Green Party candidate Jeremy Karpen says that as he was greeting voters outside his Logan Square polling place on Election Day, he watched the same scenario time and again. A campaign worker for 39th District state rep Toni Berrios, whom Karpen was trying to unseat, would pull a voter aside, greet him familiarly in Spanish, hand him a palm card . . . and then tell him that Karpen was with the Tea Party....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The long, diverse district stretches along the lakefront from the Gold Coast to South Shore, and since 2006 it’s been represented by Elga Jeffries, who was picked by Democratic committeemen after rep Lovana “Lou” Jones died. But Jeffries is widely considered a goner after a quiet stint in the legislature, and four others have lined up to take her on....
CASINO JACK This harsh philosophy emerges in the very first scene, as Abramoff brushes his teeth in an office men’s room and addresses himself in the mirror. “Mediocrity is where most people live,” he observes. “Mediocrity is the elephant in the room. It’s ubiquitous. Mediocrity [is] in your schools, it’s in your dreams, it’s in your family. . . And those of us who know this, those of us who understand the disease of the dull, we do something about it....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The seat belonged to Zell as CEO of the Tribune Company because the president of the Gridiron Club is Dick Cooper — formerly of the Los Angeles Times but now, technically, of the Tribune Company’s combined Washington bureau. Since Zell wasn’t going to the March 21 dinner, his seat was passed down to Tony Hunter, publisher of the Chicago Tribune....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A nastily contrariwise way of remembering Tim Russert was published Friday in Canada’s most important newspaper, the Globe and Mail, by one of its best-known columnists, Rick Salutin. Russert was a familiar face on the TV screens of millions of Canadians, but even so he was a foreigner, and Salutin examined him phenomenologically, as Canadian intellectuals like to examine Americans....
The Warped Tour returns to the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre (I-80 and Harlem in Tinley Park) on Sat 7/31 with a full-to-bursting bill of punk rock, hardcore, emo, crunkcore, ska, metalcore, and more. Of the more than 70 bands spread across the festival’s seven stages, several have been around the block a few times, including local heroes Alkaline Trio, California pop-punk troopers Face to Face, “up the punx” loyalists the Casualties, ska punks Reel Big Fish, and mid-90s skate-punk mainstays Pennywise....
A recent post on one Rogers Park blog began: “Proof that Barack Obama is a friend of Satan.” Another asks, “Commander Sobczyk, what are you planning to do about GANGS, sir, like the Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, and whatever other SCUM roam the streets of the 24th District?” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Of the tens of thousands of local officials in the United States, the choice of a shady, ineffective, unresponsive official like Joe Moore seems odd indeed,” Tom Mannis wrote at the Chicago News Bench (rogersparkbench....
To hear some tell it, when Chicago was selected as the U.S. candidate for the 2016 Summer Olympic games a few weeks ago, the citizenry rejoiced. “Chicago sports fans cheer a victory unlike any other,” read a headline in the April 15 Chicago Tribune; the article went on to describe the joyous celebration at ESPN Zone in River North. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “This all about moving people out, brother,” said Louis Carter, a softball player....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I don’t have a blanket disdain for Christmas music like most folks I know. As a kid I eagerly awaited the end of Thanksgiving because it marked the date I could start irritating my mother by playing her holiday records. That doesn’t mean I have much of a stomach for the holiday music piped in at every retail establishment around the corner—I find most of it cloying and schmaltzy....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Stroger’s biggest problem has never been nepotism or financial mismanagement. He’s an incompetent boob, which may be the only unforgivable sin in Chicago politics. No matter what happens with Dunnings, my favorite Stroger mishap will always be Cook County Magazine. It’s not so much that he invested taxpayer money in thinly-veiled hagiography, it’s that he fucked it up so badly it had to be scrapped....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Beats me (maybe it’s affectionate, like Spanish diminutives?), but Towbar, a coffeehouse and cafe that opened in Rogers Park earlier this year, has a grown-up menu notwithstanding its “bevvies” and “butties.” All three owners are from England—husband-and-wife Jamie and Debbie Evans are native Liverpudlians—but Debbie says she’s always been more interested in European cooking, which she taught in Japan at one time....
