Mike Sula The Mother of All Pork Chops, Knockum Hill BBQ All that bad barbecue I wrote about last week put me in a coma. But I did see a bright shining light while I was out, and heard a pleasant southern drawl beckoning me toward it. Suddenly I found myself in heaven or, rather, beautiful southwestern Kentucky, where the angels took pity and told me of a magical pit on a hill out in the country....
5210 N. Clark 773-878-0894 smallbardivision.com Runner-Up Hungry Brain
For the past five years Chicago Film Archives has sponsored a local artistic collaboration called the Media Mixer. In each year, CFA commissioned three Chicago-based media artists to create new works with material taken from the organization’s archival footage. Nancy Watrous, executive director of CFA, says that the artists could choose and use any footage that they wanted, as long as CFA had the copyrights or the works were in the public domain....
When most rockabilly artists make comeback albums, they always seem to include at least one song that looks back on the way things were at the dawn of their genre. Carl Perkins probably did this more than anybody, reminding everyone that He Was There When Rock ‘n’ Roll Started. The title track of Wild! Wild! Wild!, the new Bloodshot release from Robbie Fulks and Linda Gail Lewis, continues that tradition, reminiscing on rock’s early days while taking a few potshots at today’s sounds....
Boyce & Hart: The Guys Who Wrote ‘Em Here it comes, walking down the street: tonight at 6 PM the sixth Chicago International Movies & Music Festival opens at the Logan with a live set by the Tommy Boyce/Bobby Hart cover band the Candy Store Prophets, a screening of Boyce & Hart: The Guys Who Wrote ‘Em, and a Q&A with Hart, the surviving member of the duo who penned some of the Monkees’ biggest hits....
From what I hear, 1990 was a hell of a year. NASA sent the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit, Nelson Mandela was released from prison—and, crucially, I was born unto this world. Twenty-five years later, as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, a panel of six WBEZ radio personalities and six storytellers and poets will come together for a month-by-month review of 1990. Just because I lived through only half of ’90 doesn’t mean I can’t contribute to the conversation....
During the garage-rock boom of the 90s and 00s, the Woggles made frequent visits to Chicago from their Atlanta home base. Though their stepped-up twist beats and occasional choreography drew comparisons to the Fleshtones, it was clear that the quartet were mapping out their own path. As the millennium has progressed, the Woggles have been slightly less visible in these parts, but they haven’t slowed their step at all. Their most recent album, Tally Ho!...
Battle peri peri has been fully engaged since the end of May, when the mega chicken chain Nando’s opened its first Chicago location on Randolph. The second outpost opened in Lakeview last month, and so it seemed the time was nigh to evaluate the South African chicken empire vs. the scrappy hometown little guy, Logan Square’s esteemed Macanese restaurant, Fat Rice, which for a few months now has been offering two varieties of peri-peri chicken to go at lunchtime....
Let’s face facts here. Beaches is first and foremost a 1988 film starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as two best friends who yak/sob their way through careers, single parenthood, and serious illness. Rainer Dart, who’s mostly written novels, took an earlier crack at theater in 2011 with The People in the Picture, a Holocaust musical New York Times critic Ben Brantley called “thin treacle.” In Beaches, her lyrics high-five each other like so many unmemorable children’s rhymes....
Au cheval 800 W. Randolph Runner-Up The Bad Apple
There’s plenty of Chicago history shut up in the city’s libraries, museums, and archives, but there’s also plenty of it sitting out on the streets in plain view. You just need the right guide to show you. That’s where Paul Durica comes in. As an instructor at and graduate of the U. of C. (his dissertation was on tramps, hobos, and transients in American literature), Durica knows how to navigate libraries, museums, and archives and extract interesting facts and information about the city’s past....
Early to Bed 5044 N. Clark Runner-Up The Pleasure Chest
The Black Ensemble Theater is known for its jukebox musicals about African-American musical giants—Etta James, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone. But the subjects of The Black White Love Play are a journalist and a lawyer: Roger Ebert, longtime film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and his wife, Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert, an attorney who left her law career to manage Ebert’s business ventures. Roger was the first film critic to receive a Pulitzer Prize, a world-famous TV pundit and author of dozens of books....
Paul Slattery/Wikimedia Commons Last night and tonight are the first two nights of Passover, and while I’d love to post a cover of “Dayenu” or something like that, my mind always zeroes in on Joy Division‘s “Passover” whenever I think of this holiday. Despite its title, “Passover” doesn’t really sound like the Jewish holiday of the same name—at least it doesn’t sound like a dozen people loudly singing off-key and in broken Hebrew, or like my mom complaining that no one is helping her serve food or clear the table fast enough....
A visit to the Devon Avenue business strip is a kaleidoscopic experience. There’s a swirl of flashy storefronts, iridescent saris, booming bhangra music, and aromas of cumin and kebabs in the South Asian part of the district, concentrated between Leavitt and California. Farther west you see a mix of Balkan, Jewish, and eastern European establishments, including the Croatian Cultural Center, a kosher fish market, and the city’s only Georgian bakery. It’s a first-class feast for the senses....
According to Chicago DCASE commissioner and culture czar Mark Kelly, speaking Wednesday at Navy Pier, our fair city is “the epicenter of art for the country and the world.” Or at least it is this week, while Expo Chicago 2017 is displaying work by 3,500 artists from 25 countries and 58 cities. The Chicago Artists Coalition booth features Yvette Mayorga’s High Maintenance (Art After Nov. 8, 2016), an eye-popping, immersive, rococo, satirical, and Candy Land-pink critique of immigration law, sexism, racism, the American Dream, and life in general in the Trump era....
Chance The Rapper chanceraps.com @chancetherapper Runner-Up Barack Obama
Refer to Chicago as “Chi-town” and you sound like a rube. (And for the record, something similar’s true in Atlanta—call it Hotlanta, get backhanded.) But slap a pound sign in front of a pun, suddenly the entirety of the Internet is on board. #Chiraq was big this year, but it was eclipsed by #Chiberia, the hottest hashtag about the freezing hellscape that was our city this past winter—the coldest four-month stretch since record keeping began in 1872, according to the National Weather Service....
chicagoreader.com Runner-Up Mick Dumke, Chicago Reader
Pequod’s Pizza 2207 N. Clybourn Runner-Up Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria
