Friday 5/17 – Thursday 5/23
18 SATURDAY Five years ago the words “west of Western” struck fear into the hearts of some real estate speculators, but now it appears to be official: Humboldt Park is hot. This weekend the Division Street Market–60-odd vendors selling vintage clothing, handmade textiles, used books, collectible ceramics, and avocado green glassware, brought together by the folks who run the Bucktown Arts Fest–makes its inaugural appearance in and around the 206-acre park’s stables at 3015 W. Division. The market runs today and tomorrow from 9 to 4, rain or shine. Admission is free; call 312-409-4658.
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21 TUESDAY “When he is moving inside her, and her eyes roll when she feels him in certain spots, he presses her in just those spots. Suvarnanabha says, ‘This is the secret of young women.’” These third-century instructions on locating the G-spot come from University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger and Harvard scholar Sudhir Kakar’s new translation of the ultimate primer on erotic love, the Kama Sutra. Frustrated with the flowery 19th-century translation by Sir Richard Francis Burton, which Doniger and Kakar argue denies sexual agency to women and mutes the frank sensuality of the original text by adding words like “lingam” and “yoni” to refer to male and female genitalia, the authors went back to the original Sanskrit to construct their version, which was published this year by Oxford University Press. Though Doniger noted in a recent interview that “The Kama Sutra is about pleasure in a much broader sense–good food and good drink, wearing beautiful silk clothing, going on picnics, listening to good music,” there are still plenty of descriptions of acrobatic sex. She’ll speak and sign books tonight at 6 at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton. It’s free; call 312-255-3700.
