local talents.Continue your Fourth of July celebration with the Grant Park Orchestra as it performs quintessential American music: Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, hits from Broadway, and flag-waving favorites. Can't get out of the holiday without a little Sousa. Principal percussionist Josh Jones will be featured in 'Yankee Doodle Fantasy.'Or maybe the stars and stripes aren't flying so high for you this year? Rejoice in our First Amendment freedoms with a few laughs. No one better to help with that than Sammy Obeid, a Lebanese-Palestinian American comedian who hails from Oakland, California. His act combines an affable persona, sharp storytelling and incisive political commentary. Regardless of whether you agree with all of his takes, he'll get you thinking.Wu-Tang Clan rolls into town on what's been billed as their final tour — 'The Final Chamber' — more than 30 years after their founding on Staten Island in 1992. Run the Jewels opens, offering a whole other reason to go.Keyshia Cole, another Oakland native, unleashes her defining blend of R&B, soul and hip hop at the United Center. 'The Way It Is' tour marks her 20th anniversary and also features Tink, Jeremih and Elijah Blake.The influential Buffalo Grove emo band has reunited for a tour that stops for two nights at Thalia Hall. Formed in 1989 by brothers Mike and Tim Kinsella along with Victor Villarreal and Sam Zurick, perhaps you know them better from such later projects as Joan of Arc, Owls and American Football. Jump on this if you want to go; Saturday's show is already sold out. Also features Coffin Prick and Jenny Pulse. … but in this case, it's the fifth of July in Ravinia — close enough. Chicago, now marking its 58th year since its local founding, has long been a staple of the summer outdoor concert scene. This time, the band is joined by a Fleetwood Mac tribute band, Stevie McVie.This Zanies show features a solid lineup of comedians well known to Chicago audiences: Adam Gilbert, Skyler Higley, Chris Higgins and Kristen Toomey. You've got three more chances to catch the show. 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. July 5 and 7 p.m. July 6 at Zanies Comedy Night Club, 1548 N. Wells St.; tickets $32.25 (ages 21+; 2 item minimum) at chicago.zanies.com
Fireworks 2025: All the Fourth of July shows in the Chicago areaExpect plenty of pyrotechnics all weekend long in the city's parks and boulevards, but for Chicago's official fireworks, head to Navy Pier.'Jurassic World Rebirth' not your speed? Consider the Music Box Theatre's mini festival of Federico Fellini films. It includes a new, 35mm print of '8½' as well as 'La Dolce Vita,' 'La Strada,' 'City of Women' and 'Amarcord.' Years ago, I saw 'Nights of Cabiria' on a steamy hot night, and it still lingers in my mind as a different sort of summer blockbuster.
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New York Post
28 minutes ago
- New York Post
Fourth of July legend Eric ‘Badlands' Booker takes The Post inside his chugging prowess
Last name, Bladder. First name, Greatest. Reigning Nathan's lemonade gallon chugging champ Eric 'Badlands' Booker is ready to wash away the competition this Independence Day, seeking a fifth straight championship belt in the hot dog eating contest's newest opening event. 'I'm just trying to chop my time down, take bigger and fewer gulps,' Booker, a 56-year-old dad of three who hails from Selden on Long Island, told The Post. 'It's kind of like a martial artist. They say the harder you hit, the faster you punch. … I'm pretty confident. I'm really confident,' added the man who set a world record with his 21-second chug off Stillwell Avenue last July 4. 3 Eric 'Badlands' Booker spoke with The Post ahead of the Fourth of July. Dennis A. Clark Booker, who recently retired as an MTA subway conductor, has been a core part of America's favorite eating endeavor for over a quarter century. He first qualified for the big stage at an Oceanside Nathan's in 1997 after downing 16 dogs in 12 minutes. 'I got the trophy, a spot at Coney Island, and I got a year's supply of hot dogs,' the gentle giant recalled. 'They gave me two boxes with 480 links of hot dogs. It was 60 pounds.' Good to be bad That fateful moment turned Booker into a regular ravenous competitor in the hot dog competition and other Major League Eating events — he says chicken wings are his favorite to scarf — as his lore began to grow. Fittingly, it was The Post who coined his 'Badlands' nickname in 2001 in an article surrounding the hype of then-newcomer Takeru Kobayashi and his opponents. 3 Eric 'Badlands' Booker has set numerous soda world records. Dennis A. Clark 'That's when it caught on. I felt honored. It's kind of like 'Top Gun.' They name once you really get there. So I ran with it,' said Booker, whose personal best was 40 hot dogs. Booker quickly went from stove to stardom and launched a food-themed hip-hop career during the mid-2000s with albums such as 'Hungry and Focused,' later going on to rap a recorded intro for the Nathan's contest in 2020. He also began a beverage consumption YouTube page, Badlands Chugs, in 2012, with the initial goal of chugging a two-liter Diet Coke bottle without burping. Out of all carbonated beverages, diet soda is the most belch-inducing, Booker warned. 