An e-mail alert for the unlicensed version of Acid Rap If you attended the CHIRP Record Fair this past weekend there’s a chance you came across some of the recent rap and R&B bootleg records I wrote a B Side cover story about a handful of months ago—these are unofficial versions of free mixtapes and albums that either haven’t come out on vinyl or are out of print. I bought my first of these hip-hop bootlegs from local record distributor Groove Distribution at last year’s CHIRP Record Fair (a $20 copy of Frank Ocean’s breakthrough mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra), so I fully expected to find more of them at Groove’s table at this year’s fair....

“I really like the image here, and the breaking of conventional ideas of keeping comics in a box. The descriptions were great.”—Eric Kirsammer, our Comics Issue curator, on why he chose Hernandez’s comic (CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO READ A COMIC)

Rommel Canlas/Shutterstock There is no online courtship ritual for musicians. It’s 2014: Tinder and OKCupid are probably valued at more money than I’ll see in my entire life, but there aren’t any GPS apps for musicians just looking for a platonic jam session. I mean, I get it—romantic connection is a near-universal human desire, while jamming through hand-me-down amps is not quite as sought out. But musicians have to take their anonymous thirst somewhere, and with no specialized network to join (yet), they take it to Craigslist....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

For more than 25 years, reedist Chris Speed has been one of the most fascinating and versatile figures in jazz and improvised music, an individualist who puts ensemble first. He’s occasionally claimed top billing on records by bands he’s led—including with the corkscrewing Yeah No, which translated IDM rhythms into hyperactive acoustic grooves—but for the bulk of his career he’s been subsumed in a group identity or playing as a sideman....

Some programming organizations make you eager to know what they’ll show next; the nonprofit Chicago Film Archives makes you just as eager to know where they’ll show next. In the last several months CFA has presented films (often on celluloid) all over town, from Comfort Station in Logan Square to Black Cinema House in South Shore to Constellation in Roscoe Village to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Streeterville. That the organization strives to cover so much ground is in keeping with its mission of promoting the history of the whole Chicago area, which makes it a valuable educational resource as well as a cinematic one....

Last spring local nonprofits Between Friends and Rape Victim Advocates joined forces to address sexual harassment in the music scene with a campaign called Our Music My Body, which has since tabled at the Pitchfork Music Festival as well as shows at Subterranean and Beat Kitchen—during Riot Fest the latter also hosted an OMMB panel about confronting harassment. Tonight Beat Kitchen celebrates the campaign’s first anniversary with a benefit show featuring an eclectic lineup of locals: indie-rockers Grandkids, rapper Lin Z, neosoul instrumentalist Kopano, and indie-pop duo Water From Your Eyes....

Peter Yang Amy Schumer New York comedian Amy Schumer is unapologetic about her sexuality, narcissism, and hatred for almost everyone—consequently creating a comedic triple threat that spares nothing from her snark. Her hilarious first TV special, Mostly Sex Stuff (2012), is filled with jokes that are, well, mostly about sex. With a coy smile and a sweet delivery she details her experiences with encountering an uncircumcised penis, being the slutty one in a group of prudish Connecticut housewives, and taking the Plan B pill (“They should call it Plan A; it’s a great plan”)....

The 15 stories in Chicago Noir: The Classics (Akashic Books), selected by local literary notable Joe Meno (whose novel Marvel and a Wonder we wrote about earlier today), can be called noir in the sense that they generally examine the less illuminated sides of humanity, but they’re not all of the hard-boiled variety and some aren’t even all that crime-y. But the noirishness ranges from very dark to shady to just a bit shadowy—sometimes even a little light peeks through....

Documentary maker Alex Gibney made a name for himself ten years ago with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), a devastating indictment of the executives who ran the Houston energy company Enron into the ground. Since then he’s produced and directed some of the very best American political documentaries: Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), about U.S. torture of terror suspects; Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010), about the malign power of lobbyists in Washington; and Client 9 (2010), about the sex scandal that took down New York governor Eliot Spitzer....

4874 N. Lincoln 773-561-8191 lincolnsquarelanes.net Runner-Up Fireside Bowl

Puppet Bike www.facebook.com/puppetbike @chipuppetbike Runner-Up Ronnie Woo-Woo

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images Mayor Keef? • That Donald Trump’s lawyer lashed out at a reporter for publishing a story about the allegations that Trump raped his ex-wife Ivana? (According to the lawyer, “you cannot rape your spouse.”) —Drew Hunt • That seagulls in the UK are currently on “a killing spree” of other animals, and experts fear human babies might be next?...

It’s fortunate that “Troublemakers,” a new exhibition of Art Shay‘s human rights photos, is showing at the Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University: admission to the Gage is free, so until the show closes on December 19, anyone can return as many times as he or she needs to in order to take in the whole thing. Many of the 300 photos here have never been shown before, and until now, some were never even printed—they only existed as slides....

Robbie Fulks has spoiled his Chicago audience. Aside from a handful of weeks each year, he’s in residency at the Hideout every Monday night, trotting out entertaining themed sets that show off his mind-boggling versatility and musical curiosity—he’s explored just about every conceivable strain of Americana, covered great rock songwriters, and even played programs of jazz. As a singer, musician, and songwriter, he’s long been the city’s most potent and erudite triple threat, but his Hideout residency underplays that last talent....

chicagofringe.org Runner-Up Sketchfest

1150 N. Damen 773-489-5999 smallbardivision.com Runner-Up Glitterguts, various locations

Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 800-850-4406 (for appointments), storycorps.org/locations/chicago It looks like we’ll all be immortal for our Facebook friends, but if you’re hankering for an audience that’s a little broader, there’s StoryCorps: all you have to do is lasso a partner and make an appointment for an audio recording session in the booth now permanently parked in the Chicago Cultural Center. Sessions usually take the form of an interview, with one participant drawing an autobiographical tale out of the other....

On Tuesday, Bandcamp founder and CEO Ethan Diamond announced that the service will donate 100 percent of the money it makes from music sales this Friday, February 3, to the American Civil Liberties Union. Diamond wrote on Bandcamp’s blog that he chose to act in response to Trump’s executive order banning people from seven mostly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. for the next 90 days. But even before Diamond made the announcement, Bandcamp was a magnet for musicians hoping to resist Trump’s toxic policies through their work, donating the proceeds from new cassettes, digital-only EPs, and other releases to nonprofits working to help the new administration’s victims (and its likely future targets)....