Yes, yes, we Chicagoans are blessed to live in such a terrific theater town, where you can see something tremendous even in the most humble storefront black box populated with non-Equity actors. But here’s the thing about those storefronts: most of them just don’t have the budget for comfortable seating. Instead of the well-padded, velvet-covered seats that abound in the fancy downtown palaces, where you can enjoy a quality nap if road-show Phantom proves less than captivating, little theaters provide flimsy folding chairs crammed as close as seats on the el and with only slightly more padding....

Born into extraordinary wealth during the reign of Louis XIV, French writer Jean-François Regnard traveled widely—and for a while, involuntarily, when he was captured by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery. Ransomed, he continued his travels, spending time with the Sami people of Lapland. Then he took a cushy government job that left him free to write Molière-esque plays for Molière’s old theater, the Comédie-Française. Regnard died under ambiguous circumstances (suicide?...

“I discovered Raw magazine while looking for pornography in the back room of my local Omaha comic shop,” Chris Ware recalls in Outside the Box, a collection of in-depth conversations between influential cartoonists (among them Allison Bechdel, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Daniel Clowes) and Hillary L. Chute, a comics scholar and assistant prof of English at the U. of C., where she organized the wildly popular Comics: Philosophy & Practice Conference in 2012....

The death of Emmett Till is widely regarded as a central moment in the civil rights movement. The 1955 kidnapping, brutal torture, and murder of the 14-year-old Chicagoan, targeted by two white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi, marked a turning point and catalyzed the growing awareness of racial discrimination in America. Yet despite Till’s centrality to our current understanding, his story was largely out of public consciousness for decades, only to reemerge as its weight in history became clearer....

Sometimes even George Orwell had to take a break from writing about injustice, oppression, and totalitarianism and turn his attention to his immediate personal happiness and comfort. In his 1946 essay “The Moon Under Water,” he describes in rhapsodic detail his favorite London pub, a quiet, old-fashioned sort of place where the barmaids call you “dear” (more high-class than “ducky”) and where you can get a creamy draft stout in a china mug along with a good, inexpensive lunch, which you can enjoy, depending on the season, in a comfortable chair by the fire or under a tree in the back garden with your family....

The Red Line conductor known for his uplifting, unorthodox announcements—”Cheer up, it’s only Monday,” “Don’t forget your coffee,” “May the force be with you”—retired last December after nearly 36 years driving CTA trains. During the 59-year-old’s final run, on New Year’s Eve, fans rode the entirety of the Red Line, passing out doughnuts and encouraging other riders to write Powell thank-you notes. Devotees doled out high fives, fist bumps, and hugs to Powell at each stop....

Weedeater Not a fan of Paul McCartney? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. There’s more live music to catch during the first half of this week anyway. Local jazz combo Stirrup play at corner tap the Charleston. Peter Margasak says, “This scrappy instrumental trio was born in 2009 as the rhythm section of the Horse’s Ha, the elegant folk-rock group fronted by Janet Bean and Jim Elkington. As Stirrup, though, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, bassist Nick Macri, and drummer Charles Rumback have a sound of their own....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here.

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Patrick O’Malley, 51, doorman. “I was a floor trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before I became a doorman. I loved it; it was just very stressful. By the time I did my eight years down there, I was burned out. There’s a lot of money going around, and things can be easily misconstrued, so I might tell you that I’m gonna sell you five, and things are so crazy you might say, ‘Oh, you just sold me 50,’ so you better have the money for 50....

Baltimore, Maryland, that roiling crucible of Mexican culture, has sent Chicago a taqueria. It’s fair to wonder what the folks behind Barcocina think they have to offer a city with an infinity of opportunities to eat well in simple mom-and-pop taquerias, to say nothing of the recent rise of chef-driven taco spots. Then again, how uptight can you be about something like that when you’re offered a “cheeseburger” taco that arrives swaddling underseasoned, dry ground beef, cabbage, unmelted shredded cheddar, and a mildly spicy mango sauce with the viscosity of Gerber baby food?...

Chicago Cultural Center 78 E. Washington Runner-Up Tribune Tower

Margie’s Candies 1960 N. Western

On the 2016 self-released EP There’s No Magic Left in This World, local singer-guitarist Ryan Ensley (formerly of antifolk outfit Shiloh) showed his knack for melding spunky, unvarnished acoustic instrumentation with big rock ’n’ roll power. Ensley played nearly every instrument on the EP, and though it was engineered by onetime Oshwa member Michael Mac, it has the spunky energy of a home recording. That spirit has stayed intact as Ensley has transformed Sonny Falls into a proper band....

ARTIST: Daniel MacAdam SHOW: Lucero at Metro on Fri 9/28 MORE INFO: crosshairchicago.com

Black Jack In this week’s long review I take a look at Generation War, a German miniseries about five 20-year-old Berliners pulled into Hitler’s doomed assault on the Soviet Union; it’s hardly a masterpiece, but it’s entertaining and sometimes compelling, and its weeklong run at Music Box includes a panel discussion Saturday at 2:30 PM (between parts one and two) on the historical controversies surrounding the project. We recommend Black Jack (1979), an 18th-century children’s adventure directed by Ken Loach, and An Honest Living, a documentary about four creative Chicagoans (director Jordan Freese attends both screenings)....

Last August when Arc Gallery put out a call for submissions for an exhibition to be titled “I Can’t Breathe,” the idea was to “begin a conversation” about “the shocking violence by police against unarmed citizens” that had been revealed in “video after video” over the previous year. A week ago, Chicago got to see its own indelible, racially charged video: the long-withheld record of the killing of Laquan McDonald. This exhibit, which could just as well be called “16 Shots,” is appallingly timely....

4736 N. Lincoln 773-293-2665 bookcellarinc.com Runner-Up Myopic