Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, January 4, 2016. Eli’s Cheesecake has been hiring war refugees for years Refugees from Iraq, Congo, and many other war-torn countries make up about 15 percent of the employees at Eli’s Cheesecake. “People who come as refugees have great skills,” Marc Schulman, the president of Chicago’s most famous cheesecake company, told NPR. “These are great performers, great people.” Hiring refugees who have resettled in Chicago is not a new practice for Eli’s....

The experimental production Confidential Musical Theatre Project makes its Chicago debut with, well, no one knows exactly. Avra Fainer and Steve Lavoie cast the top-secret musical, but even the performers won’t meet each other until an hour before the show; everyone involved rehearses on their own time and just prays that everything comes together. “You want to put a show on, and there’s so many logistics you have to deal with,” Fainer says....

ctunet.com Runner-Up Brian Bean, member of Occupy Chicago

For the past decade, Bethany Thomas has been a fixture in the Chicago music and theater scenes. She’s appeared at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Second City, Court Theatre, and Writers Theatre, among others, and she won a 2013 Jeff Award for a role in South Pacific. As a musician she’s played almost every major venue in the city (including shows with Robbie Fulks and Jon Langford), and she’s also a regularly featured artist at the Paper Machete and Salonathon....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About what the success of Asian Americans means for racial discrimination? —Sue Kwong • Or hear Stephin Merritt deconstructing the song “Andrew in Drag”? —Kate Schmidt

African-American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce and the Politics of Race” at the Chicago Cultural Center is a show that serves as a much-needed corrective to design history: it covers a century’s worth of fine art, commercial, and industrial design by black creators in Chicago, some of whom first came here during the Great Migration. Another cabinet nearby contains the work of Miller, a designer from Virginia who settled in Chicago after World War II....

ARTIST: Ryan Duggan SHOW: Ryley Walker, Ohmme, and Ben LaMar Gay at the Empty Bottle on Fri 12/28 MORE INFO: ryanduggan.com

Alfred A. Knopf There’s one small subgenre of literature that I find particularly endearing: the young woman working in publishing book. When I was younger, I viewed those books as guides to life. Even after they stopped being useful, at least to me since my own career as a young woman in publishing was more or less a disaster, I still enjoy them as wish fulfillment. How nice it would be to be young and living in New York and surrounded by books all day (but without having to live in the crappy apartment and deal with the pretentious young men and condescending bosses and the horrible, soul-crushing boredom of being an administrative assistant)!...

Late last fall, right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA started a website called the Professor Watchlist, which singles out college professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda,” according to a mission statement on its home page. Curator Ruslana Lichtzier was appalled by the site, so she decided to organize an exhibition in response. She personally asked more than 300 friends and acquaintances to submit works as a counteraction to Professor Watchlist’s directives....

Meyvn 2627 N. Kedzie

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams various locations

Sam Kirk and Sandra Antongiorgi’s “Weaving Cultures” iamsamkirk.com santongiorgi.com Runner-Up JC Rivera’s Bear Champ

See also the online version of the Best of Chicago 2014.

Raveonettes With the cold weather setting in most music events are heading back indoors. Although the majority of the big outdoor music festivals are over the Owl’s hosting a weeklong minifest that wraps up on Sunday. Of course there are plenty of opportunities to catch great live music that isn’t in conjunction with any kind of festival, though there are some additional fests out there as well. “On their lyrical, meditative new album, Slant of Light (Thrill Jockey), the Philadelphia duo of harpist Mary Lattimore and keyboardist-guitarist Jeff Zeigler create the sonic equivalent of a dimly lit sauna, with all the enveloping warmth and permeating calm that implies,” writes Peter Margasak....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, August 28, 2017. Rahm: Chicago students no longer treated as “second-class citizens” in state school funding deal Chicago Public Schools students will no longer be treated like “second-class citizens” under a new bipartisan school funding deal agreed upon by state legislators, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “That clear benchmark has been met,” Emanuel said. More details about the agreement are expected to be revealed Monday, but legislators’ “efforts risked being derailed amid ongoing rancor between Governor Bruce Rauner and Mayor Rahm Emanuel as well as pressure from unions,” according to the Tribune....

With the annual Chicago Jazz Festival stealing all of the attention this weekend I think it’s important to remember that jazz shows happen in Chicago every day, and once the fest shuts down Sunday the music doesn’t go anywhere. For example, in this week’s paper I wrote about the local debut on Wednesday of LA sax phenomenon Kamasi Washington at Bottom Lounge, and on that same night one of the best bands in Norway returns to Chicago when Cortex plays Constellation....

Noah When it rains, it pours: this week brings both the Chicago Underground Film Festival, with screenings through Sunday at the Logan, and the Chicago Latino Film Festival, with shows through April 17 at River East 21 and other area venues (including Gene Siskel Film Center, which presents a retrospective of Oscar-nominated films from Spain and Latin America). When it pours, we reign: check out this week’s issue for 23 new reviews of both festival offerings and regular commercial releases....

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast Our goober-natorial candidate Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • About rootworm-resistant Bt corn and how rootworms evolved to eat it—as predicted? —John Dunlevy • About The Bachelor: The Videogame? (With Bachelorette version included!) —Brianna Wellen

Atlanta’s hip-hop scene has produced plenty of artists who’ve meddled with the genre’s DNA, though none have done it quite like Raury Tullis, who records and performs as Raury. Hailing from suburban Stone Mountain, the 19-year-old’s bold and buoyant songs blend a broad mix of pop sounds—earthy soul, wide-screen folk, and a tinge of golden psych-rock. Raury hits 1st Ward tomorrow night to support All We Need. Before that he’s dropping by Jugrnaut for a meet and greet, which you can RSVP to here....