Dorothy Andries described her final day at Pioneer Press: “They did walk me out the door. They have to walk me out the door.” “On Friday the list of people leaked out and Friday morning there were people all over the newsroom crying and the layoffs hadn’t even begun yet. Someone said, ‘You’re on the list.’ I said, ‘It’ll be OK. It’ll be OK.’ I went to the human resources department and said ‘I know I’m on the list—let’s get this done....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mike Sula gets the uncanny feeling he’s dining among Van Gogh’s potato eaters at Andersonville’s Vincent, where chef Joncarl Lachman (HB Home Bistro) has turned the former La Tache into a dark Dutch boite and in addition to eclectic contemporary American dishes is serving the food of his heritage, from maatjesharing shots of genever (aka Holland gin) to zaansemosterdsoep (mustard soup) to a $25 three-course prix fixe Dutch meal....

A first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “My dad? Everybody loved my dad. He was always cracking wise. He was a lampshade-on-the-head kind of guy. He had a goat. Her name was Bella. He’d walk her down Devon Avenue. ‘What kind of dog is that?’ kids would ask him. My dad would say, ‘It’s a goat dog....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like every revision so far, the new ordinance is riddled with exemptions: Events booked at venues with fixed seating, events promoted by licensed nonprofits, events involving fewer than 99 people and with no admission charge. Family picnics are singled out for exemption, which means the ordinance has at least reached a point in its evolution where its language isn’t so vague that it could be applied to literally any event that more than a couple of people show up to for any reason at all in any setting in the city at any time....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America’s war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq....

QMy husband is a very kinky submissive man. When we were dating, I found out that he’d been talking to multiple people online and that he had met up with a professional dom a couple of times. I felt betrayed that he had done this all behind my back, even though I’d told him that I would be down with him seeing a dom. (I even offered to buy him a session for his birthday!...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m sure there’s a degree of nostalgia clouding my judgment, but Martha’s Vineyard Ferries are the kind of rock band that nonchalantly displays everything that’s been wrong with indie rock over the last 15 years by showing how to do it right. The music is powerful yet subtle, lean yet satisfying. The trio features relative young gun Elisha Wiesner (of Kahoots, and a Martha’s Vineyard native) with a couple of indie-rock veterans who’ve always been models of good taste and peerless ethics—Chicago’s Bob Weston (Shellac, Volcano Suns, Mission of Burma) and Portland’s Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine, Pullman)—and together they create flinty, no-fuss rock tunes of remarkable economy, heft, and impact....

The most succinct first-person account of living with Alzheimer’s disease remains the one provided by the first person diagnosed with it. Auguste Deter was 51 years old and otherwise healthy when she was brought, in 1901, to Dr. Alois Alzheimer’s clinic in Frankfurt, Germany, with a strange case of what looked like premature senility characterized by confusion, volatile behavior, and severe memory lapses. “I have lost myself,” she said. But lately Alice has begun tripping over ordinary words....

Owning a vintage motorcycle can be a test of one’s patience and bank account. No matter how sharp and collectible it may look, once the cobwebs are brushed off and it’s polished to a sparkle, the bike still has to get running. And if you have, say, a tiny and somewhat rare ’72 Kawasaki G3 two-stroke, the fix isn’t as easy as strolling down to AutoZone with a grocery list of parts....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Instead, he switched to culinary school with the intention of working in Chicago, and did his best to follow the food scene here. When he heard in 2001 that a Thomas Keller protege named Grant Achatz had taken over as chef of Trio in Evanston, he went to dine there—”It just spun my whole world of food around. I never had a meal remotely close to that, taking food like that and just stretching your brain beyond what you normally perceive it as....

QI am a straight 29-year-old guy and I’ve been into ball busting—having my balls kicked and stomped—since I was 14. The fucked-up thing is, I only enjoy getting my balls busted by other guys. I’ve been hit in the balls by girls, and it doesn’t do anything for me. I thought I might be bisexual, since I want guys to kick me in the balls, but I don’t get turned on by the idea of sucking cock or getting fucked by a guy....

