Windy City Bebe 1423 W. Belmont Runner-Up Monica + Andy

Some local bars (cough, Billy Sunday, cough) come up with clever concepts to bring their highfalutin’ cocktail menus back down to a blue-collar Chicago earth that’s full of dives, corner taverns, and sports bars. Yet sometimes there’s no need for such cerebral mischief. Take the Sportsman’s Club: Heisler Hospitality’s Humboldt Park hot spot has a rotating selection of superlative craft cocktails (the mint julep they served on the day of the Kentucky Derby is up there with the Bluegrass State’s finest), and even an amaro machine....

Gabe Caruso @GabeCaruso Runner-Up Ike Holter

Fran Spielman/Sun-Times Media Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett haven’t found a way to hire school librarians. I was reading a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s letters—great book, by the way—when I came across a missive from February of 1983 that sort of sums up Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s curious attitude toward libraries. “I have complied with this request. Since books are to libraries what asphalt is to highway departments, I assume that Indiana is also asking donations from suppliers of asphalt for her roads....

Sun-Times Media University of Chicago students study low-temperature chemistry in 1962. Cryogenic science may soon be able to let people live in the future—but why would they want to? Change is like the stranger in the movies who arrives in town and is a little too smooth and a little too friendly to children. We know he’s up to no good. When we look back to where the human race was a few hundred years ago, we might concede change some respect....

J.R. Robinson releases his latest LP as Wrekmeister Harmonies, Night of Your Ascension, today via Thrill Jockey, and along with the epic record comes a brand-new music video staring noise-rock legend David Yow. Wrekmeister is a project whose records are known for their dark, minimalist, hypnotic drones, but on Night of Your Ascension, Robinson’s assembled a cast of more than 30 names from the heavy metal and experimental world—members of the Body, Cave, Corrections House, Bloodyminded, and Anatomy of Habit are among those involved—and together, during the course of a year, created a massive, monstrous racket....

Mick Dumke Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tio Hardiman campaigns in Uptown with running mate Brunell Donald, insisting, “This is real!” Tio Hardiman has pulled his van over and the windows are fogging up, but he’s just getting started. “We have campaign literature, a website outperforming everyone else’s, and we’ve got a campaign office—and if you call our office, a receptionist answers the phone. This is real! And the guy who has all the money—what’s his name?...

ARTIST: Bill Connors SHOWS: Oozing Wound, Conduit, Rectal Hygienics, and Bruges at Sleeping Village on Fri 12/14 MORE INFO: instagram.com/billconnors

600 E. Grand 312-595-7437 navypier.com Runner-Up Lincoln Park Zoo

939 W. North 312-642-3370 dentalsalon.com Runner-Up Big City Dental

813 W. Fulton Market 312-226-5556 goglazed.com Runner-Up The Doughnut Vault

In Italy, sgroppino—cocktails made with lemon sorbet, vodka, and prosecco—are usually served as a digestif or a palate cleanser between courses. At Lone Wolf, where patrons are more likely to be having pre- or postdinner drinks than a full meal, it’s not likely to arrive between courses of food, but the fruity, refreshing cocktail works equally well as an aperitif. Stephen Cole, who designed the bar’s cocktails, learned about the 500-year-old drink from a business partner who visited northern Italy, and decided to put a modern twist on the classic cocktail....

Steppenwolf Theatre 1650 N. Halsted Runner-Up Trap Door Theatre

There are few people with more moral authority than Holocaust survivors, and at a press conference at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie Thursday, they used that authority to speak out against President Donald Trump’s immigration ban—which, they noted, had, in a supreme irony, been enacted on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Eighteen survivors came to the museum to show their solidarity for the refugees and nationals of seven primarily-Muslim countries who have been forbidden entry into the U....

“Tennis Court” b/w “Swingin Party” It’s obvious that pretty much everyone loves the Replacements. And it’s pretty safe to say that most everyone likes Lorde a whole lot too, even if they don’t want to admit it. So when you put the two together, greatness is completely expected. Today’s 12 O’Clock Track is the B-side to Lorde’s “Tennis Court” single from last summer, a cover of the Replacements’ 1985 classic “Swingin Party” off of their Tim LP....

Cathy Taylor Naeem Hayat as Hamlet In honor of the Bard’s 450th birthday last April, Shakespeare’s Globe in London put together a traveling production of Hamlet that’s scheduled to hit 205 countries by birthday number 452, in 2016. That’s a dozen more countries than are members of the UN. The United States is country 28 on the itinerary, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater is the second stop here after the Folger in D....

Austin’s A Giant Dog are the type of band that shouldn’t stand out as much as they do. The five-piece, whose lineup at one point featured Texas garage-rock wunderkind Orville Neeley (OBN IIIs, Bad Sports, etc) on drums, play straightforward, no-frills, punky rock ’n’ roll. Nothing fancy, nothing special, they hammer through tracks with rock-solid confidence that rivals the garage-rock greats. “Photograph,” the first single from next month’s Toy (Merge), hints at what could just be their best record yet....

Shedd Aquarium / Museum Campus 1200 S. Lake Shore Runner-Up Lake Shore Drive

Aimee Levitt Oh, life! Oh, coffee! I am a firm believer in the magical restorative powers of coffee. I am not quite right until I have my morning cup, preferably made from recently roasted beans, brewed in a French press, and consumed at my kitchen table, but even the preground, slightly burned stuff at the office will do. Without it, my mind is blurry. I feel headachy. It’s quite possible that this has nothing to do with coffee itself but the fact that I am hopelessly addicted....