Tie: D’Amato’s Bakery 1124 W. Grand

The Fat Shallot 773-893-0826

Adam Schubert doesn’t have much left to prove to fans of Chicago underground rock. He plays guitar in psychedelic postpunk band Cafe Racer, which has put out albums with two of the scene’s best labels: their self-titled debut via Dumpster Tapes in 2016 and Famous Dust via Maximum Pelt this past February. Schubert is also a prolific singer-songwriter outside that group, though you’ll have to take his word for it: he’s been recording solo for around a decade, and in all that time the only material he’s released has been the June 2018 Dumpster Tapes EP Ruins by his project of the same name (not to be confused with Tatsuya Yoshida’s experimental duo)....

This veteran Dallas quartet was instrumental in defining the sound of alt-country in the mid-90s, layering hard-hitting shuffles, twang-drenched guitar, and the shiny melodies of singer Rhett Miller. The Old 97s return to that nearly 25-year-old formula like a favorite shirt on their 11th album, Graveyard Whistling (ATO), dutifully toggling between cliche and wit while serving up some songs about getting ripped and suffering heartbreak—occasionally within the same track (“Irish Whiskey Pretty Girls”)....

Sun-Times Media Ernie Broglio during his illustrious three-year career with the Cubs Writing yesterday for the Bleader, I had reason to look back 50 years to a couple of events that seemed like good ideas at the time. There was the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which saw Congress man up and vote almost unanimously to give North Vietnam what-for. And there was the Brock-Broglio trade, which saw the Cubs swindle the Cardinals out of a pitcher who’d won 18 games the previous year!...

In late 2014, a giant black banner appeared on the side of a building in Barcelona, Spain, the home of the annual Primavera Sound music festival. In a vaguely familiar heavy white font, it read simply ride. Speculation about a Ride reunion, stoked over the years by smirking “never say never” teases from various members, had been at a fever pitch since the breakup that fall of Liam Gallagher’s post-Oasis group, Beady Eye, in which Ride’s Andy Bell played guitar....

Michael Gebert Larry Tucker and his wife Ruby There’s a tiny “aquarium” smoker, the smallest model I’ve ever seen, in the window of month-old Crazy Bird Chicken in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. But Larry Tucker, a man once celebrated for barbecue back when it hardly existed on the north side, seems ambivalent about using it. “That was here, it wasn’t part of my original concept. But it seems like I’m going to have to incorporate it because the neighborhood people come alive when they smell that smell....

Cabot Cheddar Shake is “a dehydrated cheese product made of the finest northeastern cheddar cheese,” says Paul “PK” Kim, a bartender at Cafe Marie-Jeanne. He’d never heard of the cheese powder before Jacob Huelster of Watershed challenged him to create a cocktail with it. “But I wanted to show respect to it, because I know it’s an ingredient that’s near and dear to Jacob’s heart,” he says. He named his orange-tinted drink #NotMyPresident....

With President Trump issuing frightening proclamations on a daily basis—hard to believe it’s only been about two weeks since he took office—many of you undoubtedly forgot your city or state even exist. Shortly thereafter, Board of Education member Michael Garanzini talked about trimming the school year. Apparently, the district is still broke, even with the backdoor pay cuts. The Madigan-Rauner fight goes back to January 2015, when the governor roared into office determined to force Democratic legislators to pass union-busting legislation that would effectively dismantle collective bargaining rights in Illinois....

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531 N. Wells 312-929-3501 gtoyster.com Runner-Up Shaw’s Crab House

Born Ready Who’d expect the trash-championing Factory Theater to mount an unabashedly sentimental comedy with legit dance numbers, heart-on-the-sleeve romance, and only a couple veiled vagina jokes? Stacie Barra’s charming, well-crafted homage to 1950s backstage intrigue films (think a kinder, gentler All About Eve) focuses on former child film star Marion Kroft’s struggle to restart her alcohol-steeped career in television variety shows. With the unlikely assistance of enthusiastic chorus girl Harriet, whose Iowa naivete may mask questionable motives, Kroft finds legit stardom looming....

“I liked how this one was topical, political, and funny. Narrative comics allow you to develop an idea and deliver a nice punch line. I also liked the elements of truth that make the humor come out.”—Eric Kirsammer, our Comics Issue curator, on why he chose Sampson’s comic (CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO READ A COMIC)

Putting the piece on alone was something of a necessity, Starr writes over email. “There’s a period that I think every comedian or performer who makes their own work deals with, where it feels like pulling teeth to get people to work with you,” they explain. “Not necessarily because they hate you, but because of scheduling. There’s not enough hours in the day.” One of the show’s songs, “Freeze,” uses the form of a classic improv game to analyze this competitive rat race side of Chicago acting....

Uptight On Sunday at 4 PM Black Cinema House will screen the rarely revived Uptight (1968), a drama set among black revolutionaries in Cleveland, Ohio. Urban planner and architecture critic Lee Bey will introduce the film and lead an informal discussion afterwards (tickets are free, but it’s recommended you reserve a seat—you can RSVP here). The movie features an original score by the great Booker T. Jones (his only one, save for John Cassavetes’s Opening Night) and a cast that includes Roscoe Lee Browne, Juanita Moore, and Ruby Dee, who also cowrote the script....

Bonnie and Clyde Kokandy Productions does all it can with Frank Wildhorn, Don Black, and Ivan Menchell’s 2011 Broadway flop (it only ran for four weeks), here in a Chicago premiere. The performances crackle (in particular Desiree Gonzalez and Max DeTogne as the titular star-crossed outlaws), the score soars under John Cockerill’s musical direction, and the pace moves at a fine clip under director Spencer Neiman. Sadly, however, Wildhorn and company have put some formidable roadblocks in the way of success: some of the ballads slow things to a crawl, and Menchell’s book feels unfocused and fragmented at times....

Can someone die from being too boring? According to the new webseries Diagnosis: Boring, the answer is “yes.” In the first episode of the Chicago-made show, a doctor tells Jess (Ana Silva) that she has “Super Boring as Shit” syndrome and only a few weeks to live. There’s a possibility she’ll survive if she takes antiboring meds and adjusts her habits to make herself more cool. (“You must start smoking cigarettes,” her doctor says....

As soon as I started reading a post that ran on this very blog last week, “A dog drinks Bowser Beer for dogs,” a question burst into my mind. The mystery enveloped me—it wormed its way into my head and burrowed into my brain—I couldn’t escape it: What did Bowser Beer, a drink made specifically for dogs, actually taste like? I read the article three times. No answer. As I sat there, unable to rid myself of this cursed query, fate settled itself onto my shoulders....