I can’t speak to the women’s selections, but for my money Knee Deep Vintage in Pilsen has the best men’s vintage clothes anywhere in Chicago. I was hipped to the shop by my brother, who has a really sharp suit he bought there for a paltry $50. That was four years ago, and since then I’ve procured virtually every button-up shirt in my closet, a few polos, a couple of sport coats, and a vintage corduroy bomber jacket that one online outfit is selling for $150 (I bought it for $30)....

Blood at the Root Dominique Morrisseau’s play inspired by the Jena Six case, in which six black teenagers were initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate after nooses were hung from a tree on campus in their small, mostly white Louisiana town, is given a furious and urgent staging by the Yard and Jackalope Theatre Company. From the moment the audience enters through a metal detector to take their seats before the classroom/football field/school hallway set, the tension is palpable, and it doesn’t let up until the show’s end....

Yesterday React Presents announced the lineup for Mamby on the Beach, its annual collision of electronic music, hip-hop, and indie pop; this year it takes over Oakwood Beach on June 24 and 25. The headliners don’t exactly scream “excitement” to me, with the exception of Flying Lotus—his comrades at the top of the bill include indie-pop has-beens MGMT and, um, Walk the Moon, the Cincinnati pop-rock group behind the irritating 2014 single “Shut Up and Dance....

Challenged by Big Star bartender Cayce Key to make a cocktail with tahini, Charlie Schott of Parson’s Chicken & Fish initially tried taking his inspiration from the ingredient’s Middle Eastern roots. Because he’s usually had the sesame paste in baba ghanoush and hummus, he was going to pair it with lemon juice, but said the two flavors didn’t mesh well. “Tahini by itself dries out your mouth,” he said, “like a brown paper towel”—and that didn’t work with the acidity of the lemon....

Would the rust belt benefit from a journal of its own—a medium chronicling its resurrection or continued decay? I emailed Trubek some questions. “At the same time, it is indeed the differences that define each place as well—and also what we do at Belt. What is unique and worth recording, remembering, and reflecting upon in each city? In each neighborhood? Here again Chicago may gain back its asterisk, because one purpose of Belt is to write about (surprisingly) under-written about places....

Motivational Jumpsuit In 2012, Dayton’s finest, Guided by Voices, released three full-length albums, an impressive feat even for the megaprolific indie-rock pioneers. Last year was slightly less productive for Mr. Robert Pollard and the gang, with only one album out and a mere two live appearances (the Denver and Chicago Riot Fest dates). Over the course of 2013, it seemed like the band might once again come to an end: drummer Kevin Fennell was booted from the group, and Pollard stated in an interview that he was considering pulling the GBV plug....

Logan Arcade 2410 W. Fullerton Runner-Up Emporium Arcade Bar In February 2018, this category was updated to use the phrase ‘arcade bar’ in place of the word originally used.

Hopleaf 5148 N. Clark Runner-Up Map Room

DePaul Art Museum, 935 W. Fullerton, 773-325-7506, museums.depaul.edu Steps from the Fullerton el stop, the DePaul Art Museum is comfortably cozy, just two floors, a handful of rooms on each—you can walk through the whole thing in 45 minutes. It was a perfect venue for the homey, just-closed exhibit “From Heart to Hand,” devoted to African-American quilts from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Some pieces were relatively symmetrical, like Mary Maxtion’s Everybody Quilt, a delightfully imperfect grid of panels each individually patterned, so you feel like you’re looking into a series of only partially glimpsed alternate dimensions....

Tank Noodle 4953-55 N. Broadway Runner-Up LD Pho

With the 2018 Carnaval of New Latinx Work, a festival celebrating new works by Latinx theater artists, Latinx Theatre Commons, founded in 2012, aims to connect national audiences to the Chicago theater community. “In the midst of the current administration’s virulent hostility towards the Latinx community, promoting new Latinx stories and the artists who create them has become all the more urgent,” Lisa Portes, LTC Carnaval Champion, or organizer, and head of directing at the Theatre School at DePaul University, said in a press release....

Former BANG BANG PIE SHOP owners Dave and Megan Miller have spent the last year milling flour and baking breads and pastries (as well as making more substantial dishes) at Baker Miller Bakery & Millhouse, which they opened last September in Lincoln Square. Now, less than a mile west of the bakery, they’re opening Baker Miller General, a grocery store with a hot food bar. Dave Miller describes it as a “typical small-scale grocer,” offering produce, bread, coffee, grains, and the like, but with the addition of a hot bar where they’ll sell food to go....

Diversey River Bowl 2211 W. Diversey Runner-Up Waveland Bowl

875 N. Michigan 312-787-9596 signatureroom.com Runner-Up Sixteen

Alpana Singh Seven Lions, The Boarding House

When I first heard Baltimore singer-songwriter Ed Schrader six years ago he’d been making antifolk that approached throwback 50s pop with a minimalist, amateurish pizzazz—with just a single floor tom and his sometimes high-pitched wail Schrader could make some strange tunes that evoke the “forever young” aesthetic K Records’ Calvin Johnson’s been doing for decades. Schrader’s music got better once he teamed up with bassist Devlin Rice and started making loud, stomping postpunk as Ed Schrader’s Music Beat....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Lack by Pan Daijing Michael Gregory Jackson, Clarity On this spectacular 1976 quartet record with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, reedist Oliver Lake, and saxophonist David Murray, bandleader Michael Gregory Jackson plays mostly acoustic guitar. The great compositions (a few through-composed) and interesting improvisations feature lots of flute plus one of my favorite textural combos, acoustic guitar and alto sax....