In September the city announced it will be releasing a three-year Vision Zero action plan, inspired by the international movement with the goal of eliminating serious traffic injuries and fatalities through better infrastructure, education, and enforcement. Chicago’s plan, currently slated for release later this winter, will involve a dozen city departments, with the goal of reaching zero crash deaths by 2026. In contrast, according to a map of fatal crash sites provided by CDOT, traffic fatalities were spread fairly evenly throughout the city this year....

Oozing Wound oozingwound.bandcamp.com @OozingWound Runner-Up REZN

chicagocriticalmass.org Runner-Up Bike the Drive

A tricked-out Fiat is suspended from a wall in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s atrium. “It’s kind of a gravitational mindfuck,” senior curator Dieter Roelstraete says of the piece, the entry point into “Metamorphology,” the first major museum survey in the U.S. of the British conceptual artist Simon Starling, opening June 7. A stone’s throw away at the Arts Club of Chicago, an associated Starling show, “Pictures for an Exhibition,” debuts June 6....

With the Great Chicago Fire Festival of the last couple years, the city made a peculiar spectacle of the anniversary of one of our worst disasters. City Hall poured cold water on the fest earlier this month by cutting off funding after this year, but perhaps the money would be better spent on an effort to commemorate a more recent catastrophe: the 1995 heat wave. Not to celebrate the five July days that left 739 people dead—but to prevent anything like it from happening again....

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Flowers and pictures that are part of a growing memorial sit on the steps in front of the home where Robin Williams filmed the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • About the south-side mural the University of Chicago sponsored and then painted over? —Tony Adler

There’s a “Chicago Pastrami Dog” on the menu at 3 Squares Diner that sounds tempting. Just imagine: an encased farce of brined and smoked brisket dragged through the garden of the orthodox Chicago condiments. Sounds simultaneously delicious and dangerously provocative. I was so unnerved by the Chicago Pastrami Dog I was prepared to ask for ketchup, but then I noticed the small tub of it—a molasses-colored version with a deep sweetness that seemed to terrify the thick and nicely crisped fries....

When Martha Lavey became Steppenwolf Theatre’s artistic director almost two decades ago, she invited me to lunch to pick my brains about the fringe theater scene. With so many resources at her disposal, she explained, she felt a duty to share the wealth with the smaller itinerant companies in town. I knew her good intentions were genuine (we spent time together in graduate school, and I’d seen firsthand her commitment to experimental work), but I doubted the demands of an oversize, heavily mortgaged, subscriber-dependent institution would leave her much room for noblesse oblige....

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ryanduggan.com Runner-Up Dan Polyak

3333 N. Marshfield 773-248-3333 lakeviewymca.org Runner-Up Irving Park

Noname’s fans consider her this generation’s “woke” female rapper, but it’s a notion that Noname herself rejects. In a recent interview with The Fader, the Chicago rapper otherwise known as Fatimah Warner insists that her music shouldn’t be pigeonholed as “real hip-hop” (shorthand for old-school rap, usually invoked by the same people who think the four elements represent the only true hip-hop culture). “A lot of my fans . . ....

Is it just me, or do you often walk out of a significantly bankrolled (and thus terribly important) Shakespeare production, one over which a preponderance of critics has raved, and think to yourself, What on earth was all that? Did those actors understand anything they were saying? Who told them to get perpetually worked up over everything? And for God’s sake, why did no one on that stage remind me of anyone I might encounter in real life?...

Mick Jenkins I’m a sucker for Halloween-themed music events (or at least the idea of them), which means I need to start making plans to get to the Portage Theater soon. Starting sunday the Silent Film Society of Chicago hosts its Silent Horror Film Festival there, which will feature organist Jay Warren providing a live score for The Phantom of the Opera, The Hands of Orlac, and The Monster. If you’re looking for more straightforward musical performances there are plenty of great opportunities for that in the coming week....

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Paul Boucher Jose Abreu slams his 27th homer on July 4 at U.S. Cellular Field against the Mariners. He now has 29. Sure, the White Sox and Cubs are a combined 23 games under .500, with the Cubs deserving most of the credit. But Chicago baseball fans still have something to crow about. Abreu has amassed his 29 homers—and 23 doubles as well—despite missing two weeks at the end of May because of a sore ankle....

One of the most wonderful phenomena in the world of improvised music is that players can come together with little more than an introduction and proceed to create work in which they rapidly forge common ground. Few words need to be spoken, as sound transcends all manner of cultural differences. Chilean trumpeter Benjamín Vergara, whom I hadn’t previously heard, visited Chicago a couple of years ago armed with little more than some recommendations from his fellow trumpeter Jacob Wick, a former local....