The Reader’s Choice: Relax on Milwaukee Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Relax straddles the divide between gentrifying Logan Square and blue-collar Avondale: crotchety old regulars camp out in the back of the huge bar by the dart board and pool table while kids from the Rat Patrol bicycle gang hang out in front, drinking dollar beers and eating popcorn from a greasy machine embellished with a picture of Rick James....

Last night Lollapalooza announced the complete lineup for this year’s festival, and it looks a lot like every other big music festival that’s happened over the past five years or so. Reading through the list of second-tier acts on the bill is like running across an old commercial on TV where you surprise yourself by knowing every word in the script. Bright Eyes, Arctic Monkeys, Crystal Castles, Flogging Molly, Atmosphere, Cold War Kids, Cage the Elephant, Delta Spirit—haven’t I seen this exact lineup listed a dozen different places already?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Among the 49 aldermen who voted in favor of Mayor Daley’s hard-times 2009 budget were a couple dozen who delivered impassioned and often defensive speeches explaining their support. And within this group were a few aldermen who also used the occasion to share a few thoughts about pet issues, from problems with education funding (Sixth Ward alderman Freddrenna Lyle) to the perils of abandoned homes (33rd Ward alderman Richard Mell) to the necessity of firefighters (29th Ward alderman Ike Carothers)....

The last time the TIF-funded deal at Montrose and Clarendon reared its ugly not-so-little head was on a sweltering day in June, when everyone involved would have been better off watching the NBA finals. Well guess what? The foreseeable future is now the past. The deal is back. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’d love to tell you Alderman Cappleman’s take on the miraculous revival of this plan, but after I called his office I wound up talking to Tressa Feher, his chief of staff....

First dates are pretty easy. Contact was made, ways of correspondence exchanged, communication is then made after the initial meeting and a date is set to reconnect again. Both parties are on their best behavior; this is the “real” first impression so from this point, this first date, the relationship could go any which way. On the better end the date is the first in a number of memories created by the two people, which have transformed from being two people into being one couple, one unit of love (at least on the surface) if you will....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And basically I agree. “Childish” is largely irrelevant, an easy, moralizing put-down where something less analytically loaded—that doesn’t skew the semantics from the get-go—gets you to a more interesting place. (Interesting too that “childlike” skews in the opposite direction—depends on what brand of kid you are, I guess: innocuous before impish, etc.) Which doesn’t mean the land of the overmuscled and preternaturally endowed is a place you’d necessarily want to visit, only that it’s a little more complicated—and worrisome—than supercilious dismissals ever let on....

Tenor sax vet Fred Anderson turned 78 in March, but it doesn’t look like age is catching up with him. His recent shows have been as intense and focused as any he’s played in years, and From the River to the Ocean (Thrill Jockey), his new album with drummer and longtime disciple Hamid Drake, is simply astonishing. Anderson and Drake are a powerhouse on their own–check out their 2004 duo record, Back Together Again–but River is a group affair, and all the better for it....

A search committee has been formed to find a replacement for Museum of Contemporary Art director Robert Fitzpatrick, who announced last month that he’ll be stepping down next year after a decade on the job. It’ll be interesting to see if they offer the cool half million in annual salary and benefits that he’s been getting. With average annual attendance stuck around 215,000 or less for the last few years (the traveling Warhol show goosed last year’s to 275,000), Fitzpatrick’s effectively been collecting more than $2 for every visitor who walks through the door....

Low Down Dirty Blues Northlight Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Those songs take up perhaps 80 of the show’s 90 minutes, so it’s tempting to adopt the standard critical line on jukebox musicals: audiences come for the music, so everything else can be forgiven if not outright ignored. But the nonmusical elements in Low Down Dirty Blues aren’t benign—they’re confusing. The show is set, apparently, in a south-side club called Big Mama’s....