Macaron Chicago macaronchicago.com Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Someday sociologists will look back at the Great Macaron Craze of 2010 and wonder how a French treat that existed in semiobscurity for centuries suddenly seemed to be everywhere in the food world. Part of the answer surely has to do with affordable luxury in an economic downturn; for not much more than a buck, you can nosh on something that combines the delicate sophistication of an Alinea amuse-bouche with the sugar rush of a Krispy Kreme doughnut....
The bond between local hip-hop acts and the folks behind this city’s streetwear stores and brands is tight, and the lines between the communities are often blurred as folks from both scenes are friends and collaborators—for example, Jugrnaut co-owner Manny Rodriguez DJs for rapper and one-man pizza party ShowYouSuck. Walk into Leaders 1354 or Saint Alfred any day of the week and there’s a good chance you’ll see a rapper or producer whose tracks have recently been featured on Fake Shore Drive, Ruby Hornet, or Elevator hanging out or leisurely perusing new gear....
Brain fathered by Brian Posen—whose other brainchildren include Stage 773 and Street Tempo Theatre—the Chicago Sketchfest heads into its twelfth year promising the “largest sketch comedy festival America has ever seen.” Stretched over two consecutive weekends, the fest will roll some 130 troupes through Stage 773’s four theaters. Two of those troupes are musical improv ensemble Cupid Players (Sat 1/5 and 1/12, 8 PM) and silent improv trio Bri-Ko (Sat 1/5 and 1/12, 11 PM), both of which feature—you guessed it—Posen....
On Wednesday, June 26, Cameron Esposito ended a set in her new home of Los Angeles by saying, “Thanks a lot, Supreme Court, for burning all of my material.” That was the day SCOTUS handed down two decisions that are bright spots in a session that undermined other civil rights protections, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and letting stand a lower-court ruling that California’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional....
This Wolf has read that plants are partial to the bass frequencies of house music, but we haven’t heard about somebody writing songs for our green friends since Stevie Wonder “branched out” with Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants in 1979. Anyway, muttonchopped tubaist Mark Messing, leader of local gonzo marching band Mucca Pazza, has composed some tunes about the plants at the Garfield Park Conservatory—and he wants everyone to sing along....
I read recently that “time . . . passes more quickly when gravity is reduced.” Assuming gravity is reduced at higher altitudes, that means time goes by faster in Santa Fe than in Poughkeepsie. What’s up with that? —Chris in SF, NM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You heard right, Chris. But unless you’re way more anal than anybody I want living in my reference frame, you won’t have to reset your watch....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For years, baseball statistical experts from Bill James on down have been debating the role of the closer. Is it best to save your best relief pitcher for the ninth inning and the last three outs? Or should he be deployed in the middle innings, when it might be the actual critical moment of the game, say, with runners on in the sixth or seventh inning and the opponents’ heart of the order coming up?...
I have a slightly ambivalent relationship* with barleywines. Done right, they’re one of my favorite kinds of beer in the wintertime, but because of their high alcohol content—usually pushing double digits—and the concomitant need to heap a whole bunch of crap into the mash tun when brewing them, they sometimes turn out hot and harsh, with a mess of big flavors clanging discordantly. Time usually mellows a beer that’s strong enough to cellar, so I was encouraged by Central Waters‘ claim that their Y2K barleywine—more properly called Kosmyk Charlie’s Y2K Catastrophe Ale and “originally designed for the Y2K survival kit,” whatever that means—is aged for a year before it reaches the drinking public....
“We are people who don’t want to eat meat with poop in it; you are people that sell poopy meat. Why is it hard to understand the disconnect?” While this is true of shopping bags, I do not believe giving bags made of corn a bad name is a helpful or “green” plan and doing so could cause some damage to the movement. As an alternative to garbage bags or dog waste bags, bags made of corn are the best thing on the market....
