They say West Loop is the Best Loop, and that definitely applies to the dating scene. Since this part of the city is laden with hot 20- and 30-somethings, the streets are constantly buzzing. Here, you’ll find some of the most popular and notable restaurants in the city, dozens of bars, shops, and things to do at every turn. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever been to the West Loop and not seen someone who has the potential to be my future husband (here’s to you, guy who walks his Frenchie down Randolph).

And just in case you’re planning a date in a different neighborhood, check out our 2022 revamped dating guides for Logan Square to Lincoln Park, too. Oh, and there are more to come.

180 N Morgan St, Chicago, IL 60607

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a million more times: going out in the West Loop doesn’t count unless you stop at Federales. The energetic atmosphere here makes it the perfect spot for drinks with friends, a work happy hour, OR a first date! We likely all know plenty of couples who’ve met at Feds or have met someone ourselves that we, at one point, thought could’ve been the one (I’m still holding on to one of those nights).

When you take a date here, you’ll probably indulge in guacamole and shrimp tacos, and continue to bond over throwing the ice molds from your Casamigos shot at the bell. Hey, if Chance the Rapper can hit the bell, why can’t you?

1364 W Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60607

What’s better than a regular dinner date? Cooking together! While you might be a little uncomfortable going to a stranger’s or having a stranger come to your place for the first time, there’s another option – Gyu-Kaku! This nationally known Japanese BBQ place brings ease and great flavors to one of the cutest first date ideas: cooking together.

Over the open flame in the middle of your table, you and your date will work your way through preparing a multi-course meal consisting of various meat and veggies. The great thing about Gyu-Kaku is that the marinating is done for you, all you have to do is sear and enjoy! If you do feel okay spending your first date in either of your apartments (which is totally fine), Gyu-Kaku also offers their raw, marinated meats to go. 

112 N Green St, Chicago, IL 60607

Dear coffee lovers turned romantic lovers, if you haven’t already, meet Sawada. The first coffee shop in the US of Hiroshi Sawada offers a menu of espresso and matcha-based drinks that you won’t find anywhere else in the city. This industrial-style shop is a coffee lover’s dream, complete with the scent of always freshly brewed drinks wafting through the air. If your date gets competitive, you’ll find warm wood-paneled walls, glistening string lights, and a ping pong table.

While you converse and uncover each other’s quirks and favorite colors, why not sip on an aromatic latte, then split a Doughnut Vault donut as you plan your second date? Is there anything more dreamy than getting to know a perfect match over a cup of coffee on a chilly fall day? I’m pretty sure Taylor Swift has written songs about this. 

813 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607

The drink of pure romance? Wine, of course! At Joe’s Imports on Fulton Market, the wine list is curated by wine Director Joe Fieley’s personal travel and experiences. Here, you’ll find wine from unique places all over the globe, like Israel and Romania, making it the perfect spot to dive into something new together.

A date at Joe’s Imports also guarantees an intimate setting where you and your date can nibble at smaller snacks or share larger meals, all while sampling what could be the wine that brings you two even closer. Think about it, on each anniversary of your first date, you can start the tradition of hunting down that special bottle and reminiscing on the place where it all started: Joe’s Imports. 

942 W Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60607 

New to the West Loop is Texan Taco Bar. Opened by Parlor’s owners Michael Bisbee and Tim Hendricks, this spot elevates traditional TexMex food with specialty tacos and hand-squeezed margaritas. A first date, at least by my standards, usually isn’t complete without a few drinks, and tequila will definitely bring that warm and fuzzy feeling in your stomach that’ll have you chatting away in no time. As of food, Texan Taco Bar has plenty of shareable like Texan Queso and Nacho Bites, and a huge dessert menu to splurge on something sweet to wrap up what was hopefully a perfect first date.!

Featured Image: Federales

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In March 2020, Theatre L’Acadie opened a production of Tennessee Williams’s The Two Character Play the same week the city locked down for the COVID-19 pandemic: sibling actors, mad and maddening, tilt on the edge between fantasy and reality with a backstory of undefined trauma. Two years later, we return to nearly the same scenario—two characters, claustrophobic make-believe, submerged psychological wounds—in Callie Kimball’s Things That Are Round (directed by Erin Sheets). But true to our participation in the long-present pandemic, we never get to leave the living room—nevertheless, pandemonium.

