It all started with babka. For the last month or so, I’d had a hankering for a slice of the stuff. So when I was asked to bring a dessert to a brunch at my sister and my brother-in- law’s house, I knew just what I would get.

Babka. Not just any babka. A chocolate babka. From Leonard’s Bakery in Northbrook. And if chocolate wasn’t available, I would snag a cinnamon nut one. Leonard’s, after all, was legendary on the North Shore for their Jewish-style favorites: challah bread, hamentashen, rugelach, mandel bread, and, yes, babka.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with babka, it’s a dense, braided bread-like cake made with yeast and layers of sweet filling. It was made famous in a “Seinfeld” episode. Babka originated in the Jewish communities of Poland, Russia and Ukraine in the early 19th century, and it’s often found here in kosher and Jewish bakeries.

Leonard’s wasn’t exactly next door to my house, but it was close to my doctor’s office. I decided I would stop there after my upcoming appointment.

My mouth was watering as my husband pulled into the bakery’s parking lot, but we soon realized there was no Leonard’s there. In its place was, however, the Wake N Bakery.

We were in shock. What happened to Leonard’s? Did they change their name? Were they bought out? Do they still sell Leonard’s goodies? We were already they there, so what the heck. We went inside to check it out.

When we stepped inside the front door, we could see right away the store looked completely different. The place was freshly painted, very stark, with colorful, hippie-like murals, like something you’d like on a Grateful Dead album cover.

There was no line of beautiful babkas or row upon row of fragrant challah breads. None of Leonard’s famous chocolate coffee cakes drenched in glistening, sweet, chocolatey goodness.

Was there the heavenly scent freshly baked goodies? There was none. Nada. Zilch.

There were a few sweets on display. But the prices!? Damn. I mean $16.88 for a brownie!? Chocolate Chip Pecan cookies for $10.88??? Each. Whaaaaat!?

Behind the counter, a tall, friendly, bearded young man could see we were completely befuddled. He told us Leonard’s, which had been in business for 34 years, closed two years ago.

The guy explained to us clueless souls that Wake N Bakery was a bakery which sold sweets and drinks items which were infused with cannabis, THC hemp-derived cannabis. The sweet baked goods were made right on the premises, too. (Later I learned the bakery was a franchise of the bakery and coffee shop, Wake-N-Bakery in Lakeview.)

Aha! Now it made sense.

“Would you like to try a Banana Nut muffin? Or an Oreo cupcake?” he asked. He explained the cupcakes ranged in price from $8.88 to $10.88 to $18.88. The nice guy explained that the cupcake price differential was due to how big the cannabis infusion was. The larger the infusion, the higher the price of the cupcake.

“Not today, I said. “Maybe next time.” And I meant it. Maybe we would “get “sconed,” as it says on the bakery’s website, in the future.

When I badgered the nice bearded guy with more questions about Leonard’s, he kindly and patiently told us, Wake ‘N Bakery did not sell any products made from Leonard’s recipes, but Once Upon a Deli, located next door, did. The business had purchased some of Leonard’s recipes.

With that info, we hightailed it next door with high (no pun intended) hopes. They did have some of Leonard’s standbys. But sadly, no babkas. Turned out they didn’t make or sell babkas.

At Once Upon a Deli, we ended up buying a chocolate coffee cake, which tasted exactly the same as the one I remember from Leonard’s. Over-the- top sweet. Drowning in chocolate. Addictively delicious. So much so, one bite and we were experiencing a high of our own. It may have been just a sugar buzz high, nevertheless, for now at least, it was high enough for us.

Pat Benatar. Duran Duran. Eminem. Eurythmics. Dolly Parton. Lionel Richie. Carly Simon. These are the headliners of this year’s inductees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Yeah, I know Dolly Parton isn’t rock and roll. Yeah, I know Eminem isn’t rock and roll. But, the rock hall made it clear years ago they’re more than a little flexible with the different genres of music of their inductees. Besides, how can you say anything bad about Dolly? She deserves every accolade that she receives….and more.

It also gets old and tiresome to argue for those musicians who I feel have been overlooked by the Hall voters. I’ve made cases for Warren Zevon, Little Feat, Jethro Tull and a few others so many times that I’ve lost count of the numbers.

