At the Expo for Today’s Black Woman at McCormick Place, two teenage girls in knee-high boots and metal belts hop a barrier and jump on stage as impromptu back-up dancers for 18-year-old Shorty K. The audience members raise their cell phones and sway as the young rapper takes the mic. “I came from these streets/grew up in these streets,” he raps. “Chicago/Chi-Chi-cago!” People flock to the Moo & Oink promotional booth to catch a glimpse of the heartthrob, who also performs promotional jingles for the Chicago-based meat wholesaler and retailer. After finishing a song titled “Dear Mama,” he wishes his mother a happy birthday and leaps off the stage, grabbing a napkin to wipe his brow. “It’s pandemonium. People love it,” he says. “Yesterday girls were chasing me out of here. I get a lot of phone calls somehow. I’ve changed my number several times and they still get it.” Shorty K (real name Korey Isbell) was on the first day of his job collecting shopping carts at Moo ...

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A coffeepot with the message “Stay Up” is stapled to the wall. This spray-painted sign is not a commercial for the caffeinated generation; it’s Camela Christopher’s street art. Christopher heard this phrase one evening outside the Rainbo Club in Wicker Park. After she saw patrons being rude to a homeless man nearby, she struck up a conversation with him. Encouragingly, he told her to stay positive by saying, “Stay up!” “I was so moved by it,” Christopher says. “I’m walking away and someone who obviously has it so much worse than I do at that moment is telling me to stay up.” She made a stencil of the phrase and began spray-painting it on signs around Chicago. Christopher, a 2005 Columbia BFA graduate, has had successes with commissioned paintings and experimental films. She has also done some editing work at Chicago’s Edit Diva Media, and has sketched animations for a new kids’ video. But these legitimate jobs don’t keep Christopher off the streets. “It’s easy to get distracted,” she says. “My teachers told us, ...

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East Pilsen is an incubator for Chicago’s visual artists. It’s less recognized for theater, but that may soon be changing. Tucked behind the North Community Bank on the corner of Halsted and 18th streets, EP Theater, now in its third year, has created a cozy space for low-budget theater to thrive. In the quaint lobby, a piano and record player sit below headshots of the actors from the recent performance of La Bella Vita. A small curtained entrance leads to an intimate theater with only 50 seats hugging the edge of the stage floor. It’s been a labor of love for co-founder Jason Ewers, who met co-investor Garret Prejean through their mutual obsession with Chicago theater. “I was seeing 70 plus plays a year,” Ewers says. They met after one of Prejeans’ performances with Black Box Rebellion Theater Company. “We courted for about a year,” Prejean jokes of their intial discussions of launching a theater of their own. In 2003, they began the paperwork process. Lawyers for the Creative Arts helped them ...

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So you received a degree, graduated and landed a terrific job. Now what? A Michigan Avenue shopping spree may sound appealing, but where will that leave you in 30 years? Investing is a better option, and iShares are a great place to start. iShares are a good bet for recent grads seeking to make money on their new earnings. That means you have to put down your iPod long enough to actually make an investment plan. What they are iShares are low-cost index funds that you can buy and sell like stock. That means they allow you to purchase stock in numerous companies at once. “It is easier to buy an iShare with 20 Chinese companies that are already found for you; you don’t have to go searching for them all,” says a Chicago vice president for a division of Merrill Lynch (who can’t be named due to company policies). iShares are similar to mutual funds, but they trade and sell like stocks. “You can buy and sell iShares whenever you want, but mutual funds are at their net ...

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