Things That Are Round Through 8/28: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Facility Theatre, 1138 N. California, theatrelacadie.com, $20 suggested donation

A dentist in her middle years, Tetherly (Capri Gehred-O’Connell) seeks a nanny for her son Dylan. Erstwhile paralegal and aspiring opera singer Nina (Laura Jasmine) is no Mary Poppins, but she’ll do just about anything for cash paid in advance. “He’s so easy,” wheedles Tetherly, wielding wads of hundred-dollar bills. There’s just one catch: Dylan is imaginary, also deaf—NBD, right? 

What could be the world’s easiest babysitting assignment becomes a daily game of inventing reality in combative dialogues between tense Tetherly and nasty Nina, who, despite the odds, become friends—if friends who pay friends are friends. Gehred-O’Connell’s Tetherly is high-pitched as a drill; Jasmine’s Nina is petulant and practical—she saves her imagination for making money out of molehills. In the confines of Tetherly’s living room, which is stacked with the cardboard boxes and plastered with the Post-it notes of a life approached provisionally, patients, partners, and practical matters become as insubstantial, invisible, and inaudible as Dylan. The truth is not beautiful; the beautiful is not true, but shared fantasies (and/or finances) become the basis of real relationships. 

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This story was originally published on April 13, 2016.

LOS ANGELES — The clock ticked toward midnight Wednesday. The sold-out stands had emptied hours earlier.

Now, ushers, security guards and cleaning crews swept mounds of purple and gold confetti, streamers and balloons into white trash bags. But Kobe Bryant remained on the court.

In a black Los Angeles Lakers hoodie, sweatpants and a pair of his sneakers, the 37-year-old gathered his family — his wife and two young daughters — on the Staples Center hardwood, and posed for pictures beside the team’s half-court logo.

As shutters snapped and flashes popped, Bryant smiled, lingering in the place where he had delivered the most perfect farewell, one so fitting and surreal that it too will linger in the vivid memories of those who watched it almost impossibly unfold.

In the final game of his storied 20-season career, Bryant scored 60 points and hit the winning shot with 31.6 seconds left. He scored 15 of the Lakers’ final 17 points. He outscored the opponent by himself (23-21) in the fourth quarter.

And, to round out the storybook ending, Bryant led the Lakers to a 101-96 victory against the Utah Jazz in his 1,346th and final regular-season game, punctuating a season-long farewell tour with a performance that even he couldn’t fathom.

“It’s hard to believe that it happened this way,” he said after notching the sixth game of 60-plus points in his career. “I’m still in shock about it.”

In October, Bryant’s first shot of the preseason in Hawaii hit the side of the backboard, foreshadowing a season of struggle.

Kobe Bryant gave his fans a farewell performance to remember. He scored 60 points in his last game as a Laker. Harry How/Getty Images

The tribute videos, standing ovations and chants still poured in, even though Bryant kept misfiring, earning comparisons to Willie Mays with the New York Mets and Johnny Unitas with the San Diego Chargers, stars in their twilight who had become shells of their former selves.

Bryant’s 20th season ultimately amounted to a living wake, but unlike some aging icons, he never retreated from the spotlight. Instead, he remained the Lakers’ sole focus, especially as they clung to him for relevancy during their worst season in franchise history (17-65).

And he was never more the focus than Wednesday, starting with the fact that Bryant attempted a career-high 50 shots, his most since taking 47 in 2002.

According to Elias Sports Bureau, Bryant became the first player since Rick Barry in February 1967 to attempt at least 50 shots in a game.

Bryant took 58.8 percent of his team’s 85 shots, the highest percentage of his team’s shots that he has ever taken in a game, even more than when he scored 81 points. In essence, Kobe’s final game was so Kobe. He has always been a gunner, firing away as much as he pleases, even excessively.

And he has had an ultra green light during this season, but never more so than in his finale, and he took full advantage. “My teammates were just continuing to encourage me, [telling me] ‘Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot,'” Bryant said.