'I remember it vividly. … I tried it, failed miserably. I had a nine-second burp that came out of that, which just went super viral,' he said. 'My son, Brandon, he filmed it with his iPhone, and my wife was upstairs, and she's just like, 'What's going on down there?!' ' Booker added of his son, fellow hip-hop producer OKHipHopOnline, with whom he collaborates. Since that fizzy fury, Badlands set numerous soda world records, glugging ocean water, pickle juice, and tons more fan-suggested concoctions while amassing almost 4 million followers. The nearly six-pound lemonade title belt, which he helped design, features a blue finish as a nod to the ocean chug, according to the champ, who has held the crown each year since its inception in 2021. That first year was just Booker vs. a timer, and his stunt was such a hit that Nathan's decided to bring in others for a full-fledged competition. Even flow Opposite to chowing down on hot dogs, Booker says that hot and steamy days are an advantage for downing lemonade out of a plastic jar while judges watch beneath the table for spillage. 3 Eric 'Badlands' Booker Dennis A. Clark On top of that, nowadays he spends his Fourth of July morning enthusiastically spitting bars to the crowd of 30,000 strong in South Brooklyn to pump everyone up to see the legendary Joey Chestnut in action. 'I'm probably dehydrated by the time I get up to do the chug,' he said. 'The last couple of years, when I drank my gallon, I just felt refreshed and hydrated. I'm ready to go, you know? I didn't have to use the bathroom for at least an hour.' As the undisputed lemonade king of the world, Booker is proud to have become a household name nearly 30 years after that fateful day in a Nassau County Nathan's. 'People recognize my voice on the subway,' he said. 'Hey, you're the guy from Nathan's! You're the chug guy!' It's awesome. I'll ring the horn or something, especially if we're at the station. Being recognized is amazing.'
San Francisco Chronicle
37 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Shepard Fairey's ‘Fractured' marks first major S.F. show in nearly 20 years — and it demands your attention
You know him from the 2008 Barack Obama 'Hope' poster, but Shepard Fairey has a lot more to say. 'Shepard Fairey: Fractured,' the American artist's first major San Francisco show since 2008, showcases 115 politically charged works at Harman Projects gallery at Minnesota Street Project. The collection features portraits of both well-known and anonymous figures juxtaposed with text and imagery in Fairey's signature restricted color palette. Nearly all the work is silkscreen, sometimes with mixed media, on paper, wood or aluminum. 'I've been looking for an opportunity to do something in San Francisco for a while,' Fairey told the Chronicle. 'San Francisco is my kind of town.' Though Fairey never lived in the Bay Area, 'Fractured' is in a way a homecoming. Between 1996 and 1999, while in his 20s, Fairey estimates he visited the region at least once a month for the 'really incredible' street art and graffiti scene. Meanwhile, street art was sparking interest in another corner of the country. In western Massachusetts, Harman was following the growing movement, documenting his finds and sending photographs of his discoveries to the Wooster Collective, a website that documented street art. When he moved to Oakland in 2006, he said he kept up the practice of 'going out with local artists in the middle of the night while they wheat-pasted.' Harman loved Fairey's art so much, he purchased a set of four screen prints the artist made in 2008 in collaboration with Blek Le Rat for $1,200 — despite earning about $10 an hour at the Lake Merrit Whole Foods in Oakland. He remembers it took six months to pay off the credit card. 'When I say I was a fan, I really mean it,' said Harman, now owner of Harman Projects and Hashimoto Gallery, both of which have locations in San Francisco and New York. 'The fact that we're here 17 years later,' he mused. 'It's really an honor.' Harman's admiration for Fairey's work only deepened when he attended the artist's 2008 exhibition, titled 'Duality of Humanity,' at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. The show focused on what Fairey called 'reverse propaganda,' infused with what he then saw as Obama's optimism and political ideals. 'At the time, I didn't have much going on creatively and I thought it was interesting that an artist I admired was doing this for a presidential nominee,' Harman, now 42, recalled. Harman began blogging and eventually became the expert on Obama street art. For the 2009 presidential inauguration, too broke to afford a hotel room, Harman wound up sleeping on the floor of a Washington, D.C. gallery for five days. (He jokes it was a 'crash course' in gallery management.) 