The final Raw Nerve EP, Every Problem Solved It’s been close to a year since local hardcore fivesome Raw Nerve called it quits with a couple finale shows. I unfortunately missed the very last performance, but I got a pretty good view of the scene thanks to some footage circulating online. The whole thing looked as chaotic and fiery as the band itself—it took less than two minutes for one dude to do a barrel roll while crowd-surfing atop the swarming group of diehards....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Today marks the opening of Fashioning Desire, a show of work by nine local fashion photographers, at City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower, 806 N.Michigan. The exhibit includes images by both established and emerging photographers, including Brian Kuhlmann, Sandro, and Erika Dufour. Hours are 10 AM to 6:30 PM Monday through Saturday and 10 AM to 5 PM Sunday....

“Support each other, assholes!” Beth Amphetamine yells. It’s the end of a sweaty August practice for the Windy City Rollers All-Stars, and the hawkeyed cocaptain is giving her teammates her idea of a pep talk. The All-Stars are used to laughing. It’s easy to laugh when you’re winning. Off the track, they’re lawyers, research analysts for unions, clerks at Whole Foods. On the track, they’re speed demons and monster blockers who’ve defeated nearly every top derby team among the 98 leagues in the national Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA, or “wooft-dah,” for short)....

Rock ‘n’ roll is having a tough time on the pop charts these days. There have been only a few rock-oriented acts that have been performing consistently well on the Hot 100 recently, mostly Fun. and the inexplicably popular Imagine Dragons. Rock’s not even doing that great on rock radio, with alternative stations leaning heavy on the Ye Olde Timey sounds of folksters like the Lumineers and (thanks to some racially suspect decision making on the part of radio programmers) Macklemore’s Atmosphere-lite rap....

The raunchy Fireside Bowl bathrooms of yore have finally achieved mythological status. Last week the Chicago News Cooperative reported for the New York Times on a new series of shows being booked this summer at the bowling alley by House Call Entertainment’s John Benetti. WBEZ did its own version of the CNC story, which featured nostalgic quotes from former Los Crudos front man Martin Sorrondeguy and Underdog Records collectivist Douglas Ward but no comment from famously reticent former Fireside booker Brian Peterson....

Its wings are raised, as if before flight, but from the way the bird’s straining, it’s clear—even in the photograph—that the oil is weighing them down. The pelican’s mouth is open, and there’s a little glob of syrupy liquid dangling from the bottom of its beak. The bird is half-submerged in what looks like spoiled pudding. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But the environmental impact of the oil spill, the largest in the industry’s history, may stretch well beyond the gulf....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The exclusive showing is the pilot presentation of NT Live, a new initiative by the National to broadcast its theatrical productions around the world. The National’s Phedre will be filmed in HD during a live performance on June 25 and broadcast via satellite to more than 200 movie theaters and performing arts venues worldwide. Steppenwolf, along with several other arts venues, will re-broadcast the film two weeks later....

Antonio Johnson called Ray Longstreet to talk business. Longstreet complained that some of his own street sellers were partying, making noise, and disturbing neighbors while on the job. He said he’d told some of his employees, “If I was an older person and I owned a house over here I’d call the police on you niggas too.” The west side of Chicago has been known for decades as home to some of the largest and most vibrant drug markets in the country, where customers from around the midwest travel to find street dealers offering “blow” or “rocks” just minutes off the Eisenhower Expressway or the CTA’s Blue and Green lines....

Out today “It’s like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, basically, but with more sucking,” is how Nicholas Day describes his new book, Baby Meets World: Suck, Smile, Touch, Toddle. But I’d liken it to How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species, a reader-friendly work in cognitive ethnology. Because in some ways babies do seem like another species, a sometimes inscrutable one. Burping we get, but why is that creature pointing?...

Andy Warhol I used to work in an art gallery in La Jolla, California—a ritzy little ocean enclave just north of San Diego. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a Porsche. There were no stores, only boutiques, and none of them seemed to sell anything that cost less than $300. La Jolla is littered with luxury in the way that liquor stores overrun areas of urban blight. That’s something you’d think would bode well for an art gallery....

Pure voodoo at its best, performance art traffics in psychic violence, provoking questions that viewers, by virtue of their emotional disturbance, feel compelled to answer. Defibrillator Gallery’s Rapid Pulse, now in its second year, is designed to make the genre more talkative: the festival, which includes window shows, public spectacle, and video screenings, coordinates performances with discussions, spread over ten days and four venues (Defibrillator, 1136 N. Milwaukee; Electrodes, the gallery’s front windows; Hub, 1535 N....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like most dance music genres, blog house was declared dead by its more cutting-edge proponents as soon as it got popular enough to earn its own unfortunate moniker. And for sure there is something burnout-inspiring about the form’s kudzu-like infestation of dance clubs around the world, and the way that its genuine talents are often swamped by wave after wave of pale imitators....

HOLLYWOOD HOLT | These Are the Songs That Didn’t Make the Album but Are Still Cold as Hell So Shut the Fuck Up! Vol. 1(mix tape) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Holt seems as fed up about this as anyone—hence the mix tape These Are the Songs That Didn’t Make the Album but Are Still Cold as Hell So Shut the Fuck Up! Vol....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But, the Tribune recalled, the editorial page of 1963 “still wouldn’t let it go.” Afterward, it “harrumphed” condescendingly that “the planners and participants can consider their job well done, and the residents of the capital, who had to put up with a day’s inconvenience, are entitled to acknowledgment of their patience. Such oratory as there was, was less superheated than might have been expected....

Ay Ay Picante It’s all about seafood and starch—mainly in spud form—at this Peruvian spot owned and operated by a husband-and-wife team. For starters we tried the ocopa, a traditional appetizer of cold boiled potatoes served with a strong, somewhat minty-flavored sauce made with cheese, ground walnuts, and huacatay, a herb native to the Andes. An ample plate of one of several ceviches offered copious calamari and shrimp plus sweet potato, onions, and corn....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The late Chicago Espresso was a gem–directly across the street from the Kedzie Brown Line station and spitting distance from some of the best middle eastern groceries and restaurants in the city. It brewed Intelligentsia beans and was the only place in the neighborhood to get a decent cup of joe. Despite that, it was a sleepy little place and the fact that it opened one block north of a Starbucks made me worry....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The National Review editorial leans heavily on reporting on Obama by Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. According to the National Review, De Zutter “tells us that the young politician did not accept ‘the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation — which helps a few upwardly mobile blacks to “move up, get rich, and move out.’...

Q Recently, I celebrated my first year of marriage to the most amazing man. When we first began dating, he told me that he enjoys open sexuality and wants swinging to be part of any partnership he’s in. I regard myself as free-spirited and agreed to explore this with him. We delayed experimentation because I had a stressful job and I wanted to spend my limited free time with him instead of having multiple partners....

QHere’s your chance to deal with the problems of a couple of senior citizens: I am a woman in my late 60s, and my “boyfriend” is five years older. We were lovers long ago. He came looking for me a few years ago and we reunited. We live on opposite sides of the country, so we only see each other for a few weeks every year. For various reasons, that is unlikely to change....

Living in close proximity to Wicker Park, I’ve come to recognize the progression that stably employed couples in their early 30s follow upon settling down. They replace their couch from the Salvation Army with one from CB2. They take up jogging. They get a dog. They talk about having a baby. But so far as I know, Scott and Cara Flaster are the only such pair to start a record label specializing in high quality, lovingly packaged, and brutally punishing underground metal....