At the end of August, Theatre Y held a two-day release party for Controlled Burn, the new record by Marvin Tate. ✍️: milo bosh

Best Listening Session: Marvin Tate at Theatre Y

Best of North Lawndale

southsideweekly.com

At the height of Operation Midway Blitz, more than twenty people in our community were routinely abducted each day. ✍️: Karina Mireya 🖌️: Atlan Arceo-Witzl

Everything is On Fire

Reflections on what kept us going on the anniversary of Midway Blitz.

southsideweekly.com

To passing tourists, the building remains a majestic, mysterious fixture of the neighborhood. But for newly arrived immigrants, stepping through its doors feels like coming home. ✍️: Yonggang Xiao

Best Century-Old Community Hub: Pui Tak Center

Best of Chinatown

southsideweekly.com

This community is experiencing a renaissance, and amidst it all is The Black On Black Love Community Garden. ✍️: Orion Meadows

Best Multi-Generational Garden: The Black on Black Love Community Garden

Best of Auburn Gresham

southsideweekly.com

A Slow and Steady Disaster As Chicago’s Black population has steadily declined, the South Side of our parents’ generation is shifting beneath our feet. ✍️: Eve L. Ewing. 🎥: Rose Blouin

A Slow and Steady Disaster

Schools, Jobs, and Safety: Why Black Folks Are Leaving Chicago

southsideweekly.com

A neighborhood changes by what gets built and who moves in. It also changes by who it loses. Back of the Yards has been answering this change with the kind of party the ancestors turn up at. ✍️: E’mon Lauren

Best Blessed Bike Ride: Black August Ancestral Bike Ride

Best of Back of the Yards

southsideweekly.com

Just down the block from the South Side YMCA and around the corner from a Jewel-Osco, Da Book Joint is busy, bright, well-organized, and well-stocked, serving readers who would otherwise have to travel outside of South Shore to peruse new titles for adults and for kids. ✍️: Jill Petty

Best Mother-Daughter Business Partnership: Da Book Joint

Best of South Shore

southsideweekly.com

Best of the South Side 2026! This year, we hope features and longer neighborhood profiles will prompt deep thinking about this place we call home. How are we doing, collectively? What patterns are static in the region, and what things are changing? How are our communities evolving, over time?

Best of the South Side 2026

ince last year’s Best of the South Side (BoSS), a new engagement editor, art director, editor-in-chief, and interim publisher have joined South Side Weekly. So, we appreciate your patience and grace, dear readers. Because this year, more than most, BoSS is brought to you by newbies. Ironically, we newbies have heard—from the hardbitten, dedicated vets—that […]

southsideweekly.com

President Donald Trump’s administration is using a little-known legal motion to remove asylum-seekers without a hearing to unfamiliar, third countries like Ecuador and Uganda. ✍️: R. Taylor Robinson and Borderless Mag

‘Seems Like a Betrayal’: They Fled Violence, Followed U.S. Asylum Rules—and Still Faced Deportation

President Donald Trump’s administration is using a little-known legal motion to remove asylum-seekers without a hearing to unfamiliar, third countries like Ecuador and Uganda.

southsideweekly.com

Join us in celebrating the public release of Jail Solidarity Network’s inside-out archive! For the last three years, people incarcerated in Cook County Jail and outsiders in Chicago have recorded their conversations. Now, they're ready to share these stories.

Johnson voiced support for a citywide moratorium on data centers, but stopped short of opposing the quantum campus. ✍️: by Max Blaisdell and Hyde Park Herald

South Side Residents Press Johnson to Halt Quantum Campus

Johnson voiced support for a citywide moratorium on data centers, but stopped short of opposing the quantum campus.

southsideweekly.com

Poetry for your Saturday morning! Have a poem in response to this issue's prompt? Submit through this link to possibly be featured! bit.ly/ssw-exchange Heaven by Jalen Kobayashi

The Exchange: An Ode To

The Exchange, the Weekly's poetry corner, is a collaborative space celebrating the literary arts.

southsideweekly.com

Following a multi-year case that generated concerns about the rights of the abused to self-defense, Golden pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter for fatally stabbing her partner. ✍️: Dave Byrnes

Domestic Abuse Survivor Keshia Golden Accepts Plea Deal 

Following a multi-year case that generated concerns about the rights of the abused to self-defense, Golden pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter for fatally stabbing her partner.

southsideweekly.com

Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths. ✍️: Shannon Heffernan and The Marshall Project

A Prison on Fire

Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths.

southsideweekly.com

Insiders resort to creative and desperate measures to keep themselves clean, healthy, and bug-free. ✍️: Micah Clark Moody and Meghna Anand

Pest Control Notified

Insiders resort to creative and desperate measures to keep themselves clean, healthy, and bug-free.

southsideweekly.com

A part of the Chicago Monuments Project, artist Amanda Williams commemorates the dozens of extraordinary people missing from public memory. ✍️: Marc C. Monagham and Hyde Park Herald

‘Other Washingtons’ Installation Brings New Histories to King Drive

A part of the Chicago Monuments Project, artist Amanda Williams commemorates the dozens of extraordinary people missing from public memory.

southsideweekly.com

South Side Weekly and the Hyde Park Herald are seeking a passionate and systems-oriented leader to head South Side Media Works, our parent nonprofit. Apply by September 8th. Learn more about the role and apply through this link: https://southsideweekly.com/executive-director/

Author and civil rights attorney Flint Taylor sat down with former Representative Bobby Rush and former Black Panther Ann Campbell-Kendrick to discuss the assassination and its aftermath. Author ✍️: Max Blasidell and Hyde Park Herald Read more here:

New Haymarket Book Rewrites the Narrative of Fred Hampton’s Murder

Author and civil rights attorney Flint Taylor sat down with former Representative Bobby Rush and former Black Panther Ann Campbell-Kendrick to discuss the assasination and its aftermath.

southsideweekly.com

The Exchange, the Weekly’s poetry corner, is a collaborative space celebrating the literary arts. Read more to hear from our new engagement editor, Alycia Kamil Moaton, and learn how to submit your work for a chance to be featured in our next issue. ✍️: Alycia Kamil Moaton Read more here:

Reintroducing The Exchange

The Exchange, the Weekly's poetry corner, is a collaborative space celebrating the literary arts.

southsideweekly.com

Ask an Expert: What Are Archives For? Teresa Helena Moreno, associate professor and librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago, discusses what we mean by information, how it can appear in archives, and how digitization impacts accessibility. ✍️: Ellie Gilbert-Bair Read more below

Ask an Expert: What Are Archives For?

Teresa Helena Moreno, associate professor and librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago, discusses what we mean by information, how it can appear in archives, and how digitization impacts accessibility.

southsideweekly.com

At the corner of 18th and Wood Streets in Pilsen, Herrera wheat-pasted a portrait of Salgado Araujo alongside a list of people killed in detention and encounters with immigration authorities since the start of the second Trump administration. ✍️: Jocelyn Martinez Rosales Read more here:

Remember Their Names

A public art installation honors the lives lost to the US immigration system.

southsideweekly.com

Who could forget the magic that was the Bears’ last season? The 2025-26 campaign stood on the shakiest of legs before landing an 11-6 final record and a thrilling playoff win against the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field. ✍️: Malachi Hayes Illustration: Lily Sundsbak

The Chicago Bears Gear Up for a Smashing Season

Head coach Ben Johnson is back at the helm as the team settles in for their first open practice on July 31.

southsideweekly.com

The 575,000-square-foot facility aims to remedy health disparities impacting patients on the South Side. ✍️: Max Blasidell @hydeparkherald

University of Chicago Medicine to Open Freestanding Cancer Center in April 2027

The 575,000-square-foot facility aims to remedy health disparities impacting patients on the South Side.

southsideweekly.com

South Siders are hot picks in the NBA Draft, three Sox players star in this week’s MLB All-Star Game, and the Bears Stadium is still in limbo. ✍️: Malachi Hayes

South Side Sports Roundup—July 2026

outh Sider of the Month: Michael Massey, Kansas City Royals (baseball) The South Side Sports Roundup’s first monthly spotlight falls upon professional baseball player Michael Massey, who attended Brother Rice High School on 99th and Pulaski before playing for three years at the University of Illinois. Now in his fourth year in the majors with […]

southsideweekly.com

As M.A.D.D. Rhythms rings in 25 years of operations, Barrett is looking forward to everything it will be doing this year—and the future of the institution. ✍️: Matt Brady Read more here:

Bronzeville’s M.A.D.D. Rhythms Celebrates 25 Years of Fostering Tap Dancing

n a warm Tuesday evening in early July, half a dozen young tap dancers congregated on the upper floor of the Harold Washington Cultural Center in Bronzeville at Making A Difference Dancing Rhythms, Chicago’s very own nonprofit tap dancing institution. The white walls of the tap dance organization, also known as M.A.D.D. Rhythms, were sporadically […]

southsideweekly.com

Ask An Expert: Presidential Libraries The Weekly sat down with Kellee Warren to break down what presidential libraries are, why they matter, and how the Obama Presidential Center is distinct. ✍️: Ellie Gilbert-Bair Read more here

Ask An Expert: Presidential Libraries

Kellee E. Warren, associate professor and special collections librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago, discusses the importance of presidential libraries and how the Obama Presidential Center is unique.

southsideweekly.com

https://southsideweekly.com/sixteen-minutes-in-a-burning-cell/ Based on FOIAs and leaked records, this story describes what we know about how Martinez Duncan died in Cook County Jail last November. ✍️: Micah Clark Moody and Harley Pomper Illustration: Riley Hannon Read more here:

Sixteen Minutes in a Burning Cell

What we know about Martinez Duncan’s death in Cook County Jail

southsideweekly.com

The Obama Presidential Center and Library is open. Read reporter Leigh Giangreco’s coverage here: https://southsideweekly.com/obama-presidential-center-opens-on-juneteenth/

The latest article from Doing Time, a series that investigates the daily life of people navigating court and jail, was published in our Comics Issue. Read here: https://southsideweekly.com/clothesline/

Have you had a chance to check out our comics issue? Check it out here: https://southsideweekly.com/the-comics-issue/