Bryant played as if he were trying to drain every shot from his basketball soul, satisfying fans who didn’t spend thousands to come see him pass anyway. He said his nerves affected him some, but to keep his emotions in check, he had planned to follow his typical game-day routine, busying himself by focusing on the matchup.

“It didn’t work out that way,” he said with a laugh. “There were so many people to talk to and items to be signed and pictures to be taken. I just gave myself up to that. I just said, this is fine, this is cool. Just let it go, let it ride. Just enjoy it. It was fun.”

Several times, Bryant’s sentiments nearly overtook him, such as when he put on his socks, shoes and jersey or ran out of the tunnel. “OK, you’ve got to block that out because none of that makes a difference whatsoever if you come out here and completely lay an egg,” he told himself. “So you have to concentrate and focus and then you can be nostalgic all you want later on tonight and tomorrow.”

In terms of his tomorrow, Bryant said he plans to work out, if only to avoid falling into bad habits. He’ll work out of his corporate office, where he is ferociously hell-bent on building Kobe Inc. into an empire that one day overshadows his mythical basketball legacy.

Many Lakers fans and others no doubt will want to see him play basketball again, somehow. They might catch a glimpse on social media, he says, but he affirmed that he’ll never play in the NBA again. His body simply can’t take any more.

The fact that he walked off the court Wednesday is almost as miraculous as his point total. After all, his past three seasons were cut short by injury, and even Bryant admitted there were times this season when his body failed him to the point where he worried he might not reach the finish line.

Such concerns arose after the Lakers played the Dallas Mavericks earlier this season, Bryant said. Despite all the physical therapy and treatment he received on a daily basis, his body still felt terrible, still ached and stiffened up.

He wondered then, “Maybe this is Father Time and this is just what happens. That was a very tough moment for me,” Bryant said. “I didn’t know if I could pull myself [together].”

He missed games to rest. He played limited minutes in others. Late this season, he was so heavily wrapped in heat packs on the bench that he looked mummified.

The ultimate goal: help him escape his last game unscathed so that he can walk off on his own.

“It’s surreal,” he said of leaving the court for the last time. “It’s hard to describe. It’s almost like you’re in a fog and everything is moving extremely slow yet extremely fast. You’re trying to look and take it all in. You’re trying to observe and you’re not quite sure where to look to just take it all in. Very difficult to do. But it’s like a dream.”

Bryant had told his young daughters that he used to put up big numbers like that quite often. “Really?” they asked him. “YouTube it,” he told them.

Wednesday didn’t mark the perfect ending, because, for him, perfect would’ve been a sixth championship. But the Lakers are stuck in the NBA’s basement, so all he could do was try to put on a show, which he did in glorious fashion, once more.

As he sat on the dais before a packed news conference, with 450-500 media credentialed for his final game, Bryant donned his jersey. It seemed like he didn’t want to take it off, to move on and leave his lifelong obsession behind, but he laughed at the notion. “I just figured, tonight I’d come in here early since I know you [media] have deadlines and stuff,” Bryant said. “It’s not like I have to ice. What takes a long time is I have to ice, I have to stretch, [receive physical therapy]. [But] what am I doing that for? The treadmill tomorrow? I figured I’d come in here a lot faster and get going.”

Then Bryant paused. He spoke about how his teammates sprayed him with champagne when he came into the locker room after the game. ‘”That’s only for championships,” he told them, “but all right.”

He could smell the champagne on his jersey, just as he could in past Junes when the Lakers were dominant. Then Bryant admitted it. He wasn’t ready to move on. “Taking it off is going to be very strange,” he said.

When he sank a 20-footer in the final minute to give the Lakers a 97-96 lead, the crowd erupted, delirious that Bryant gave them one more clutch shot. His final point came at the free throw line, just as his first point did in New York on Nov. 5, 1996.

Bryant played all but 4.1 seconds in his final frame, checking out to another ovation and more deafening roars. After hugging teammates and former teammates, a sweat-soaked and worn-down Bryant came to half court and addressed the crowd. “You know, I can’t believe how fast 20 years went by,” Bryant said. “This is crazy.”