So, instead of lamenting about who is not in, why not celebrate those who will be inducted in November. We can celebrate Pat Benatar, who should have been elected years ago. We can celebrate the Eurythmics, who also should have been elected years ago. We can celebrate the record number of women who were elected this year. We should and can be as gracious as Dolly Parton, who when learning of her election, tweeted this:

I am honored and humbled by the fact that I have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Of course, I will accept it gracefully. Thanks to everyone that voted for me and to everyone at the rock hall. I will continue to work hard and try to live up to the honor.

Related Post: We need more women in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

This week we have Mother’s Day, of course. Some Kentucky Derby events and a few leftover Cinco de Mayo beer events. And next week we get Chicago Craft Beer Week, starting with Beer Under Glass. More details and I compile the many events going with this.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, we have another temporary COVID-related shutdown. Flapjack Brewing announced they had learned two of their employees tested positive over the previous weekend. They are performing the due diligence of closing down and sanitizing per CDC guidelines. They will announce a specific re-opening later.

Mother’s Day, May 8

I’m honored to be the Listing Agent for this lovely home at 1521 North State Parkway. It is on an oversized lot and has over 9,700 square feet of magnificent space. Lincoln Park is your back yard, and Lake Michigan is your swimming pool. Three separate outdoor spaces, landscaped and terraced. Built in 1894 but recently completely renovated, so you have the best of modern amenities combined with the classic elegance of the Gold Coast. It’s easy to say, but it truly doesn’t get any better than this!

The new owner will be surrounded by history. The architect, George Maher, shown above, and Frank Lloyd Wright were both draftsmen at the influential Silsbee firm in the late 1880s, and both helped design buildings for Chicago’s 1893 World Columbian Exposition. Maher designed 1521 North State Parkway in the Beaux Arts style, and later in 1899 the Pleasant Home, shown above, where he combined Arts and Craft styling with the horizontal lines you see in many of Wright’s designs. They are both considered giants in American architecture, and I’m thrilled with the Listing!

Another special place in Chicago from the same era is Washington Square Park. It started as a cow path with a well where farmers could bring their cattle to drink! The land for the park was donated to the City of Chicago in 1842, not long after Chicago’s founding in 1833, and the park was renovated using plans drawn up by the renowned Jens Jensen in 1910.

It now serves as the “front yard” of the Newberry Library, as seen above, and it took on the nickname “Bughouse Square” in the 1890’s. It was placed on the National Historic Register in 1991.

Bughouse Square was the primary spot in all of Chicago for Orators to pull up a soap box and expound upon topics of the day and engage in lively debates, usually with a radical point of view. In fact, the first Gay Pride March was located at Bughouse Square in 1970. As shown above, the park is an island of peacefulness in the middle of a bustling residential area!

I can’t close without mentioning the Joffrey Ballet’s creative world premiere adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men”, being presented in a double bill with George Balanchine’s first ballet work, “Serenade” from 1933. “Serenade” is pictured above.

“Of Mice and Men” was adapted to the Joffrey stage by Cathy Marston, with an original score by Academy Award-nominated composer Thomas Newman. The Joffrey continues to be the cultural gem of Chicago, something every visitor to Chicago should see.

Let’s hope it warms up soon, Chicago’s famous summer Street Fests are right around the corner!

So many haven’t the faintest idea, as reflected by the deceptive reporting about public opinion.

Just one example: Politico, which was complicit in leaking the first draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, put this headline on its deceptive spin on public support for the case:

Poll: Half of voters support maintaining Roe v. Wade:Only 11 percent say abortion should be “illegal in all cases.”

That is a startling false equivalence, designed to show overwhelming support for Roe.

If the reporting were unbiased and consistent, the 11 percent who say abortion should be illegal in all cases must be compared with the 25 percent who want it to be legal in all cases.

Those are the outliers, but if you want to actually know what Americans believe about abortion, you’ll find that polls consistently reveal that they want something in between. But that’s not what’s in Roe and its companion high court case, Doe v. Bolton. In fact, Roe has been redefined by a later decision, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey

Yet, many of the people who are out of the street shouting their demands to politicize the Supreme Court and keep Roe probably haven’t even read Roe. They are out of step with the American public that, through the years, has consistently wanted some restrictions on abortion.

Gallup regularly polls about abortion. Some findings: A large plurality (48 percent) say it should be “legal only under certain circumstances.” Only 24 percent are “satisfied or somewhat satisfied” with “the nation’s policies regarding the abortion issue.” Equal numbers find abortion to be “morally” right or wrong.

Ask the shouters and sign toters if they support abortion in the second or third three months of pregnancy. I imagine that many will say, “Of course, anytime. Nobody can control my body.” That would put them way outside public opinion. Gallup says only 28 percent support of the former and 13 percent of the later.

