Billy Goat Tavern 430 N. Michigan312-222-1525billygoattavern.com

1551 W. Division 773-235-9100 facebook.com/pornandchicken Runner-Up Slo ‘Mo: Slow Jams for Homos (and Their Fans)

Lana Del Rey’s place in the pop firmament has been ambiguous from the start. At the beginning people argued about her relevancy and authenticity, whether she was a legitimate artist working within the aesthetic culture of hipsterdom, or a corporate shill mining it for major labels to market in a watered-down way to a mainstream audience. After her disappointing coming out on SNL a lot of the anti-Lana contingent gleefully labeled her a flop....

The idea that there’s no such thing as moral goodness, the sort that can be distinguished from Spock-like cost-benefit analyses or Darwinian instincts, isn’t exactly novel. Noted contemporary philosopher Joey Tribbiani made that argument to Phoebe Buffay on Friends, which led her on a memorable series of botched attempts at selfless deeds. “I went down to the park and I let a bee sting me,” she announced to him in defiance....

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Her Sister’s Secret (1946), which screens tomorrow at the Gene Siskel Film Center, is that the movie contains no villains. The story is about an unwedded mother who’s unable to find the father of her child, yet the filmmakers refuse to demonize either the woman or the man who impregnated her. They present the situation as the result of unfortunate accidents—no one is at fault....

Tori Amos plays tomorrow night at Chicago Theatre. Chicago’s floating around in a post-Lolla haze right now, but if you still want to take in some more live music after this weekend’s massive festival, you’ve got some great options during the first half of this week. On Tue 8/5, there’s Casket Girls at Subterranean, and Wiz Khalifa and Young Jeezy are playing out at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park....

On the evening of July 19, anyone hoping to take a quiet stroll, jog, or bike ride on the west end of the 606 was out of luck. At California Avenue, young Latinx activists formed a human wall across the elevated path, demonstrating against the real estate feeding frenzy that they say is displacing lower-income and working-class residents along the popular greenway. The demonstration, organized by the LSNA and LUCHA, began with a rally in front of Humboldt Park United Methodist Church, located a few blocks north of the 606....

Taking into account their overwrought, long-winded band name and knack for writing sweeping, emotional posthardcore epics, . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead were built to rule the moody, dyed-black-hair scene of the early aughts. And in their early Interscope phase, they did. This is mostly because of the revered Source Tags & Codes, the Austin band’s major-label debut, still acknowledged as its masterpiece—though they righted the ship with 2012’s Lost Songs, there were definitely a couple clunkers released between 2005 and 2011....

Certain restaurants and restaurant groups are known kitchen incubators. Trotter’s. Alinea and company. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. They’ve all nurtured legions of cooks and then let them spread out, like seeds cast into the wind, and grow into chefs. Still, the predominance of most of these starters underscores the truth in Bar Marta’s name: this is good drinking food, truly communal, with the exception of a handful of salads. It begins with a dish of olives and spicy-sour dill pickles, starkly different from the treacly preserved vegetable candy most restaurants traffic in these days....

2323 N. Milwaukee 773-227-2739 revbrew.com Runner-Up Half Acre Beer Company

Cindy’s 12 S. Michigan Runner-Up Signature Room

When Against Me! front woman Laura Jane Grace moved to town last summer, it’d been more than a year since she’d been known as Tom Gabel, and her Florida-based agitprop punk band was preparing for the January release of Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Grace clearly drew inspiration from her own experiences for the album, Against Me!’s first since she came out as a transgender woman in 2012; it’s a vital, poetic document of her struggle with gender identity, and her introspective lyrics fuel its huge, anthemic songs....

“Everybody rejectin’ me in this industry,” raps south-suburban MC and 2008ighties crew leader Calez toward the end of “Heaven on Earth,” one of the finer cuts on his new Ceito mixtape. It’s a somber number, with Calez dropping religiously confessional rhymes over a sluggish boom-bap beat before cycling back to the chorus: “This will be the last sad song I ever write / After this I’m moving on to a better life....

Township will be remembered as a punk hub, but arguably the most important show the intimate Logan Square venue and restaurant hosted before it mysteriously shuttered last year was an all-ages rap blowout that took place in November 2015. The event was originally slated for the Abbey Pub, but when a mid-November fire forced the venue to close up and cancel all of its shows, rapper Saba moved the event to the much smaller club....

But once you get past the smell of the durian, Gara says, working with it isn’t much different than working with any other savory ingredient in a cocktail. “It was definitely a process of trying to pair it with different flavors and having it fail miserably.” He found that the spiciness of whiskey worked well with the flavor of durian, and to play up the fruit’s vegetal qualities and sweeten it, he made a juice of durian, carrot, and guava....

Stephanie Bassos A crowd shot from Deafheaven’s set Philip Montoro: I learned something interesting at Pitchfork on Sunday. The poor sod dressed as Twinkie the Kid could barely see in that costume. I saw a woman leading him (it?) by the elbow across the lawn, and she had to warn him when they crossed the paved path: “Look out, there’s a little step down here!” This presented a truly difficult temptation: I mean, it’s not like I wanted to get kicked out of Pitchfork, but if it had to happen, I’d have wanted it to be because I blindsided Twinkie the Kid with a flying tackle....

Steep Theatre Company 1115 W. Berwyn 773-649-3186 steeptheatre.com Runner-Up Jill Valentine

Jeff Winn Groundswell Coffee Roasters 4839 N. Damen groundswellcoffeeroasters.com Runner-Up Alice Max

wxrt.cbslocal.com Runner-Up Chuck Mertz (WNUR 89.3 FM)

The rollout of the Ventra payment system was a clusterfuck: the byzantine sign-up process, the hours-long customer service calls, the tale of one commuter who had to cope with hundreds of new Ventra cards clogging up his mailbox. Even Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CTA president Forrest Claypool were pissed; they refused to pay Ventra’s parent company, Cubic Transportation Systems, till it ironed out some issues. But where most of us saw red, a couple members of iO troupe the Ruckus, Alan Linic and Ollie Hobson, saw comedic gold, and they mined enough of it to craft a jokey hip-hop track called “V....