We’re all pretty patriotic when it comes to our neighborhoods—their distinct character, shared history, and occasional natural enemies. It must have occurred to designer Steve Shanabruch that Chicagoans could rally around the right hyperlocal emblems, so he made logos for every neighborhood in the city—77 in all. In each, a pithy doodle with the hood’s name in a unique font is superimposed over a grainy, black-and-white photo of something intrinsic to the area, like the Union Stock Yard Gate in Back of the Yards or ivy-covered el tracks in Ravenswood....

Succezz Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » T-shirt connoisseurs shopping at Succezz, a new South Loop boutique mostly targeting guys, may gravitate toward specimens like a rhinestone-bedazzled skull number by Christian Audigier, the former Von Dutch designer you can blame for the trucker-hat trend. It retails for $185. The Affliction brand offers similar designs (minus the bedazzling) for prices in the 50s, but I was partial to a tee featuring Money Clothing’s signature ape as the Statue of Liberty, just $38....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So where does that put us? Eisenstein says that puts us under overwhelming pressure to turn everything into a good or service. Consider, for example, the forest primeval. “ While it is still standing and inaccessible, it is not a good. It only becomes ‘good’ when I build a logging road, hire labor, cut it down, and transport it to a buyer....

When the music ends at the Jazz Festival, it’s usually just starting somewhere else in the city. This year’s afterfest offerings, like last year’s, aren’t quite as rich as they’ve often been in the past, but there are plenty of worthwhile options each night, from loose jam sessions to full-blown concerts. There are of course more jazz shows in town this weekend than I’m listing here; I’ve restricted myself to those with some connection to the festival....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Most of the dramatic weight of the X-Files comes from the not-entirely-plausible idea that governments are engaged in and capable of grand conspiracies controlled throughout generations by smart and competent people. Students of history–of the Kennedy-era CIA’s involvement with Cuba, of Iran-Contra, of MK-ULTRA, etc–will naturally be skeptical of this idea. But at least the 20th century provides some grist for the mill....

David Banks/Getty Images Alfonso Soriano admires his sixth-inning homer last night. If not for a little bad luck—it stopped raining—the White Sox wouldn’t have lost to the Cubs again last night. The game was a makeup of a May 28th contest. The Cubs were winning that one, 2-0 in the third inning, when a downpour temporarily saved the Sox. The postponement was the best the south-siders could do that week, the Cubs trouncing them in the other three games....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Here’s Conrad Black, the former owner of the Sun-Times, writing from his federal prison cell in Florida to identify with impeached governor Rod Blagojevich. Black was convicted in 2007 of corrupt business practices and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Now the same U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago that prosecuted Black is after our governor, and Black calls U....

When the White Sox acquired Jake Peavy, shortly before the interleague trade deadline on July 31, he was supposed to be the addition that would make them serious World Series contenders. Yet by the time he actually debuted on September 19, not only the team’s championship hopes but their mere playoff aspirations were all but dashed. Team chemistry —that is, the chemistry of players who hang out day after day for eight months, sometimes developing a knack for winning and sometimes not—remains as elusive to managers as anyone else....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tomorrow evening at 6 PM, Northwestern University will host the second edition of their “Illuminating the Shadows” conference on film criticism. The focus this year is on the relationship between traditional criticism and academic film writing. The panelists are Elena Gorfinkel (a professor of art history and film studies at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Girish Shambu (a professor at Canisius College in New York who runs an esteemed film website) and Adrian Martin (former critic for Melbourne’s The Age, current professor, and coeditor, with Reader emeritus Jonathan Rosenbaum, of the excellent collection Movie Mutations)....

Even when we hate it. I was in New Orleans over Christmas and I didn’t hear about Katrina. I heard about Katrina and Rita and Ike and Gustav and Betsy and Camille. Betsy was the earliest, 1965. Some say the worst. New Orleans is still cleaning up from Katrina. But because it has survived one hurricane after another, New Orleans not only can look itself in the eye but likes to....