Asking if you support Roe elicits meaningless answers, as meaningless as being asked if you’re pro-choice or pro-life. These are mere, pointless labels, yet the abortion industry and its media promoters want you to believe that they paint a complete picture of public opinion.

I wish partisans on both sides would actually read Roe and Doe in the original. Alito certainly did, and his first draft demolished Roe’s credibilty and the history it cited as it tried to make it seem like the “right to abortion” is grounded in American tradition.

Abortionists tried to make that argument in Roe, in a failed attempt to show that Roe is only reinforcing a practice that long had been considered to be “right.” You can hear the same  fallacious assertion in the liberal media and from the angry crowd on the street.

He laid out the detailed history and concluded: “The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions. On the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973. 

This is important, because it was one of the principle legs of the pro-abortion argument. It’s unlikely this reasoning could be deleted by other justices because it’s fact.

Alito also demolishes the bogus stare decisis argument that is so often cited by pro-abortionists. Citing detailed court history, he concludes that the rule that it can never overturn a bad decision is “not an inexorable command.” He wrote:

When one of our constitutional decisions goes astray, the country is usually stuck with the bad decision unless we correct our own mistake. An erroneous constitutional decision can be fixed by amending the Constitution, but our Constitution is notoriously hard to amend…..Therefore, in appropriate circumstances we must be willing to reconsider and if necessary overrule constitutional decisions. Some of our most important constitutional decisions have overruled prior precedents. 

He provided a long list of such cases, including Brown. v. Board of Education that ended “separate but equal” in schools, and West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, that set aside a law setting minimum wages for women because it “violated the ‘liberty’ protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”

I’m still navigating the last half of the 98 pages, but I’ve read enough to know that this is a thoughtful and skillful argumentation that flies in the bald-faced lie that undoing Roe amounts to the politicalization of the court, the end of democracy, and cancelation of all the gains that women have made.

Never mind that the draft would not “ban abortions”; it would give the decision-making back to the people and out of the hands of black-robed, unelected elites who handed down the original Roe to start with. It is the essence of democracy, not its demise.

Not according to the hard-left Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who unleashed a gawd-awful rant about how “extremist” judges were about to impose their “extremist” views on women. Good Lord, she was a tenured law professor; can’t she do better than that?

I guess she doesn’t have to when she and others believe they can win by talking stupid to people who don’t know any better.

And refuse to learn.

To subscribe to The Barbershop, type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) today announced that tickets for Forothermore, the first career-spanning retrospective of internationally renowned, Chicago-based artist Nick Cave, will go on sale April 6. The most comprehensive survey of Cave’s work to date, the exhibition is curated by Naomi Beckwith, former Manilow Senior Curator, MCA Chicago and will be on view at the MCA from May 14 to October 2, 2022.

“I’m thrilled to be sharing my career’s work in my chosen hometown. I don’t take the gravity of this moment for granted,” said Cave. “From the MCA to the DuSable and beyond, this community and city-wide project is the realization of a dream that could only happen in Chicago — this way, with this brilliant team and throughout this great city.”

The celebration continues with the ArtEdge: Celebrating Nick Cave gala on May 21 in the Roundhouse at the DuSable Museum of African American History, featuring a presentation of The Color Is, a performative fashion experience, featuring an 80-look production by Nick Cave and Jack Cave. Produced by the MCA, The Color Is is an experience based on the concept of freedom from limits and described as a couture-created body of work that is an amalgamation of cultures, times and ideas, emancipating them from the limits of regular classifications. Gala tickets will be available alongside the exhibition on-sale, beginning April 6.

In addition to the performance at ArtEdge: Celebrating Nick Cave, there will be two public performances of The Color Is at the DuSable on Sunday, May 22 at 5:00 p.m. and Monday, May 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Running concurrently with Forothermore, Cave will also debut a new video projection for Art on theMART, the world’s largest permanent digital art projection, as part of its Summer 2022 programming. The to-be-titled work, along with Cave’s Drive-By-Remix (2017), will be shown twice nightly on theMART’s facade from May 6 through September 7, 2022.

Following its tenure at the MCA, a reimagined version of Forothermore will travel to the Guggenheim in New York City for an exhibition opening November 18, 2022, and is also curated by Naomi Beckwith, who currently serves as Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Guggenheim Museum.

