As interest in local, seasonal eating keeps growing, so does the number of farmers’ markets for city dwellers. The big, city-run markets at Federal Plaza and Daley Plaza open this week, as does the independent Green City Market in Lincoln Park, and others follow in the coming month. July Blueberries, cucumbers, raspberries, summer squash, snap beans MONDAY-SATURDAY aUsing recycled materials and land leased from the city, the organic farmers at this urban training project (including four student interns from nearby Cabrini-Green) sell only what they grow on-site....

To terrorize an audience, stimulate its imagination to work overtime. Hitchcock understood this—we never do see a knife pierce flesh in Psycho‘s famous shower scene. Similarly, conservative auteurs base their claim that Barack Obama is an unconstitutional alien in the Oval Office not on a birth certificate that says he was born in a foreign country but on the lack of one meeting their high standard for authenticity that says he wasn’t....

Q I met my girlfriend about three months ago on a social-networking Web site. The pictures made her look attractive and in shape. We texted each other nonstop for the first three months. This past weekend we met, and she didn’t look anything like her pictures. However, we did still have sex twice. I’m about to start my freshman year in college, and I realized upon returning from my orientation that I don’t want to be tied down going into school....

THE MEEK A RED ORCHID THEATRE WHEN Through 6/3: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM WHERE A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells PRICE $20-$25 INFO 312-943-8722 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On occasion directors have even squelched Neveu’s attempts at profundity: in early 2006 A Red Orchid turned The Earl, a sobering examination of ritualized male violence, into frat-party mayhem. But this time a different Red Orchid director, Brennan Parks, has gotten Neveu’s intriguing new The Meek exactly right–or as right as this flawed work can be got....

Both beers come in 22-ounce bombers that cost $7.99 apiece. The brewery’s six-head Meheen bottling machine can handle a 30-barrel batch in about nine hours—not bad, considering that Solemn Oath has just six full-time staff—but in neither instance did that much beer end up bottled. (Grain and hops take up space in the tanks too.) Brewery president John Barley says 352 cases of Ravaged by Vikings and 250 cases of Combat Marshmallow made it out into the world—that’s 4,224 and 3,000 bombers, respectively, compared to roughly 5,500 for a proper 30 barrels....

Summer brings more for Chicago book lovers than lite fare to gloss through under the umbrella: lit fairs, book sales, a venerable celebration of free speech, and even one full-fledged gala. —Sam Worley Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Little City Used Book Sale Billed as the largest used book sale in the midwest, this annual sale also offers CDs, DVDs, records, comic books, and collectibles....

Retired Chicago teacher and environmentalist Kathy Cummings moved into her West Town three-flat in 1999, and began transforming the postage-stamp front yard into the kind of natural landscape she knows is best for the world. Cummings, a two-time Green Party candidate, says she took a look at the weed law and became convinced she hadn’t violated it. The ordinance specifies that the average height of weeds must not exceed ten inches, but doesn’t define what a weed is; a supplementary rule identifies them only as “vegetation that is not managed or maintained” by the property owner....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The theme this time around was publishing, so we decided to include reviews of self-published books by local writers. I assigned a bunch and set a deadline. Now here’s the strange thing: over the following couple weeks, staffers who’d agreed to review a book kept showing up at my office door to express their anguish (anguish!) over what I’d given them to read....

Michael Yarish/FX Jax Teller rode out of our lives on Tuesday. We knew this was coming: Sons of Anarchy is over. The FX show bowed out on December 9 with more of a whimper than a bang as Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) Thelma & Louise‘d into oblivion in “Papa’s Goods.” But the fuss is far from over; among all the usual recaps and goodbyes, there have been think pieces about the show’s ending and bizarre police reports about a supporting player....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On April 22 the Sun-Times and Tribune jointly filed an emergency motion asking Gaughan to let them in on what’s going on. “The public has a nearly absolute right of access to Court records and proceedings,” the papers argued, and “absent specific factual findings that demonstrate in each instance how secrecy serves a compelling interest overriding the essential right to access and that no other less restrictive alternative is available, public access cannot be denied....

