Reza’s Restaurant 5255 N. Clark Runner-Up Taste of Lebanon Restaurant

The Art Institute of Chicago 111 S. Michigan Runner-Up Museum of Science & Industry

Classixx On Tuesday local indie hip-hop label Closed Sessions released the official debut album from Treated Crew’s Mic Terror, Fresh Prince of Darkness, and the rapper’s celebrating its release with a party on Friday at the Hard Rock Cafe downtown. The lineup is pretty killer; Mic Terror are Saint Millie, Taylor Bennett, Treated Crew, and the reunited Cool Kids are all set to perform. VIP J, Mattboy White, Manny Muscles, Million Dollar Mano, and Closed Sessions’ RTC will spin throughout the night....

Few artists have done more to popularize the sound of West Africa than Amadou & Mariam. The blind Malian couple have built a career tweaking and modernizing traditional Mande forms, first by underlining affinities with American blues and then by opening up their sound to outside producers, especially Franco-Iberian star Manu Chao, who has helped them achieve global fame. In recent years they’ve cast a broader net, with mixed results. The duo’s disappointing 2012 album Folila (Nonesuch) included collaborations with indie-rock and electro-pop artists, and the hybrids began to water down their essence....

It’s been a bad week for naming restaurants after America’s heritage: Boka Group’s Armour & Swift, a West Loop steakhouse whose name was meant to evoke Chicago’s meatpacking history (both having been early meatpacking giants). The problem was that Armour is still an active brand name with active lawyers, and they threatened action to protect their brand. Ironically the same company, after many mergers, wound up owning the Swift name too, but apparently it’s no longer defendable—because Boka’s Armour & Swift is now Swift & Co....

During a March 30 ceremony at Rogers Park’s Mayne Stage, activists from across the country were recognized for their advocacy of the trans community. Among the honorees at the second annual Trans 100—cofounded by WeHappyTrans.com creator and Reader People Issue subject Jen Richards—ten were locals. Trans MMA pro Fallon Fox was one of them; here are the other nine. T.J. Jourian At Loyola University, where the 32-year-old also works as a teaching assistant, Jourian is pursuing his PhD in higher education with a vision for improving access and experience for trans students, staff, and faculty....

A couple years ago Vaya front man Jeff Kelley and baritone guitarist Kevin Claxton were talking about the unrecognized players and pockets of Chicago’s ever-changing, nebulous music scene when they came up with an idea. “We were trying to think about, ‘How could we—and I know this is a huge buzzword, but, like, curate bands for people to listen to where they wouldn’t know what they’re gonna get, but they will know it’s gonna be rad,’” Kelley says....

To my mind, nothing embarrasses a newspaper more than a lack of vigilance over statistics—what I’ve taken in recent blog posts to calling “numerical illiteracy.” One egregious offender is the New York Times. To bolster his case, Emanuel passed along statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that he said “show rapid increases in S.T.D.’s among older people.” Between 2007 and 2011, he reported, “chlamydia infections among Americans 65 and over increased by 31 percent, and syphilis by 52 percent....

various locations 2x10nails.com Runner-Up Spa O

Born Yesterday Garson Kanin’s 1946 comedy crackles with sharp-witted dialogue, smartly drawn characters, and almost painfully fresh relevance in Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s timely revival. It concerns a crooked New Jersey scrap metal dealer, Harry Brock, who arrives in the nation’s capital aiming to bribe a senator to pass legislation that will undo government regulations and benefit Harry’s business. Hoping to make his uneducated but street-smart mistress, ex-showgirl Billie Dawn, a bit more “presentable” to the D....

Julia Thiel The Forbidden Root booth at Beer Under Glass Despite (or maybe because of) the dozens upon dozens of Chicago Craft Beer Week events happening this year, I haven’t been to many of them. But I’ve tried to make it count when I did. I made it to the official kick-off event, Beer Under Glass—which was held entirely on the grounds of the Garfield Park Conservatory this year rather than inside, leading some people to refer to it as “Beer Next to Glass....

A Red Line train rumbles overhead every few minutes, casting flickers of shadow and light onto the garden below, where Jack Meyer sits sipping a cup of coffee alongside Sarah, his golden retriever. Meyer lives in the house next door, but he leases this grassy hangout from the Chicago Transit Authority. There’s a definite drawback to having a yard on CTA property: sometimes the agency comes in and tears it up....

A Visual Voter’s Guide These images from Chicago protests over the last two years will spur you toward the ballot box.

ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: Cool Chris and the Soul Summit DJs at Double Door on Sat 10/17 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

Fred Frith is a giant of the avant-garde. Among experimental guitarists, perhaps only Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser, and Sonny Sharrock can be considered his peers. He has an impeccable resumé in progressive rock, having started Henry Cow while still a teenager in 1968 and cofounded spin-off band Art Bears in ’78—both also featured drummer Chris Cutler, god­father of the late-70s Rock in Opposition movement. Other groups in which he’s played include Massacre (alongside bassist Bill Laswell), Skeleton Crew (with cellist Tom Cora and harpist Zeena Parkins), Naked City (led by saxophonist John Zorn), and the relatively new Cosa Brava (with Parkins, violinist Carla Kihlstedt, percussionist Matthias Bossi, and sound artist the Norman Conquest)....

The world has yet to realize the full potential of Vine, but plenty of musicians are having fun trying to get there. When it comes to using the app’s short looped videos to blast original songs around the globe, an aspiring teenage MC in Maryland who calls himself Semi is leading the charge—he went viral last year with a clip tagged “another 6 sec rap.” Chicago has its share of music-scene Vine stars, but no one looks to be having as much fun with it as Jim Magas....

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The ongoing normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba augurs an uptick in the presence of artists from the island making their way to the U.S., and it’s an encouraging sign that the brilliant Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes is playing in town for the second time since last summer, a date that arrived after a long period when he only performed here once in nearly 16 years. Although the pianist has lived in Spain since 2010, the members of his current group, the Afro-Cuban Messengers, still live in Cuba....