Rahm Emanuel's Proposed Gun Law Approved 48-0
It is official: today, June 25th, 2014, marks the official allowance of gun sales in the city of Chicago. The vote was tallied 48-0 by the Chicago City Council in response to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposal, which limits where firearms are to be sold and enforces a videotaping of every sale made, spearheaded after a federal judge removed Chicago’s prohibition on firearm stores.
As of now, gun retailers will be required to possess special-use permits, will face zoning restrictions and cannot be located up to 500 feet of schools or parks. Due to tight zoning requirements, the Emanuel administration asserts that gun stores can only set up shop in about half of a percent of Chicago’s geographic area. In addition to territorial mandates, dealers will need to video record sales and set a 72-hour waiting period for the purchase of handguns, and a 24-hour wait for rifles and shotguns. Only one handgun can be sold per month per buyer, and shop records would be susceptible to quarterly audits in order to hinder gun trafficking.
Emanuel argues that the regulations on firearms will be as strict as Chicago can get legally speaking in order to restrain the city’s gun violence. Whether or not enforcing this ordinance in order to “take back [our] streets” will be beneficial, however, remains up in the air, and is bound to manifest in our city hereafter.
[via RedEye]
Chicago Wins Bid for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
While the city of Chicago is politically known for taking few steps forward and plenty more back, it has triumphantly taken a leap ahead in the world of arts and entertainment. Back in April, we mentioned the possibility of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art electing Chicago to serve as the museum’s home base. Now, two months later, Rahm Emanuel has successfully beaten out Los Angeles and San Francisco for the city to accommodate a first-ever interactive George “Star Wars” Lucas museum, which will house a quintessential collection of artwork and memorabilia from Lucas’s films.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening in 2018, will be located on Chicago’s lakefront museum campus, situating the $1 billion museum on a 17-acre site located on parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place. The mayor maintains that, “Like Marshall Field, John G. Shedd and Max Adler before him, George’s philanthropy will inspire and educate for generations.” In addition to offering new channels of education and jobs for Chicagoans, the museum will attract international tourists, serving as a monumental contribution to the city’s revenue.
One of the factors contributing to Lucas’s decision to choose Chicago over LA and San Francisco was the ability to house the museum near a body of water, keeping it surrounded by nature while simultaneously retaining a central location. Lucas is planning on placing a majority of the museum parking underground in order to amplify the green space that surrounds it.
This museum will be entirely self-funded, characterized as a “history of storytelling” undertaking that is “dedicated to the power of the visual image” and is predicted to be the world’s largest interactive museum. Check out Rahm’s comments on the Chicago x Lucas victory below.
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[via Chicago Sun-Times]
Beyonce Back on HBO with New Concert Mini-Series
Beyonce’s making a return back to HBO, following up her Life Is But a Dream documentary with a 10-episode mini-series publicizing concerts off of her Mrs. Carter Show world tour. The shows will consist of a multitude of four-minute segments called Beyoncé: X10 and will air on HBO on June 29th at 8:55PM EST as a lead-in to episodes of the final season of True Blood. The documentary is 40 minutes in total, and will most likely be launched as a package at a future date.
Each episode on Beyoncé: X10 will feature a different city that the tour has been filmed in, and will incorporate songs such as “Partition,” “Blow,” “XO,” “Ghost/Haunted,” “Girls,” and others. Short but sweet, Beyoncé’s mini-concert series will add to her empire and continue to demonstrate how this girl strives to run the world.
[via Vibe]
Ex-American Apparel CEO Accused of More Than Sexual Harassment
Dov Charney, American Apparel’s founder and CEO, was said to be fired last week due to claims of sexual harassment. After Buzzfeed received AA’s termination letter to Charney, however, it seems his accused misdemeanors appear to come in bulk and stretch even further than the realm of sexual abuse. Although Charney plans on suing American Apparel for wrongful termination, it looks like he’ll have to wash out massive loads of this dirty laundry first:
- Using company funds to pay off former female employees, or distributing "significant severance packages to numerous former employees to ensure that [his] misconduct vis-a-vis these employees would not subject [him] to personal liability". These packages were equipped with legally binding signed release agreements that included the “potential subordination of perjury,” indicating that if called to court, these paid-off employees would be required to lie under oath.
- Engaging in sexual harassment and verbal abuse, or: “[engaging] in conduct that repeatedly put [him] in a position to be sued by numerous former employees for claims that include harassment, discrimination and assault.” Charney was also not an enthusiast of sexual harassment training that serves to help eliminate harassment in the workplace. The termination letter states that "in the recent past, [he] refused to participate in mandatory sexual harassment training and undermined the Company’s policies by interrupting employee sexual harassment training mandated under California law". He also made "derogatory and disparaging remarks directed at persons of certain ethnicities or related to their gender, sexual orientation or religious persuasion".
- Permitting an employee to organize a “Revenge Porn” blog. Former saleswoman Irene Morales, who accused Charney of making her his “sex slave” back in 2011, sued American Apparel for $260 million. The case was sent into arbitration by a judge in 2012, but while the case was under way, an AA employee had created a fake blog, posing as Morales and publishing multiple nude photographs of her in order to try and discredit her case. Although Charney knew this was going on, he didn’t go out of his way to try and take the blog down. He was “in a position to prevent this conduct from occurring but, since it benefited [him] personally, [he] allowed it to continue”.
