ayanacontreras.bsky.social

What a feeling! To have so much of my life’s work in my hands. My first book, Energy Never Dies: Afro-Optimism & Creativity in Chicago is shipping paperbacks now! Hardbacks soon come. press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=84kc…

Preservationist Elizabeth Blasius, writing in the Trib on landmarking Chatham's recently shuttered Pride Cleaners, touches on a point that needs to be hammered home: The last 86 years remain excluded from the Chicago Historic Resources Survey. Update now. chicagotribune.com/2026/03/18/opi…

1965, San Francisco- just a cramped stairwell, but history fills the frame. Big Mama Thornton stands unshaken, Muddy Waters steady beside her, Chicago Blues running deep in every face behind them. No stage, no spotlight- just the raw truth of the blues. 📸 Jim Marshall

Being born & raised in Chicago, I really loved the Chicago-Mississippi duality in Sinners too. Buddy Guy is a Chicago blues legend who recently urged the city to build a monument cementing it as the Blues Capitol. Lawmakers are working on a proposal now.

THE BLACKBYRDS ROCK CREEK PARK (1975)

@danielleamir @Coolness941 #teamsparkle

@Coolness941 young gifted and black or sparkle

Her best album? I think so.

Today's architecture column. "Pride Cleaners is the kind of attention-grabbing roadside modernism found in places like Palm Springs, California, and not often in broad shouldered Chicago. A building like that is bound to fire-up an artist’s imagination." chicago.suntimes.com/architecture-d…

@DatDudeDamon_ It’s okay if you’ve only seen like one of twenty-five Chicago beaches. I get it, people love the beach-by-skyscrapers photo ops 😂

@DatDudeDamon_ Also a Chicago beach. Taken May 2025 midday

This concrete beach shit will always be hilarious to me

@CoraCHarrington @beyonceseyelid The image is also an album cover

@beyonceseyelid Appreciate you!

There’s GOTTA be other Diana Ross images to reference. The lady has 40 years of iconography to mill through.

@mickjenkins Classic music. Played it like crazy on @Vocalo in the day. Will this ever have a full release?

Designer Frames [prod. kaytranada] by MICK JENKINS on #SoundCloud soundcloud.app.goo.gl/vvenH3NK7b9GEs…

@vurnt22 This was not on Stax. It was on Chess (hence Chicago’s own Maurice White and Minnie Riperton, each signed to Chess at the time) on the record

Having acknowledged The Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight as Patient 0? The actual first Rap record is Here Comes The Judge (Stax, 1968) by the legendary comedic vaudevillian Pigmeat Markham, featuring Maurice White (!) on drums, & Minnie Riperton (!) on background vocals.

one of my favorite scenes from “claudine.” the way the camera zooms into them seated in the car as “the makings of you” perfectly plays in the background. 💗

@mickjenkins Say you’re from Chicago without saying you’re from Chicago

Bro I remember the whole grocery store stopping in they tracks to hear trapped in the closet part 3 on the radio over the speaker..lmaoooo what a fucking time

@Chuckisdope Okay. I’ll see your “Take Ya Home” and raise you “I Still Love You” (702).

Imma shake the table with this one. But the best Neptunes beat was given to Bow Wow. Twice.

We dont need to know everything.

@JAYVERSACE There are two good reasons for that. Without BET showing videos there isn’t like a national shared music experience, and 2) black radio plays gospel, but today, not enough to get that gospel banger that non gospel listeners would encounter organically.

Pro tip: buy more vinyl, books, magazines, cassettes, posters, art, movie tickets, concert tickets, buy more physical media, keep the world tangible.

Raphael Saadiq has been nominated for "Best Original Song" with 'I Lied to Your' from 'SINNERS' at the 2026 #Oscars

@Eric_Erins Uptown is more affordable for a recent grad. Also, its adjacency to Loyola Chicago and DePaul (and by proxy, other twenty somethings) is significant. Sketchiness be damned. Logan has an older (30 something +) population (among the hipster contingent) and Wicker is more like 40s.

Saw this AskChicago thread and everybody in the comments is recommending Uptown over Logan/Wicker. What??