A first feature by director Rufus Norris, adapted from a first novel by Daniel Clay, this British drama nonetheless looks back, to Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird and its 1962 screen adaptation. Clay has said that his novel came to life when he “started to wonder how the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird would cope with life in the society we live in today, as times have changed so much in the eighty or so years since the events in that novel took place, yet, as basic human beings, I don’t think we’ve moved on a great deal at all....

Joe Lally has long been idolized for his awesome work as Fugazi’s bassist, but when he emerged as a singer and songwriter on the band’s later albums, most people were caught off guard (myself included). In the context of punk’s premiere bombast, his jangly cooing made for some real WTF. Fugazi hasn’t made an album or played a show in more than four years, but Lally did recruit Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto (among a who’s who of old-school D....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The hammer-on was always a joke during my high school and college years, a cheesy heavy metal signifier on par with the devil’s-horn gesture and spandex pants. But for New York art-rocker Marnie Stern the hammer-on is bread and butter. She picked up the techqnique after watching a Don Caballero video, and many of the reviews and articles I’ve read about her use the term “shredder” without irony....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The conference will consist of two panels. The first will ask, “How do people consume the news, and what do they do with it?” and the panelists will include Rich Gordon, director of digital technology in education at Medill; Andrew Huff, editor and publisher of Gapers Block; Amanda Maurer, social media producer for the Tribune; and Daniel X. O’Neil of everyblock....

When I interviewed city clerk Miguel del Valle about his mayoral campaign, he met me at the door of his near-west-side campaign office, introduced me to staffers and other visitors, and then ushered me into his room for a 90-minute on-the-record talk. In any event, at the time of the appellate court ruling, Emanuel was first in the polls by a big margin, and del Valle was last among the four major candidates, even though he’s the only one of the four to have been elected to citywide office....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Next gave two reasons for postponing the premiere of the Loewith/Palmer play–an adaptation of the 1936 sci-fi satire by Czech writer Karel Capek, who also wrote R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). The first, of course, was money: Capek’s tale of humans fighting a race of salamanders for world domination is “highly theatrical” and “incredibly ambitious,” says Loewith, Next’s outgoing artistic director, in a statement; with puppets by the marvelous Michael Montenegro, “it deserves more financial support than we can provide in this fiscal year....

See our 2011 New Year’s Eve Guide. Candlelight Yoga Preparty candlelight yoga with chanting, led by Yogahouse teacher Emily Palmer. Register online. Fri 12/31, 6-7:30 PM, Yogahouse, 740 N. Franklin, 312-202-9305, yogahousechicago.com, $12-$17. Cornstravaganza Corn Productions combines two and a half hours of sketch, improv, and stand-up comedy with food and an open bar, plus dancing after midnight. The show starts at 8:45 PM. Fri 12/31, 8 PM-2 AM, Cornservatory, 4210 N....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones has been contemplating cover songs on his blog recently, specifically how a great cover either Kills (“be killingly good, perhaps good enough to stand alongside the original”) or Owns (“redefine the song and steal it from the author”). I had that topic on my mind this weekend when I was talking with a friend about the CSS cover of L7’s “Pretend We’re Dead....

ANDRÉ WAGNER The GTW Local rapper James King (aka the GTW) has been a Bleader fixture since he teamed up with Bengfang to drop the 4814 EP back in September. Lately others have been getting clued in on King including Yours Truly, the popular music site behind the excellent “Songs From Scratch” series that pairs producers and rappers to create a new track; it’s responsible for the sultry psych-R&B track by Jeremih and Shlohmo, “Bo Peep (Do U Right),” and a great collaboration from Chance the Rapper and Nosaj Thing called “Paranoia,” which Chance released as part of the second song on Acid Rap, “Pusha Man....

Nickie Rodica worries that Ruby’s Fast Food, the name on the simple green-and-red sign outside his family’s restaurant, might give the impression that the tiny storefront specializes in hot dogs and pizza puffs. “If you just walked by you might just assume it’s regular fast food,” he says. Ruby has a repertoire of more than 120 dishes, any one of which might make an appearance on the steam table on a given day....