“Nick Cave’s utopian vision and gift for magical material transformation is only matched by his generosity as a mentor, educator and activist,” said Beckwith. “I am thrilled to see that the seeds that he planted in Chicago have flourished into a citywide celebration that not only honors his inspiring work but is a gift to his adopted hometown. Equally important is that audiences at the Guggenheim New York will also have the opportunity to experience a fulsome view of Nick’s artistic and life practice. Nick is an artist who allows all his audiences to celebrate, mourn, and learn with and from each other; a kind of social healing that is so necessary as the world contends with continued physical and political isolation.”

For over three decades, Cave has centered his artistic practice on community building and addressing pressing societal issues related to race, gender, sexuality and class. First coming to prominence with his acclaimed Soundsuits series, Cave is celebrated for his projects that eloquently blend community building with vibrant works of art across disciplines, including immersive installations, textural sculptures, impeccably crafted fashions and dynamic videos and performances. In addition to being an artist, Cave is also a prominent activist and educator – qualities that make his work a true representation of the MCA’s mission says the museum’s Pritzker Director, Madeleine Grynsztejn.

“The MCA has committed itself to presenting local Chicago artists whose works elevate the global discourse surrounding contemporary art and social practice, including, among others, Kerry James Marshall, Virgil Abloh and now Nick Cave,” said Grynsztejn. “This recent history of curatorial programming is not only indicative of this institution’s ongoing efforts to surface the critical art histories being formed within Chicago but also serves as a testament to this city’s vibrant ecosystem of artists, galleries, universities, and museums that have supported such a thriving artist community.”

Reflecting the artist’s three-dimensional approach, the exhibition is designed as an immersive journey that begins with Spinner Forest and continues in the galleries with the artist’s cast bronze sculptures, tapestries made of sequined garments, color-saturated videos, and breath- taking installations such as the larger-than-life Beaded Cliff Wall that is comprised of millions of colorful pony beads threaded into shoelaces by hand. Displayed against a backdrop of floor-to- ceiling geometric vinyl wallpaper collaboratively designed with the artist’s partner Bob Faust, Forothermore traces artistic themes and Cave’s evolving interests over three decades, with works from as early as 1989.

Forothermore features over a dozen works from Cave’s Soundsuit series in addition to the debut of his new series, Soundsuits 9:29. The head-to-toe garments are constructed with a mélange of materials, among them beads, pearls, wire, feather, sequins, synthetic hair, and twigs. Originally created by Cave in response to the Rodney King beating in 1992, Soundsuits 9:29 addresses today’s heightened social unrest and reckoning for racial justice in response to the death of George Floyd.

Another highlight of the exhibition is Cave’s immersive 14-channel, room-sized video installation Hy-Dyve, that is presented in the adjacent fourth floor gallery and surrounds visitors with projections of flowing water, blinking eyes and mysterious creatures and patterns. Forothermore also includes Cave’s recent series of sculptures of carved and cast bronze hands, heads and limbs decorated with flowers, candles and found objects such as used shotgun shells.

Nick Cave: Forothermore is presented in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art on the museum’s fourth floor.

In addition to the MCA and Art on theMART, Cave’s work can be found in locations across the city of Chicago, including Free/Formal at the Garfield Green Line station, Rapt on the Mile at 679 N. Michigan Avenue, Wallworks at 21c Museum Hotel Chicago and Tondo at One Bennett Park.

About Nick Cave

Nick Cave (b. 1959, Fulton, MO; lives and works in Chicago, IL) is an artist, educator and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. Cave is well known for his Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body, initially created in direct response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991. Soundsuits camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender and class, forcing the viewer to look without judgment. They serve as a visual embodiment of social justice that represent both brutality and empowerment.

About The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The museum is generously supported by its Board of Trustees; individual and corporate members; private and corporate foundations, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and government agencies. Programming is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Museum capital improvements are supported by a Public Museum Capital Grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The MCA is a proud member of Museums in the Park and receives major support

from the Chicago Park District. The MCA is located at 220 E. Chicago Avenue, one block east of Michigan Avenue. The museum and sculpture garden are open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm and Tuesday from 10 am to 8 pm. The museum is closed on Monday. Tuesdays are Community Free Days with free admission for Illinois residents. Suggested general admission is $12 for adults and $7 for students and seniors. Children 12 years of age and under, MCA members, and members of the military are admitted free. Information about MCA exhibitions, programs, and special events is available on the MCA website at mcachicago.org or by phone at 312.280.2660.