In 2019, Chicago event producer and teacher Alejandro Ayala, who DJs as King Hippo, received a grant from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) to produce a two-night concert series called the Preservation of Fire. The concerts, hosted by Co-Prosperity in Bridgeport and broadcast live on Worldwide FM and Lumpen Radio, were immersive experiences that spotlit the sort of music that King Hippo tends to play on his radio shows; he stacked each bill with local improvisers and boundary-pushing musicians, including audacious jazz-pop fusion band Resavoir and saxophonist and visual artist Eliel Sherman Storey....

ZULU FITS MPAACT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Neecee and Giselle are comfortably middle-class African-American sisters with a shared fixation on Jersey Jack Black, a convicted cop killer and cause celebre in the Mumia Abu-Jamal vein. Inspired by his YouTube rants, the two teens style themselves the Blow-Up Sistas and hatch a scheme to bust Black out of the big house, using semi-salacious webcasts to raise funds and recruit Buddy, a hapless post office truck driver who delivers mail to the prison....

Best bar for day drinking in winter: Handlebar Two and a half years ago, when I had the privilege of being seated across from Michael Rother of Neu! at Slows Bar BQ in Detroit, I did my patriotic duty, encouraging him to try a staple of American culinary fare: mac ‘n’ cheese. He declined, smiled politely, and asked, “This is children’s food?” Well, I guess it is, but it’s also breakfast food at Handlebar (2311 W....

The global economy is collapsing, lethal bird flu has just jumped to humans, North Korea wants to nuke us, and there’s a totally cool vintage couture sale coming up at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers. We will be focusing on the last. And my ears pricked up when I heard from Casey Monda, Leslie Hindman’s director of vintage couture, that there’s an unusual cache of “Skahzzi” in Hindman’s upcoming auction, one of three devoted to fashion that the company does annually....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Friday night Common was in town to play a secret show at an MCA-owned loft in River West. It was sponsored by NBC 5, but despite the hella expensive-looking lighting rig, the catering, and the Hennessy open bar, it actually felt something like a real loft party–the crowd was fairly small and, since tickets were only available through a Common-themed trivia quiz, extremely pumped....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Friday and Saturday at midnight, the Chicago Cinema Society will present Kinji Fukasaku’s cult favorite Battle Royale (2000) at the Logan Theater. Along with the venue’s recent participation in the International Music & Movies Festival, this marks an encouraging development for the newly reopened Logan—proof that the management is working to showcase movies that aren’t playing elsewhere in Chicago (according to the Cinema Society website, the theater intends to arrange further such events with the group)....

http://violetness.bandcamp.com/ The cover of Last Night in My Dreams, I Was Talking to You This year’s stubborn winter may finally have given up the ghost, but that doesn’t mean icy, brooding tunes have to go with it. Today’s 12 O’Clock Track is from Violetness, aka Chicago-based singer-songwriter Vanessa Upson: “The Mighty Moss” is an ethereal jam off her debut EP, Last Night in My Dreams, I Was Talking to You, and it sounds like a white shadow of one of Bjork’s best nightmares....

Nadia Nid El Mourid (c) 2012 for harmonia mundi Terakaft The long-awaited debut of reunited 2-Tone vets the Specials finally happens on Monday at the Vic Theater, getting the work week off to a skanking start. If you can sneak into the Hideout that same night, you can get another take on Jamaican sound when Chicago natives Wild Belle play an intimate show to celebrate the release of their debut album the next day....

There were 460 dime-size holes in the door of Reginald Berry’s cell at Tamms Correctional Center. He knows because he counted them over and over. The door also had a slot for his meals to travel through, but other than that it was solid steel, and the view through the holes was of a concrete wall. Between 4 and 4:30 AM the electronic door to his pod would whir and clang, signaling that breakfast was on the way—boiled eggs on Monday, farina on Tuesday, cold cereal on Wednesday, etc....

After scoring with the horror spoof Shaun of the Dead, British comedy writers Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg take on American cop thrillers, and as in their earlier movie the good humor bubbles up from a deep reservoir of affection for Hollywood schlock. Pegg, who played the underachieving Shaun of the earlier movie, plays it ramrod straight this time as an overachieving London patrolman assigned to a sleepy country village. Roly-poly Nick Frost also returns, as Pegg’s partner, an incompetent bobby with a head full of melodrama derived from blockbusters like Point Break and Bad Boys II....