Video tributes had featured Jack Nicholson and Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson, Kevin Durant and LeBron James, and Magic Johnson called Bryant the greatest Laker ever.

After all that, Bryant told the fans how much he appreciated them remaining loyal through his career. He told them how much it meant to only play for the Lakers, a team he loved ever since childhood. “What can I say?” Bryant said with a huge smile. “Mamba out.”

Then, hours later, Mamba returned. On one side of the court, Bryant autographed the commemorative No. 8, signing, simply, “Kobe.” On the other side, he signed the commemorative No. 24 with “Laker for Life! Kobe 24.”

He took pictures, shook hands, hugged and said goodbye. Bryant received numerous farewell gifts throughout the year, but none topped what the Lakers gave him — an entire season to do with what he pleased.

To return the favor, Bryant’s poor play often helped his team lose, giving the Lakers a better shot at keeping their top-three protected first-round draft pick this summer. It marked the oddest irony of this season-long spectacle, this yellow brick road that stretched from October to April and ended on spring night in downtown Los Angeles, where Staples Center rocked as if good days were here again, where thousands of fans gathered outside as if a championship had been won.

At 12:20 a.m., with Wednesday faded into Thursday, the newest ex-Laker left the court, but not before he knelt down and slapped the Lakers’ logo, twice. He had given the team and this city scores of memories, as well as more than half his life, and now he had given everyone a farewell gift of his own — a night to remember forever.

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The most arresting facet of Diamanda Galás’s music is that it treats terror as an affecting, illuminating experience. Her 1982 solo debut, The Litanies of Satan, combines tape music with her commanding vocals to capture (as she wrote in the liner notes) the “emeraldine perversity of the life struggle in Hell.” Her landmark 1986 album, The Divine Punishment, became the first installment in a trilogy titled Masque of the Red Death that testified to the horror of the AIDS epidemic, which took the life of her brother, playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás, shortly before she completed the final recordings. Wherever Galás finds inspiration, though, her art can never be mistaken as a dilettantish exploration of the occult. “I am not a goth—I’m a Greek,” she explained in a 2008 interview with Arthur magazine. “They’re screaming all the time, it’s part of the culture that came up with Greek tragedy.” Indeed, her songs have always drawn from tradition and research, and Greek mourning rites have provided a crucial source of inspiration for records such as 1986’s Saint of the Pit. 

Galás’s new album, Broken Gargoyles, due later this month on her Intravenal Sound Operations imprint, is all mind-warping chaos. Originally presented as a sound installation in a sanctuary built in 1250, the record features verses by early-20th-century German expressionist poet Georg Heym that deal with yellow fever and the approach of World War I (it started in 1914, two years after Heym’s tragic death at age 24). The title of the album refers to a 1924 book by German anarcho-pacifist Ernst Friedrich that documented the horrors of war—including soldiers whose faces were so disfigured that they often died by suicide when forced to reintegrate into society. “Mutilatus,” the first long-form piece on Broken Gargoyles, begins with an industrial clang that settles into an ominous drone. As piano melodies pound and looping noises summon a dark, looming dread, Galás’s voice soars above the noise and transmogrifies into unwieldy shrieks and howls. Her spoken-word passages sound like incantations, and the atmosphere is unrelentingly bleak. She’s always understood how to make her voice a vessel for extremely intense emotions, and when she cackles you can’t focus on anything but the fear she provokes. “Abiectio,” the album’s other long-form composition, is even more dramatic. Galás’s shrieks are awe-inspiring: at times, they’re as sharp as the metallic screeching in the backing tracks. Whirlwinding electronics and her varied vocal techniques act as a lash to keep you trudging through this world of hopelessness and rotting flesh. This is the power of Galás’s music: it forces listeners to consider often neglected histories of human suffering.

Diamanda Galás’s Broken Gargoyles is available through Bandcamp.