- Putting his mother and father on the company payroll, while his mother is flat out not an employee, and giving his father $238,000 in AA funds, or “architectural consulting and director fees”.
- Indulging his family and friends through the misuse of company funds, by not only paying his parents with AA money but using the company credit to book them flights, allowing his friends to use corporate apartments and using them himself even while away on non-company related trips.
Check out the gallery of American Apparel ads below that expose Charney’s perviness to the public eye.
[via Buzzfeed]
Shepard Fairey Curates "Art Alliance: the Provocateurs" from 7/31 - 8/4
Art Alliance: the Provocateurs, curated by Shepard Fairey, will take place on Block 37 in Chicago during Lollapalooza between July 31st 2014-August 4th 2014. The art show will go beyond a typical art expo, fusing together interactive elements such as music, public art, panel discussion, charities, local community interests, and education, and making this exposition a magnet for drawing mass Chicagoan-attention to the arts.
Artists who’ll be present at the exhibition include Shepard Fairey, Swoon, HAZE, Space Invader, Dzine, Mark Mothersbaugh, Tim Armstrong, FAILE, Ryan McGinness, Winston Smith, RETNA, Stanley Donwood, Monica Canilao, Clare Rojas, Estevan Oriol, Evan Hecox, Gary Panter, Jen Stark, Camille Rose Garcia, Revok, Cleon Peterson, D*Face, WK Interact, and many others. Art Alliance will be equipped with live music, and will also host a Saturday night aftershow featuring a live set by Deltron 3030 and a set by Shepard himself, with tickets sold separately.
Single-Day Passes are available online for full access to over 40 famous street and contemporary artists for $10 per day. Walk-ins are welcome during all hours of the exhibition, specifically between the daytime hours of 10AM-6PM, and tickets purchased at the door sell for $12 each. Children are welcome for free with a ticket-holding adult.
Check out the Art Alliance website for more details on the event.
Social Media Clause Added to Prenups
Prenuptial agreements have shifted gears to suitably adhere to our fast-paced and social media dominated days of 2014. A newly implemented “social media clause” protects married couples and divorce partners from taking their soiled intimate lives outside of the private sphere and going digital.
New York-based attorney Ann-Margaret Carrozza describes this clause as each party having to “agree not to post, tweet, or otherwise share via social media, positive, negative, insulting, embarrassing, or flattering images or content of the other.” While each party has the ability to tweak the clause in ways they best see fit their relationship, Carrozza recommends keeping it broad in order to cover all social media-related bases. Doing so would consist of making sure to include posts that harbor positive connotations. For those who break the contract and choose to take their reminiscing and/or trolling into a public forum, the penalties are monetary.
While you might not plan on saying “I do” to somebody who would spam your nudes all over Twitter, it could be useful to have a clause that keeps up with our digital times, adding to the “I do” with an additional “I won’t.” In lieu of nostalgic creeping of the glory days, here’s a throwback to Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin' Bout You” off of Channel Orange.
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[via Fox News]
[Video] Sego: "20 Years Tall"
Utah natives and members of the LA-based band Sego are currently working on making a name for themselves in the west coast music scene. Sego’s first music video, “20 Years Tall,” manages to vibe with a wide-range of influences, but goes to show that the band promises to hold its own in the realm of punk-funk and will hopefully shower us with more playful jams in the near future.
The initial relationship between the candid bass line and percussion smoothly guides “20 Years Tall” into a synthesis of mollified vocals and noisy guitar. The chorus is lively and electronic and provides a stark contrast to the coarse vocals, and still manages to remain un-abused, unwinding the song of its wryness but not becoming its crux. The disco-punk Sego infuses in “20 Years Tall” reaches out to cult fans of Franz Ferdinand or even The Stone Roses, but cultivates a unique quintessence for the Utah natives nevertheless. Watch Sego’s video for “20 Years Tall” down below.
[youtube id="vN_og9tCaBA"]
Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna Kickstart U.S. Documentary Tour
Gael García Bernal (Amores perros) and Diego Luna (Cesar Chavez) are on a mission to launch a rogue documentary tour across the U.S. in order to democratize documentary culture. The nonprofit group overseeing the project, Ambulante, is working on using Kickstarter in order to raise $52,780, begin their documentary tour in California, and ultimately get the ball rolling on initiating their tour across the United States.
The California-based pilot plan is centered on advocating the discovery of alternative filmmaking and storytelling rooted in non-fiction film. Ambulante will curate their screenings in outdoor and makeshift spaces between September 21st and October 4th, and screen films from all over the world, with special attention called to eclectic Mexican documentaries. Some of the documentaries they have been showing over the past ten years while touring in Mexico include Searching for Sugar Man, All Tomorrow’s Parties, and The Act of Killing.
Once the project comes together, Ambulante will program one free screening event and welcome filmmakers, subjects, and other guests to speak with audiences after the film. There are also plans set for after-parties and musical performances that will be free and open to the public. The funds raised on Kickstarter will contribute to projection fees, transportation costs, and the supplying of food and gas to Ambulante volunteers. Contributing to the campaign guarantees perks ranging from a private screening of never-before released short film, Revolucion, to spending time with Diego Luna at a backers only party right before the festival, receiving collectables, and being offered an apprenticeship with Pablo Cruz.
You have until July 17th to get this documentary tour funded. Check out a detailed video on Ambulante and their Kickstarter campaign below.
[kickstarter id="ambulantecalifornia/ambulante-create-a-rogue-documentary-tour-across-t"]