'Seeing my favorite artists coalesce around this candidate really very much turned me into a political person,' Harman said, referring to Fairey and other like minded artists including Date Farmers, Ron English, Emek and Ray Noland. Harman and Fairey are hoping to inspire others in the same way in 2025. In order to rouse people off their couches, Fairey strives to make his message as direct as possible. One standout piece, 'Fractured Harmony,' depicts a woman looking through a torn mandala against an oil derrick, accompanied by words highlighting how oil giants are shielded from legal liability. Fairey describes it as a 'chaotic collage' that reflects the ripped social fabric of our moment. He particularly enjoys the duality of the mandala, which could be seen as either an aspirational harmony or as an 'easy conspiracy theory that ties things up in a package.' The mandala's promise of harmony rings hollow against the reality of the destructive oil derrick. Fairy hopes people ask questions instead of accepting 'conveniently simple' explanations, which he views as harmful to democracy. 'One of the reasons democracy doesn't work as well as it should is because there is so much apathy,' said Fairey, 55. 'You can't necessarily react to or solve every problem in the moment. … But when it matters, am I going to speak out and am I going to vote?' The exhibition also includes portraits of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, legendary pro boxer Muhammed Ali and Andy Warhol, a leading figure in the Pop Art movement beginning in the early '60s. Their images lined in rows on the wall form a phalanx of social justice camaraderie. The work shown at Harman Projects comes at a range of price points to make sure the art is broadly accessible for purchase. A signed and dated poster in a standard 24-by-36 size for affordable framing costs $30 –– cheaper than a trendy water bottle. Fairey and Harman, while showing in galleries, haven't abandoned the streets. Fairey noted Harman helped him find a wall, near the gallery along Indiana Street, for a new mural even though Harman will not benefit financially. He completed it in June. 'If public space is really meant for the good of the public,' said Fairey, 'then it shouldn't just be ads and commercial signage that we're looking at.' Perhaps a visitor to Harmon Projects' will be moved to political or artistic action. 'I, of course, would never suggest that somebody should ever do anything illegal such as making a piece of street art without permission,' said Harman. 'But I certainly hope — wink wink — that this exhibition inspires artists both indoors and outdoors.'
Axios
38 minutes ago
- Axios
America's nonstop birthday party
Starting with America's 250th birthday celebration, President Trump is planning a years-long mega-celebration that puts him at the center of the world's biggest events. Why it matters: Trump's vision for the semiquincentennial goes beyond purely American fare to showcase the country's military, economic and cultural power on a global stage. His expansive vision for a nonstop American celebration includes the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, The Atlantic recently reported. Trump is floating additional programming like a "Great American State Fair," "Patriot Games" and a "Freedom Plane" inspired by the Bicentennial-era " Freedom Train." In keeping with his love of spectacle, a New Year's Eve-style ball drop in Times Square has been discussed. Driving the news: Trump's speech at the Iowa State Fairgrounds Thursday night served as the formal kickoff to the celebrations and an opportunity to brag about congressional Republicans passing his "one big, beautiful bill." The president soft-launched 250 this year with a rare military parade to honor the Army in D.C., which coincided with nationwide "No Kings" and anti-ICE protests. More military branches' birthdays will be recognized this fall, with celebrations planned for the Marines and Navy. Trump said last night his 250th anniversary plans include a UFC fight on the grounds of the White House. Zoom in: Some of the planned activities for America 250 are more squarely around American pride, like a student-focused America's Field Trip. Trump wants his proposed sculpture park, dubbed the National Garden of American Heroes, to be ready by July 2026. The plans feature life-size statues of figures like Ronald Reagan, Whitney Houston and Jackie Robinson — "all approved by Trump," as the Wall Street Journal reported. "We're going to have a big, big celebration, as you know — 250 years," Trump said at Arlington Cemetery in late May. "In some ways, I'm glad I missed that second term because I wouldn't be your president for that. Can you imagine? I missed that four years. And now look what I have." Reality check: The turbocharged celebrations come as Americans report record-low levels of patriotic pride. State of play: Preparations for America's 250th birthday have been underway since roughly 2016 under former President Obama, though they've taken a more MAGA bent since January. There are two main organizers at the national level: the White House's Task Force 250, which Trump chairs and established via an executive order in his first week in office, and the congressional America250 Commission, which was established in 2016, meant to be nonpartisan and is backed by a nonprofit. Ex-Fox News producer Ariel Abergel, who interned in Trump's first White House and finished college in 2021, is now America250's executive director. Other Trump allies like fundraiser Meredith O'Rourke and Trump adviser Chris LaCivita serve roles in the foundation supporting the America250 commission's work. Outside of the federal planning effort, expect state-level programming across the country.
