Lillstreet Art Center 4401 N. Ravenswood Runner-Up Sip & Paint

Alleycat Comics 5304 N. Clark Runner-Up Challengers Comics

falloutboy.com Runner-Up Lovehammers

Back in January I previewed a performance by jazz trio Typical Sisters, a group that includes the Chicago-bred, LA-based guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. He returns to his hometown this week to show off a much different side of his musical personality, found on the lovely, tender singer-songwriter album, Odd Job (Dog Legs Music), he released in February. Uhlmann plays just about everything on the recording, but the delicate vocal harmonies of Cari Stevens and Alina Roitstein and the weightless strings of Lauren Baba and winds player Andrew Conrad add a gorgeous, spectral depth to the performances, accenting Uhlmann’s beautiful melodies with somber, baroque arrangements....

Early on, as with their 2012 seven-inch “Radiation” b/w “Personal Planes,” D.C.’s Priests were propelled by the sheer will to be a raging mass of hell and punk protest. Vocalist Katie Alice Greer writhes and grits her teeth over stiff, stripped-away rhythms and discordant, busted guitar lines that pretend melody before being fed into a baler, shredding any semblance of it. The tracks are all guts and nerve, each threatening to fracture under its own tension like a pane of spider-webbing glass....

The future of longtime DJ-night destination Danny’s Tavern has been in peril over the past few weeks, with the bar’s landlord threatening eviction. Nothing a little grassroots campaigning couldn’t put an end to. And apparently neither did the bar’s longtime devotees, whose voices were heard.

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. Hey, did you read: • That CBGB is reopening as a restaurant at Newark Airport? —Robin Amer • Or watch R. Kelly’s contentious interview with HuffPost Live? —Jake Malooley • That Chief Keef’s label, FilmOn, filed a lawsuit against Keef’s associates? —Leor Galil • Or see the New York Times‘s year in pictures? —Robin Amer • Flavorwire’s picks for the best literary criticism of 2015?...

When I ran into Lillerne Tapes honcho Gabe Holcombe a couple months back at the Synth-Chili Cook-Off he had recently dropped some solo material under the name Vehicle Blues through Roland Potions’s Pretty All Right Records. Holcombe was eager to share the four-song cassette, entitled Letter Writer, with me and I’m glad he did. His intoxicating bedroom shoegaze has been stuck in my head lately, partially because I’ve played the Letter Writer tape during nighttime writing sessions, and the hissing sound of the cassette adds some warmth to the EP’s twilight aura....

Sun-Times Media from WBBM TV In 1999 Alstory Simon confessed to killing two people 17 years earlier. He and his champions now say he’s innocent. If Alstory Simon is innocent of killing two people, it’s despite confessing that he did it, and despite the dramatic 1999 courtroom scene in which Simon, tears in his eyes, told the mother of one victim, “I didn’t mean to hurt her—your daughter never did anything to me....

Hrebejk’s genial sex farce 4Some screened as part of the 2013 European Union Film Festival. Read part one of this interview. As for sex being part of everyday life. . . [chuckles] sure. The way the characters talk about sex has more to do with the screenwriters than the actors, because we rarely improvise those scenes. When Michal Viewegh [a popular novelist who wrote Shameless and 4Some] talks and writes about sex, it’s always with a slight humor and a sense of romance....

Mike Sula A fungal mother-in-law, River Valley Farmer’s Table Maybe you’ve visited the River Valley Ranch and Kitchens farm store in Burlington, Wisconsin, not far from the Illinois border—but if not, that’s too bad, because it’s a wonderland of edible fungi: fresh, pickled, dried, and deployed in soups, salads, spreads, pasta sauces, salsas, and dips. It’s more likely you’ve run across their stands at farmers’ markets all over the city, pretty much every day of the week during the summer....

Kroll’s South Loop 1736 S. Michigan 312-235-1400 www.krolls-chicago.com @KrollsSouthLoop

Sultan’s Market 2057 W. North Runner-Up Taste of Lebanon Restaurant

“I didn’t want my nose broken. I was the only one of my brothers who hadn’t had it broken yet.” That line comes from young Joe Walsh, the narrator of Bill Hillmann’s near-500-page debut novel, The Old Neighborhood, published in April by local outfit Curbside Splendor. Hillmann’s a onetime champion amateur boxer; when he describes an ass whoopin’, you know he knows what he’s talking about. And there’s a whole lot of ass whoopin’ in the old neighborhood....

Aloha Poke Co 131 N. Clinton Runner-Up Pokiology

Shortly after Bonelang dropped Pleasure Palace, an April 2015 EP that levitates as its vocal harmonies recall the effervescence of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the rapid-fire elasticity of Aesop Rock’s Bazooka Tooth, MC Samy.Language told hip-hop site One Throne that the Chicago rap duo’s sound had gelled just “in the last couple months.” Pleasure Palace sounds like it was made by musicians who know each other as well as they know themselves, and it helps that Samy and his bandmate, Matt Bones, spent about six years together playing indie rock before launching Bonelang....

For this year’s Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago’s top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Dish: Fried oyster taco on a squid ink tortilla with salsa borracha

On his debut album, Blkswn (Zero Fatigue/Downtown), Chicago-based rapper Chris Smith Jr. (aka Smino) makes a point of telling you where he came from. “Netflix and Dusse,” a gussied-up track filled with clipped tropical-house beats and come-on raps, ends with a recording of a phone call between Smino and what seems to be his grandfather, who once backed Muddy Waters on bass. “I’m blessed to be able to look and see my history in it though, and just know how I ended up where I’m at,” Smino says....

The world may never catch up to Chicago rapper Vic Spencer—not that he seems to mind. He’s been dependably prolific and undeniably fierce on the mike throughout 2018, starting with January’s Spencer for Higher, a collaboration with UK producer SonnyJim. Since then, he’s dropped three solo albums: June’s Duffle of Gems, August’s A Smile Killed My Demons (which you could only get by sending Spencer $20 via PayPal), and November’s compact Stupid, which he released on the Backcourt label....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, May 26, 2017. Have a great holiday weekend! Union Station will be transformed with $1 billion renovations Riverside Investment & Development will lead a $1 billion renovation and redevelopment of Union Station and the area surrounding it, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Amtrak CEO Wick Moorman announced Thursday. “We’ve had a great partnership [with Amtrak], because if you’re going to have a 21st-century economy, it needs to run on a 21st-century infrastructure,” Emanuel said during the announcement event....