Robert Pattinson, bigger than life and confined to an ant farm One way that David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis improves upon the Don DeLillo source novel is that it balances DeLillo’s cerebral prose with an exacting sense of corporeality. The stretch limo in which much of the book (and even more of the movie) takes place is an impossible space—and seeing it rather than imagining it makes one better appreciate the brilliance of the conceit....

Scott Waguespack pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the election season when he toppled Daley-backed incumbent Ted Matlak in a runoff for alderman of the 32nd Ward. But on Monday afternoon the police officer checking IDs outside City Council chambers didn’t recognize the bespectacled 36-year-old Waguespack, who looks like a friendly math teacher or the manager of a shoe store, so he stopped him. If Waguespack and the eight other new aldermen are going to be agents of change in the council, they’ve first got to get in the door....

Adobo Grill The four-course prix fixe menu features a choice of items such as guacamole prepared tableside, chicken breast with serrano ham, empanadas de barbacoa, and several desserts, plus unlimited margaritas, beer, and wine and a tequila toast at midnight. Live mariachi music; seatings at 9, 9:30, and 10 PM. Reservations required. a1610 N. Wells, 312-266-7999, adobogrill.com, $89. Ballo Appetizer buffet and pizza, plus a DJ, dancing, and a champagne toast from 10 PM to 2 AM....

The convent was pea green inside and out, with jutting aluminum awnings and tall brown oak doors. Fruitless orange trees lined the entrance. Sister Donna trekked the six of us, four girls, two boys, past the pruney gray-haired woman in the front office. She had sinewy hands and a smile too big for her face. Aleks Sennwald Lucy was the only friend I was allowed to spend the night with, but not on weeknights and never at my house....

After a Bad Brains show in D.C. in 1981, Vic Bondi went home to Chicago and instructed his group Direct Drive to play faster and harder. In spring ’82, he changed the band’s name to Articles of Faith. Later that year they put out their first seven-inch EP, just in time for the heyday of American hardcore. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Articles of Faith were every bit as fierce, tight, and distinctive as Black Flag, Minor Threat, and Dead Kennedys....

Because Charles Blackstone has so much in common with Peter Hapworth, the narrator of his new novel, Vintage Attraction, it’s tempting to imagine it’s a roman a clef. Both are literary fellows: Blackstone is the managing editor of the online journal Bookslut, while Hapworth is a hapless and unhappy freshman comp instructor. And both marry sommeliers who have become local celebrities. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Blackstone’s spouse is Alpana Singh, former host of Check, Please!...

Canadian singer–songwriter Julie Doiron has been doing her solo gig since the mid-90s, drifting from obscurity to semi-obscurity despite keeping up consistent quality. Her records have always been bedroom intimate and minimally arranged; she spins bare-all, painful narratives out of domestic relationships, but she does it ever so quietly and plainly. Sometimes too quietly and plainly. So her latest, Woke Myself Up (Jagjaguwar), comes as something of a surprise. The stories are just as dark and nuanced, but the cottony country drift of her sultry voice is edged with something a little pissed and raw....

Four music-biz vets formed Omnivore Recordings in 2010, and since then they’ve released a steady stream of interesting-looking reissues. It took me a while to take note, though last year I reviewed an Alex Chilton collection on the imprint called Free Again: The “1970” Sessions. That anthology brings together tracks the pop genius cut as his first band, the Box Tops, was disintegrating, capturing a raw pop glow that presaged the emergence of Big Star....

If Charlie Trotter hadn’t suggested eating Rick Tramonto’s liver to Tribune reporter Mark Caro, there probably wouldn’t have been a foie gras ban in Chicago. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Caro—an entertainment reporter who’d interviewed and written stories about Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Michael Jordan, and Halle Berry—says he got a bigger reaction to his piece, “Liver and Let Live,” than anything he’d ever written in his 20-some years at the Tribune....