Ain’t Misbehavin’ Porchlight Music Theatre’s superb rendition of this ingenious 1978 Broadway hit celebrates composer Thomas “Fats” Waller and his world, the Harlem jazz scene of the 1920s and ’30s. Conceived by Richard Maltby Jr. and Murray Horwitz, the show strings together more than two dozen classic tunes written and/or recorded by Waller, including “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now,” and the title song. Director-choreographer Brenda Didier and musical director Jaret Landon have assembled a top-flight cast and band who capture the score’s ebullient energy and swinging stylishness....

3614 W. Belmont 773-558-0081 vaudezilla.com Runner-Up Kiss Kiss Cabaret

One of the latest establishments to pop up on what’s gradually becoming Logan Square’s busiest stretch, along Milwaukee just north of California, has a split personality: half see-and-be-seen River North-esque nightclub, half dark and deserted dive bar. There’s often a line to get in to the East Room, but there’s no signage outside, just a brick wall and a single red light bulb. There’s a drink menu, but it doesn’t feature craft cocktails or bottle service, just cheap beer and a lot of whiskey....

In some ways, bookmobiles are even better than libraries. It’s true that the selection is limited, but the bookmobile brings the books directly to you. Or, in the case of BiblioTreka, the Read/Write Library‘s bookmobile-on-a-bike, to cultural events around the city, so you can look at art or see a play or attend a reading and also rummage through the organization’s expansive and unconventional collection of Chicago-centric media. And then you’ll have something to read on the way home!...

What a handsome new sign! Regular readers may remember my column from July 2013, about CHAOS Brew Club‘s Summer Brew-BQ—the group’s last party in its old home near Grand and Ogden. CHAOS has been operating out of a new, larger space at 2417 W. Hubbard for more than a year, and I’ve finally found a pretext to write about it again without simply summarizing another party: Learn to Homebrew Day, which the American Homebrewers Association has declared to be Saturday, November 1....

Jazz has been a frequent partner to film and TV: consider Duke Ellington’s peerless soundtrack for Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, the improvisations that saxophonist Stan Getz brought to the Eddie Sauter score of Arthur Penn’s bizarre Mickey One, or the brilliant atmospheres Miles Davis contributed to the Louis Malle film Ascenseur Pour L’echafaud. And naturally, jazz artists have also transformed countless movie and television themes, whether or not they were originally imagined as jazz, into primo raw material for improvisation....

Recent People Issue subject Nnamdi Ogbonnaya is a hip-hop head, so whenever he posts something related to rap on Facebook I make sure to click on it. Ogbonnaya just hooked me on “Achilles” from Twin Cities MC Allan Kingdom—the dude’s wild flow on the tune is fascinating, and the way he delivers knotty verses makes it sound like big chunks of his rapping are being played in reverse. It’s strange and a little hard to grasp at first, but I got hooked as soon as I heard Kingdom relax his flow for the spacey chorus....

British producer Darren Cunningham, who’s been making music as Actress since 2004, has built a career flouting dance-music conventions. Though he’s used the language of dubstep, ambient music, and Detroit techno over the years, Cunningham has sculpted a highly personal sound that often conveys a fragile, almost handmade quality, whether he’s creating gritty noise or hypnotizing abstraction. His recent AZD (Ninja Tune) is the latest in a series of retrenchments, embracing a more deliberate dance-floor direction but retaining the wonderfully crusted-over hiss and abrupt editing techniques of 2014’s Ghettoville....

It’s never the wrong time to post a ringing endorsement of free speech. Here’s one: Nebraska’s hysterics were up in arms. The Republican governor of Nebraska called the invitation “an embarrassment to the University of Nebraska and the State of Nebraska.” Anton Ford, a professor who helped write the letter, told the Tribune that “there are people or views that are dangerous in and of themselves” and even to debate them is “problematic....

Dark Matter Coffee 738 N. Western Runner-Up La Colombe Coffee Roasters

The Infinite Wrench neofuturists.org Runner-Up Hamilton

Lost Lake 3154 W. Diversey Runner-Up Parson’s Chicken & Fish

1459 W. Irving Park 773-549-1594 deluxetattoo.com Runner-Up Insight Studios

Blum Animal Hospital 3219 N. Clark Runner-Up South Loop Animal Hospital

A Lou Mitchell’s pancake. A pool table at Chris’s Billiards. A thin-crust pizza from Vito & Nick’s. Each evokes one of Chicago’s overwhelmingly obvious physical features: flatness. Well, we don’t need no stinking mountains! Chicagoans built their own: the skyline of the Loop, with subsidiary ranges up and down Lake Shore Drive. Every day hundreds of thousands of people in cars or on trains or bikes converge towards this man-made mountain range, as beautiful in the changing light and weather as any vista in the world....

In honor of his 35th year as an elected official, Cook County clerk David Orr did what he does best: he irritated the hell out of a powerful mayor. To understand the context of Orr’s latest TIF proposal, you have to go back to 1979, when the clerk began his political career. Apparently, Hartigan wanted to prove that the machine had eggheads too. Orr won by 700 votes. Take a bow, Rogers Park....

Chicago Bagel Authority Various locations

500 N. Lake Shore Dr. Chicago native Milton Lee Olive III died in Vietnam in 1965 when he threw himself on a hand grenade to protect four of his compatriots. He was 18 years old, and after being flown home and buried in Mississippi, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. The park that bears Olive’s name provides immense respite from my personal Chicago hell: Navy Pier. I’ve worked at the tourist trap every weekday for nearly five years, and when disappointed visitors ask me, “Is there, like, something we’re missing?...

4639-41 N. Kedzie 773-279-8900 semiramisrestaurant.com Runners-up Reza’s Taste of Lebanon

Sylvester’s album Stars: “I Need Somebody to Love Tonight” closes out the album. Over the weekend I attended a wedding DJed by my friend and onetime neighbor Azikiwe, a dynamite disc jockey who also happens to design brilliant tapestries featuring rappers like Cam’ron juxtaposed against arcing dolphins. Azikiwe played a bunch of wedding-party standbys that are guaranteed to get a dance floor going (Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” is the first song that comes to mind), but also dropped a couple cuts for the time of the night he calls “getting dark”: when the crowd is so lost in the euphoria of dancing that the DJ can play out tracks the audience might be unfamiliar with....