Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In September the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board allowed Advocate Health Care to downsize Bethany Hospital on the west side and turn it into a specialty hospital for long-term care. This past weekend Advocate announced it will seek to open a new hospital in the far-northwestern suburb of Round Lake. For details check out the Blogging Mayor of Round Lake, by mayor and real estate agent Bill Gentes, which includes links to newspaper stories....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Josh Crow Garance Doré gets illustrated and blogged. Isa Giallorenzo The Galaxy Dress for reals Josh Crow Museum of the Science and Industry vice president Sheila Cawley sports the Mirror Handbag by CuteCircuit Isa Giallorenzo The Mirror Handbag by CuteCircuit Josh Crow Ryan Genz, CEO of CuteCircuit, holding the Mirror Handbag...

Mark and Jeri Webb’s collections include—but are far from limited to—vintage travel postcards, wooden deer heads, antique Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, outsider art, religious iconography, and the old wooden shoes that hang like crown molding around the perimeter of their kitchen. “It starts with one,” Mark explains, “and then there’s another one, and before you know it— “ Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Out of respect for sensitive guests, the Webbs keep religious iconography like crucifixes and altar candles upstairs, in the master bedroom....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Polish reedist Waclaw Zimpel has been a somewhat regular visitor to Chicago in recent years, first appearing at the Umbrella Music Festival in 2010 and, more recently, as a member of Ken Vandermark’s Resonance Ensemble at last year’s Chicago Jazz Festival. In August he released Stone Fog (ForTune), a tender quartet album combining original tunes and group improvisations, all of which gravitate toward a subtle, restrained approach marked by Zimpel’s lyric clarinet playing (he sticks exclusively to the instrument here)....

Doug Albers, artistic director of Bard and Fool Theater Group is fully on board with: The Dream of the Burning Boy Recently I had the opportunity to see The Dream of the Burning Boy by David West Read. The show, at Profiles Theatre through April 14, is directed by Joe Jahraus. What really impressed me was the way the cast understood the beats of the show. So often I see dramas that are dramas from start to finish, or comedies that are comedies from start to finish....

Rey Andujar, author and performer in Teatro Vista/Collaboraction’s Yo Solo Festival is nourishing his soul at: Calles y Sueños Calles y Sueños has become the place I go to get comfort food for my art soul. The project is headed by Pilsen cultural activist and advocate Christina Obregon, who works to provide an alternative space for local and international artists. What interests me the most about this cultural house is its constant motion....

The Near North Side used to be filled with shady characters and dubious businesses selling the sorts of things you’d only want to carry home in a very opaque brown-paper wrapping. The dubious businesses? Sex stores, of course. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But since the neighborhood’s been cleaned up and most of the sex stores have been replaced with high-rise hotels and chain restaurants that cater to tourists—banishing the dirty stuff to the Internet—only a few remain....

Washed up in the wave of high-profile Italian openings (Bar Toma, Balena, even Nellcote) are two restaurants that couldn’t be more at odds: RPM and Bar Ombra. The next time I want to disappear I’m headed for the latter, the Venetian-style bar from Marty Fosse and Tim Rasmussen, a radical transformation of one-half of their once overextended farm-to-table concept Acre, which continues to operate alongside Ombra in the same Andersonville space....

Eduardo Verdugo / AP Photo It wasn’t proven that Alfredo Vazquez-Hernandez was a top aide to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán (above), but he was still sentenced to 22 years in prison. Federal judge Ruben Castillo said Monday that he didn’t see solid evidence showing that Alfredo Vazquez-Hernandez met with Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, let alone that he was a logistical coordinator for the drug organization. “I will tell you on behalf of all Chicagoans and all the citizens of this country that we are tired of drug trafficking,” said the judge....

