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Improvisation has become the sriracha of performing arts. People are always finding new places to put it, from moviemaking to corporate-team building. I suppose most of those uses make sense. When you come down to it, improv is just a technique for getting folks to connect to one another as constructively as possible. What process couldn’t use a little of that? But I never understood why anybody would want to build a contest around it....

Everybody loves this 72-year-old Beverly institution for its namesake freshly ground burgers, but there are a number of destination-worthy sandwiches on its vast menu, like the beef melt au jus: two slices of buttery toasted rye cradling a dense matrix of shaved choice eye of round slathered in melted yellow cheese. Lift a corner, dip it into the cup of beef broth black as coffee, and contemplate ordering another. At $4....

Runner-Up Bill Murray

barackobama.com Runner-Up Rahm Emanuel

Art AIDS America Alphawood Gallery

Under the moniker “the LSD Tour” (with the cheeky tagline, “It’s worth the trip”), raspy-voiced Americana singer Lucinda Williams, hard-core troubadour Steve Earle (with his band the Dukes), and spiritual son of Bakersfield Dwight Yoakam have been trekking across the landscape of North America this summer. The package tour—which hits Chicago near the end of its run—promotes Williams’s rerecording of her seminal country-, blues-, and folk-rock-influenced 1992 album Sweet Old World (retitled This Sweet Old World) and the 30th anniversary of Earle’s classic Copperhead Road, as well as Yoakam’s new SiriusXM satellite radio station, Dwight Yoakam and the Bakersfield Beat, which features tracks from his back catalog and the music that shaped him....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every week in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. On July 4, 1836, while the United States was celebrating 60 years of independence, Chicagoans were preparing to dig a ditch that would change the course of the city forever. In 1987, Peter Friederici looked back on that day in his piece “The ditch that made Chicago happen....

Giant monster name, giant monster band. It’s been four years since Chicago transplants Gigan released their mind-melting Multi-Dimensional Fractal Sorcery and Super Science—a title that accurately describes the album’s apocalyptic technical-death and space-rock-on-steroids sounds. With their brand-new Undulating Waves of Rainbotic Iridescence (Willowtip), they hone their whirling sonic blades until they cut through bone. Like their previous two records, Undulating Waves was recorded with Sanford Parker (in California this time), but it’s the band’s first album with new vocalist Jerry Kavouriaris, who establishes himself as a commanding figurehead at the front of this evil ship while drummer Nate Cotton and founder/core multi-instrumentalist Eric Hersemann (previously of Hate Eternal and Lord Blasphemer) sail through interstellar storms and straight into the heart of the blackened sun....

JODI DARBY Marisa Anderson If your Memorial Day weekend isn’t overstuffed with BBQs be sure to leave a little room in your schedule for concerts; there’s a strong lineup of shows this weekend, and it’s worth holding off on that third helping so you aren’t too full of grilled meats to head to at least a couple gigs on this list. “When I listen to Marisa Anderson’s solo guitar music, I think of Sun Ra’s poem about Tone Scientists,” writes Bill Meyer....

Bank of America Theatre 18 W. Monroe 312-902-1400 chicago-theater.com/theaters/bank-of-america-theater Runner-Up Wicked

Al Podgorski/Sun-Times Media Bruce Rauner is a great businessman—right? The race for governor took an interesting turn yesterday. Mark Brown of the Sun-Times published the most cogent and urgent argument I’ve seen yet for not voting for Bruce Rauner. And the Tribune published the name of a third candidate, welcome news to voters who can’t bring themselves to vote for Pat Quinn either. Illinois is full of people who see the need and would so strive....

A lot of the roots in American roots music stem from Africa, as Malian-born D.C. musician Cheick Hamala Diabate demonstrates whenever he goes onstage. Diabate plays the banjo and the instrument’s African ancestor, the ngoni, and performs with a sprawling group of musicians, the Griot Street Band, who play horns, guitar, and a dizzying array of percussion. The performances don’t so much join African and American sounds as they remind you that their musical traditions have been fused and re-fused for so long that for some artists, they might as well be one....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, August 16, 2017. A former Miss America is running against attorney general Lisa Madigan Attorney and former Miss America Erika Harold announced that she is running for Illinois attorney general in 2018. Harold, 37, will challenge incumbent attorney general Lisa Madigan if she wins the Republican primary. The Urbana resident works for the Meyer Capel law firm and ran for Congress in 2014....

Local rapper Roy French first caught my eye and ear with 2014’s Face God, which I liked for its vivid artwork and psychedelic flair. Yesterday French dropped a mixtape called Vroom, and he seems to have figured out how to use the colors on his palette with more precision and restraint—he’s at his best when he goes monochromatic. On “Tommy Pickles,” whose pared-down instrumental is dominated by echoing, bell-like synths, he spends half the time rapping in a calm monotone; when he changes gears to half-sing the song’s hook, the track’s minimalism makes the subtle shift feel huge, as though he’s suddenly dropping his defenses....

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh Jeff Samardzija was a tough-luck loser again today. With one out in the bottom of the seventh today at Wrigley Field, in a game with Cincinnati, Cubs third baseman Luis Valbuena singled in Starlin Castro. Cubs fans responded with a standing ovation, even though their team still trailed, 3-1; it was the north-siders’ first run since Sunday.

—Kathie Kane-Willis, Chicago Urban League director of policy and advocacy Late last July, on the day Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law a statewide decriminalization measure barring cops from criminally charging individuals caught with small amounts of marijuana, a 22-year-old African-American man was arrested by Chicago police officers on the city’s west side after he told them he had about $10 worth of weed on him. The officers were on patrol in the 4200 block of West Madison just before 11 PM July 29 when they spotted two men “engage in what appeared to be a hand to hand transaction,” according to their report....

Joe Levy Coming soon to your smartphone. An unlikely team comprised of a former English lit major, a retired neuroradiologist, and an IT consultant is collaborating on a smartphone app to guide people through Chicago’s public-art sphere. “The app is like a pocket guide or a Michelin guide book,” says Joe Flowers, chief technical officer and IT entrepreneur. He, McDevitt, neuroradiologist turned photog Joe Levy, and a handful of other volunteers, have built the app from the ground up....

Kevin Tanaka/ Sun-Times Media Amisha Patel (right) wants to help you know your alderman. I got a call the other day from Amisha Patel, one of the city’s leading progressives, telling me the Indigo Girls were coming to town to throw a fundraiser for the anti-Rahm cause. Oh, my bad. You know, they say the hearing’s the first thing to go . . . Haven’t heard me rail about that in while, now have you?...

Pilsen Runner-Up Hyde Park