Parson’s Chicken & Fish 2952 W. Armitage Runner-Up Piccolo Sogno

Wood-burning pizzas! Freshly made pastas! Steaks and seafood and gelato and Nutella! Eataly has so many things to tempt you with, you start to suspect that once it lures in enough humans stuffing their faces, it’ll seal all its doors and blast back to its home planet with a full shipment of livestock. Given all its publicity, it seems hard to imagine Eataly has many secrets, but La Verdure, the vegetable counter, comes closest to being overlooked....

The Repos Ian’s Party is this weekend, and as usual it has a solid and stacked lineup. There is one huge bummer about this year’s edition, though, and that’s the last-minute cancellation of classic Chicago hardcore band the Repos. I’m not a huge hardcore guy, especially when it’s coming from newer bands, but this four-piece, which originally existed between 2003 and ’08, is an act worth getting excited for. These guys have been popping up every now and again over the past few years to play shows—usually at hardcore fests or at bigger-deal gigs like the Los Crudos reunions—and up until last week were scheduled to headline Ian’s Party on the night of Sat 1/4 at Township....

Local punk outfits Absolutely Not and Rat Hammer have a brand-new split LP out on Berserk Records, and to help welcome this document of fury into the world, we’re debuting a brand-new split music video between the two for today’s 12 O’Clock Track. Created by the team of Jeff Perlman, Jeremy Dop, and Ryan Gleeson, this video kicks off in a dank basement, with Absolutely Not blasting through “Queen,” a relentless, hyperactive tear of noisy punk, before the camera travels upstairs to the sweaty house party where Rat Hammer is pounding out the barely-a-minute “Rip Off,” a Black Flag-indebted skate-punk blast of aggression....

San Francisco’s mighty, shaggy—and a little bit unnerving—stoner powerhouse Acid King haven’t released a new album since 2015’s landmark Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere (Svart Records). A major lineup shakeup at the end of 2016 put front woman Lori S. back onstage with new drummer Bil Bowman and bassist Rafa Martinez, who played with the band from 2005 through 2008 (and is also half of sludgy metal duo Black Cobra)....

For a year or so now, fourth-wave emo bands such as Modern Baseball and the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die have been landing on the Billboard charts with a new spin on the second-wave sound that grew out of the 90s midwest scene—rugged bass, interlocking guitars, and inept but endearingly sincere vocals. For fans who grew up seeing the Promise Ring and Braid, shows by these fourth-wave groups can be a way to relive bygone nights sweating it out at VFW halls, but it’s not necessarily about nostalgia for the people putting out the records....

Besides performances by two comedy heroes, Dickie Smothers and Emo Phillips, there’s tons to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 8/15: Hailed as “timeless” by the New York Times, Readings from the Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks includes more than 300 works celebrating the prolific poet. Co-editor Peter Kahn and locals Rebecca Hazelton and Adam Levin will discuss the collection at City Lit Books (2523 N....

Over the past year or so I’ve noticed a handful of Chicago hip-hop veterans gravitating back to releasing music on physical media after long stints of focusing largely on digital platforms (whether free-download mixtape sites, or on major players such as Spotify and Apple). Perhaps they’re following the example of DJ and Black Pegasus label head Mark Davis. Since starting his company in 2010, he’s completely avoided digital releases, and he’d become known for reissuing obscure local rap recordings on vinyl well before this spring’s launch of a new 7-inch series Seven Sense; he kicked things off with a couple of previously unissued early Common recordings....

My esteemed colleague Leor Galil and I caught a chunk of the all-day Two Piece Fest at ChiTown Futbol in Pilsen this past weekend, arriving right in the midst of the hour-long “Dinner Break.” We were told that many of the day’s acts were loud, thrashy, and powerviolence/grind-themed, though there had been some exceptions. One that was absolutely not an exception was Philly’s +Hirs+, the first duo to play following the break—an abrasive 12-minute set....

Opening this Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center for a two-week run, Minding the Gap is one of the strongest American documentaries to play Chicago this year. Director Bing Liu begins with a seemingly limited subject—skateboarders in their late teens and early 20s in Rockford, Illinois—and pursues it with such diligence and curiosity that the film ends up addressing a number of major issues. Minding the Gap is at once an elegy for urban, blue-collar America and a sobering meditation on domestic violence....

Keymaster by Rich Kelly This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters, a film that inspired a generation of filmmakers and comedians and, as evidenced by a show coming through Rotofugi this weekend, visual artists. As far as source material goes, the film is perfect fodder for the exhibit’s pop-art perspective; like the movie itself, pieces range from the cartoonish to the terrifying. It’s likely there’s never been so many renderings of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in one place....

Mindy’s HotChocolate 1747 N. Damen Runner-Up Cherry Circle Room

CHIRP Radio’s First Time Storytelling Series Martyrs’ firsttime.chirpradio.org Runner-Up Miss Spoken

Insight Studios 1062 N. Milwaukee Runner-Up Black Oak Tattoo

ARTIST: Jay Ryan SHOWS: The solo living-room tour of Hum front man Matt Talbott, which included stops in Chicago and Skokie MORE INFO: thebirdmachine.com

For this year’s Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago’s top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Dish: Brisket sliders braised in Sofie beer

I track the passage of summer through the things that make me happy at the farmers’ market. First come strawberries, then garlic scapes, then tomatoes, then cherries and corn, and I celebrate them all initially with an idiotic little song-and-dance routine, and then with cakes and pestos and sandwiches and pies. And finally come the apples and pears. I know they should make me sad since they’re the harbingers of the end of market season and the onset of winter, but instead they make me happiest of all....

An empty bottle of 2014 Dark Lord on the festival grounds. This is what you might call “status litter.” This year Dark Lord Day, the annual beer and metal festival that’s also the only place (and the only day) that Three Floyds Brewing of Munster, Indiana, sells its famous Dark Lord Russian imperial stout, fell on Saturday, April 26. Readers with eidetic memories will recognize that as the same sentence (with the exception of the date) that opened my Dark Lord post last year—and if you haven’t been keeping up, I’d recommend you go back and read it now....

When the video featuring University of Missouri professor Melissa Click came to my attention, I wrote her an e-mail introducing myself as a Mizzou journalism grad and offering her a “forum” to explain her behavior. She didn’t reply. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote that the students “showed leadership in trying to rectify a failure of leadership. But moral voices can also become sanctimonious bullies.” PEN’s Suzanne Nossel, writing in the Times, expressed sympathy for both Tai’s side and the students’, but observed that “some student rights advocates seem convinced that their needs and safety can be assured only by restricting speech....