FITNESS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There’s something to the fact that this fitness facility is called a “life center” rather than a gym or athletic club. Affiliated with (and right behind) Swedish Covenant Hospital and dedicated to overall wellness, Galter houses the hospital’s cardio-rehabilitation unit, offers child care, sponsors community events such as fun runs, and has massage therapists and nutrition counselors on staff....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The chipotle en adobo that dresses these sandwiches is the linchpin, smoky with a slow burn, made in-house with morita peppers, a smaller fruitier chipotle, and Grandma Esperanza’s pineapple vinegar. The cemita Milanesa is one of the draws: a crisp, light sesame-seed bun made to order at a local bakery, a layer of avocado, a schmear of chipotle en adobo, a crisp-fried butterflied pork chop topped with a shower of Oaxacan cheese, and, in summer months, papalo–like cilantro on steroids–which Tony’s mother grows for the restaurant....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Imbibe, a cute new bimonthly magazine out of Portland, Oregon, that I picked up at In Fine Spirits this weekend, may be the best entry I’ve seen lately in the growing subgenre of drink porn. The lavish, glowing full-page spreads are quite catholic in scope–the March/April issue includes features on coffee, sake, tequila, juicers, a truly fascinating look at organic herb-infused beers, and a kinda pedestrian primer on wine tasting....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yesterday morning the Reader‘s digital content editor, Tal Rosenberg, sent out an e-mail extensively detailing how we, the Pitchfork-attending staff of the Reader, are going to cover the festival in real time. Given, we already produced a comprehensive Pitchfork guide with write-ups of every band—as well as detailed, hour-by-hour itineraries—but the buck can’t and won’t stop there. Blog posts must be posted, tweets tweeted, and Instagram photos taken so they can be shared, again and again and again....

Deerhoof has slimmed down to a trio on its new album, Friend Opportunity (Kill Rock Stars), but in a lot of ways this bubblegum-prog band is bigger than ever. Never skittish about their disjointedness, they’ve gotten bolder with it: twinkling micropop gives way to manic drum fills and dissonant guitar freak-outs, or symphonic ELO-esque choruses are interrupted by boogie breaks. Sometimes the changes come all at once; other times they’re preceded by awkwardly long pauses....

The Wikipedia page for “Hall of Fame” by Irish pop-rockers the Script calls it the group’s “first cumbia song,” which is hilarious considering that cumbia is a type of traditional Colombian folk music whose modern electronic incarnation contains some of the most daringly innovative sounds being made in the world right now, while “Hall of Fame” is almost fascinating for its total absence of anything even approaching ambition. At one point there could have been something mildly adventurous about combining the broad sweep of a vaguely U2-ish rock anthem with the vocal cadences and aspirational narrative of a rap song, but that was well before a vast number of “Lose Yourself” knockoffs drained every last bit of the small amount of excitement that concept ever had....

September Glenda Hatchett presents her self-help book, Dare to Take Charge: How to Live Your Life on Purpose. 7 PM, Borders, 2210 W. 95th, 773-445-5471. Danielle Dutton reads from her debut novel, Sprawl. 7:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299. Kate Zambreno reads from her novel O Fallen Angel. 7:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299. Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore’s 20th-Anniversary Celebration Author panels through September....

Chicago: A Biography Dominic Pacyga (University of Chicago Press) A biography? You’re treating Chicago like a person? Even after teaching the history of Chicago for 30 years, I wasn’t aware of the paranoia about anarchism that has been in the city, from the Haymarket on, till about 1968. That struck me. Lucy Parsons, the wife of Albert Parsons, who was hung after the Haymarket affair [in 1886], was still getting blamed for things in the 1920s....

Check out our photos of the bands that played on Friday. See our previews of acts playing on: Saturday ·Sunday Riot Fest main » Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of the sharpest contributors to the pop-punk canon is Screeching Weasel from little old Prospect Heights, Illinois. The number one influence on front man and sole constant member Ben “Weasel” Foster is the Ramones—which shows not only in the band’s 1992 track-for-track cover of the punk rock pioneers’ debut LP, but also in Weasel’s own up-tempo and hypermelodic tunes....

Kevin Warwick, Reader staff writer, is obsessed with… Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sparks, “Mickey Mouse” The Mael brothers have been experimenting with the Sparks brand of quirky new-wave synth-pop since the early 70s. The 1982 album Angst in My Pants was at that point one of the band’s most accessible, finally prompting recognition in the States. Plus, what says “America!” better than a track about Mickey Mouse?...

An as-told-to interview with a Chicago publishing whiz, for our Spring Books issue. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “When I first started Agate Publishing in spring 2003, I was working out of my basement. I had a cell phone, a laptop, and a DSL line. That was pretty much Agate Publishing. “Around that same time, some former colleagues of mine from a folded dot-com reached out to me about creating their own content for the schools where they then worked....