Jake Malooley

How many impossibly bedazzled Barack Obama shirts can 300,000 square feet of convention center possibly hold? A helluva lot, as evidenced by the thousands of supporters at McCormick Place on Tuesday night who witnessed the President's decisive defeat of Mitt Romney. Milling about the lakefront convention center were a number of notables: Mayor Rahm Emanuel (see him in our photo slideshow laughing it up with Fox News); Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn; State Rep. and Blago sister-in-law Deb Mell, who won reelection on Tuesday; DJ Mel, the party's soundtrack maestro; @MayorEmanuel author Dan Sinker; Broadway in Chicago vice president Eileen LaCario, who canvassed for Obama in Iowa and phone-banked for him here; jazz drummer Mike Reed; and actress Vivica A. Fox (still lookin' foine). Congressman Luis Gutierrez said he was surprised a reelection victory was called for Obama well before 11pm, earlier than most pundits believed the race would stay competitive. "I thought it would be called much later in the day," said Gutierrez, as he jetted around the floor of McCormick Place. The longtime immigration rights advocate spent the early part of the day in Ohio courting the Hispanic vote for the President. Gutierrez said he believes the demographic was a decisive factor in Obama clinching the necessary 270 electoral votes. "You see [the Hispanic vote's impact] across this country—Colorado, New Mexico," Gutierrez said of two states that ultimately went into Obama's column. "Finally, we had a deb

In the close-knit Chicago theater community, keeping your mouth shut is often equated with keeping your job. This don’t-rock-the-boat dictum, an implicitly imposed code of silence, discourages actors and crews from speaking out against mistreatment—a reality people only whispered about until recently, when a group of local theater bloggers decided to break their silence online. “There is a minor twitter of activity over some Chicago area bloggers finally publicly stating what most of the theatre community [has] known for years: Some theatres screw over people that work for them often enough to assume it is part of the business plan,” wrote lighting designer Patrick Hudson on his blog (backstageat.backstagejobs.com). “Only recently have some started publicly naming the theatres and persons that have done this.”  The name most often called out on the blogs—which included sites run by artistic director Tony Adams, actor Dan Granata, and sound designer and engineer Nick Keenan—was that of the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre. The impetus for the bloggers’ posts was a January 16 article in the Windy City Times about the Bailiwick’s financial troubles. Titled “The Bailiwick’s Fight to Stay Alive,” the piece paints the organization as a David battling myriad Goliaths: Broadway in Chicago (Altar Boyz, Jersey Boys, Wicked); fund-raising competitors like the Gay Games and Center on Halsted; and declining interest in gay theater that Bailiwick artistic director David Zak blames on gay a