2 PM: I don’t know who Milk Music is, but I love milk and music, and when seeing 80 acts you’ve never heard of, “awesome name” is a legit criterion. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 2:30 PM: Scurrying from Iceage to Thee Oh Sees to Ty Segall, and boy are my paws tired! 6:15PM: AraabMuzik is fun to dance to, and I like being around motivated pretty ladies....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As I noted in the capsule designating Joan of Arc “Best Old Musical Group” in the Reader‘s recent Best of Chicago issue, the band has earned a reputation for coming up with completely outrageous ideas and then actually following through on them. (Unlike the Judgment Night soundtrack-cover album your band keeps talking about at practice.) Their latest berserk plan is actually relatively marketable for them: reissuing all ten of the band’s full-length albums as a cassette box set....

There’s a Bible propped open against the bulletproof take-out window at Turner’s Family Soul Food in Auburn Gresham, where customers waiting for their smothered pork chops or meat loaf can study the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. . . .” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From the outside, Turner’s doesn’t look much different from the innumerable ramshackle independent fast-food joints and soul kitchens all over the south side....

Q My husband and I have been together for about four years and have been married for a little over a year. He’s 31; I’m 27. We started out as friends and soon began a long-distance relationship, until I got pregnant. We have a great friendship, and honestly I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. Here’s our problem: I have the sex drive of a 16-year-old boy, whereas he’s practically asexual....

As I lamented on the Reader‘s music blog Crickets last week, on October 13, Dubya popped out of his burrow to sign into law the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008. Among other things, it creates the position of “IP czar,” or more formally the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, whose office will coordinate prosecution of IP-related crimes at the local, national, and international levels. It’s the second new cabinet post of Bush’s tenure; the first was Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security....

Location: 401 N. Franklin, thedoughnutvault.tumblr.com Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Abstract: Seniority has its privileges. Last Wednesday food writer Mike Sula had a late night at Next (see review) and the Aviary, and the following morning while he was sleeping it off, Reader intern Asher Klein had his back. At 8:25 Klein was waiting in the second-longest line in town, at the Doughnut Vault, the cash-only takeaway hole-in-the-wall from Brendan Sodikoff (Gilt Bar, Maude’s Liquor Bar), where the queue stretches around the corner and the $2 to $3 hand-formed dunkers typically sell out before noon....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That work was supposed to begin in June, as soon as the spring AYSO season is over. But now that the $2 million Latin project has stalled, Costello doubts the Park District will run the risk of starting another.”Quite frankly, I don’t know if we’ll get the fields built anymore,” he told me. “Everything’s on hold. We have to wait to let the dust settle....

Somebody here at the Reader suggested that we run a contest to come up with a new nickname for Chicago. Windy City, Second City, City of the Big Shoulders—they all have a place in our hearts and history, but they don’t resonate like they used to. We need a phrase to reflect our current reality. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That’s not to be confused with the City of Excess, which would imply waste....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Schlabowske’s been in the business for years; for the last four or so he headed up the French wine department at Sam’s and before that he was a buyer at Wine Discount Center. Owning his own store’s been a longtime dream: “I’ve done this for 17 years and–without tooting my own horn too much–I’m pretty good at it and I wanted to have a place of my own, and make my own money....

Halloween is coming, and the question is, What will Chicago theaters wear to the party? Mostly zombie costumes, from the looks of it. Early critical returns have brain eaters outdistancing neck biters as the undead of choice in 2013—though there are also those who’ve decided to go with classics like Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the famously sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania. Here are short reviews of seven holiday shows. Check back for more over the next couple weeks....

Michael Gebert Bartlett Durand at Black Earth Meats Yesterday’s story was about a Wisconsin state agency’s alleged unfair treatment of artisanal meat producer Bolzano Artisan Meats. The story of Black Earth Meats isn’t about that kind of internecine agency warfare. It’s about regular people and competing visions of the kind of town they want to live in. And whether Wisconsin agriculture can survive when people decide they don’t want to live face to face with the reality behind the food they eat....