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The most arresting facet of Diamanda Galás’s music is that it treats terror as an affecting, illuminating experience. Her 1982 solo debut, The Litanies of Satan, combines tape music with her commanding vocals to capture (as she wrote in the liner notes) the “emeraldine perversity of the life struggle in Hell.” Her landmark 1986 album, The Divine Punishment, became the first installment in a trilogy titled Masque of the Red Death that testified to the horror of the AIDS epidemic, which took the life of her brother, playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás, shortly before she completed the final recordings. Wherever Galás finds inspiration, though, her art can never be mistaken as a dilettantish exploration of the occult. “I am not a goth—I’m a Greek,” she explained in a 2008 interview with Arthur magazine. “They’re screaming all the time, it’s part of the culture that came up with Greek tragedy.” Indeed, her songs have always drawn from tradition and research, and Greek mourning rites have provided a crucial source of inspiration for records such as 1986’s Saint of the Pit. 

Galás’s new album, Broken Gargoyles, due later this month on her Intravenal Sound Operations imprint, is all mind-warping chaos. Originally presented as a sound installation in a sanctuary built in 1250, the record features verses by early-20th-century German expressionist poet Georg Heym that deal with yellow fever and the approach of World War I (it started in 1914, two years after Heym’s tragic death at age 24). The title of the album refers to a 1924 book by German anarcho-pacifist Ernst Friedrich that documented the horrors of war—including soldiers whose faces were so disfigured that they often died by suicide when forced to reintegrate into society. “Mutilatus,” the first long-form piece on Broken Gargoyles, begins with an industrial clang that settles into an ominous drone. As piano melodies pound and looping noises summon a dark, looming dread, Galás’s voice soars above the noise and transmogrifies into unwieldy shrieks and howls. Her spoken-word passages sound like incantations, and the atmosphere is unrelentingly bleak. She’s always understood how to make her voice a vessel for extremely intense emotions, and when she cackles you can’t focus on anything but the fear she provokes. “Abiectio,” the album’s other long-form composition, is even more dramatic. Galás’s shrieks are awe-inspiring: at times, they’re as sharp as the metallic screeching in the backing tracks. Whirlwinding electronics and her varied vocal techniques act as a lash to keep you trudging through this world of hopelessness and rotting flesh. This is the power of Galás’s music: it forces listeners to consider often neglected histories of human suffering.

Diamanda Galás’s Broken Gargoyles is available through Bandcamp.

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The Chicago Cubs are one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball. They are finishing nowhere near the top of their division and are clearly in the middle of what promises to be a big-time rebuild.

However, they have one step towards finishing that rebuild already started. In order to do it the right way, you need lots of young talent and the Cubs have been accumulating it. They traded Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez, Craig Kimbrel, and Kris Bryant last year to get a lot back.

As a result of some of these deals, the farm system went from good to great. In fact, it is now a top-10 farm system according to MLB Pipeline as they come in at number ten on the dot. A lot of the prospects have lived up to the hype in the minors which has elevated the ranking.

The Cubs are one of three other National League Central teams sitting in the top ten. The Cincinnati Reds are at number four and the Pittsburgh Pirates are at number seven. Outside of the top ten, the St. Louis Cardinals are at 13 and the Milwaukee Brewers are the 19th ranked.

The Chicago Cubs actually have a good farm system loaded with good players.

Who is it that the Cubs have in the system keeping them so highly ranked? Everything starts and ends with Pete Crow-Armstrong who is thier top prospect. The Cubs acquired him in the trade that sent Baez to the New York Mets.

Brennen Davis has had some injury troubles this year but he is thier number two prospect as some time as their number one guy. He is still someone that they believe will be a star player for them at some point in the future.

Kevin Alcantara rounds out the three Cubs prospects who rank in the all-MLB top-100. He is an outfielder that could be a very good player in the not-so-distant future. All three of these guys are hoping to lead the next great Cubs team.

The Cubs probably would have been given an even better ranking if they traded Willson Contreras and Ian Happ at the deadline. They chose not to so we will see what comes of their Cubs tenures but they still could become options to be traded next year depending on how things go.

Before this new ranking by MLB Pipeline, they were ranked at 18 so it is a really nice jump for them. The last time the Cubs were ranked this high, they ended up forming a championship squad with some of the players. They are hoping to do that again.

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