Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Culinary Historians of Chicago presents Flavors of the Fruitland: An Ode to Michigan, a talk by Justin Rashid of American Spoon Foods, Saturday from 10 AM to noon at the Robert Morris College Institute of Culinary Arts, eighth floor. He’ll discuss fruit varieties and history in Michigan, specifically the tart cherries of western Michigan and the role they’ve played in his company, and samples of American Spoon’s products will be available....

Lena Dunham in Girls As I am for a lot of things, I was late for Girls. And not just because I refuse to pay for HBO. I was avoiding the show—in part for the precociousness of Lena Dunham and my growing weariness with anything designated as hipster—but mainly because of the comparison Girls draws to another show lauded as a cultural touchstone: Sex and the City. Sex and the City premiered during my formative college years and went a long way in fucking up my worldview....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The very next day a zoning lawyer sent letters to Bucktown residents letting them know of a zoning-change proposal that, if passed by the City Council, would allow a developer to build an eight-story, 51-unit mixed-use condo complex with 248 parking spaces on the 1600 North block of Milwaukee, just north of the Coyote Building. The condo complex would be one of the tallest buildings in the area and, as word spreads, residents are up in arms....

Courtesy Illustrated Press Since 2011, local collective Illustrated Press has given the comic format more immediacy with its graphic journalism. (The 2013 Reader cover story “How to Survive a Shooting” won the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s format-buster award earlier this year.) Comprised of DNAinfo reporter Darryl Holliday and illustrators Erik Rodriguez and Jamie Hibdon, the Illustrated Press’s latest venture, a second full-length book entitled Kedzie Avenue, takes readers up and down that Chicago street, retelling stories and analyzing the diverse communities that surround the thoroughfare as it cuts through the north, south, and west sides....

On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia police department mounted an assault against a group of black revolutionaries, calling themselves MOVE, who were barricaded inside a townhouse in the Powelton Village neighborhood of west Philly. For months the group had been cursing out neighbors through a bullhorn, threatening them and the police, and members had erected two bunkers on the roof of the house, equipped with gun turrets, that gave them a commanding tactical position over the street....

The Police Problem Also look at this reasoning . . . “5,000 beat officers on the streets. The police work three shifts, so that would be 1,666 beat officers out at any given time—minus everyone who’s got the day off or is taking vacation.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Well actually how I see it is that 5,000 officers, assuming each works 5 shifts a week, total 25,000 available shifts ....

QI’m a straight man at that age where the general public still considers me young. Although I’ve attended many weddings, I have no interest in marrying or even being in a relationship. I never have. Forgive me for working my own sexuality into this, but I have to say: When I was at that age the general public unanimously considers young—still a teenager—I walked into my mother’s bedroom and informed her that I was a faggot....

Lead Story Unclear on the Concept Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In March, after receiving numerous noise complaints from neighbors, the Scandia Family Fun Center in Sacramento, California, instituted a new policy for its weeks-old main attraction, a 16-story, 65-mile-an-hour thrill ride called the Scandia Screamer: riders now must remain silent at all times or the ride will be stopped immediately. Said one 15-year-old patron, “It’s kind of a bummer....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last fall when I first got a copy of Neptune City (Red Ink/Columbia), the debut album from singer Nicole Atkins, I skipped through it and then put it aside. Maybe I was turned off by her designation by Rolling Stone as an artist to watch, but I was wrong to be. Since she performs tomorrow night at the Subterranean I thought I’d give it another listen a few days ago, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long–after three spins it has taken up residence in my head....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The networks are preparing to unleash unto the world a whole new crop of sitcoms, and I imagine many a producer is busy wringing his hands and dabbing sweat from his brow as he waits to see how a mercurial public receives the fruits of his labor. Will anyone watch? Will the network request more episodes or won’t they?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fortunately, a German tourist came by; she was apparently so dazzled by the desert landscape that it didn’t occur to her that I could have been a psycho killer (I am not). It amazed her that she could drive almost four hours, a trip that in her home country could take her through a parade of history and cultures, and see nothing but the occasional gas station....

QMy girlfriend and I have been on and off for almost two years. I took her back after she cheated on me. The only thing now is that she wants to have a threesome. I am really not down with sharing her, but I am willing to do it because otherwise some other girl will do it for her. I told her that I want to be stoned when it happens, because I don’t think I can handle it sober....

Q I’m a girl who’s sabotaged my relationship. I was angry; I had complaints. But my real issue was a store of repressed childhood traumas, and I was working it out on the person closest to me, my BF. We had something magical, and I destroyed it. I’m now willing to give 110 percent to fix it. I’m writing this column on an airplane, and I was totally in the zone when I noticed that the guy sitting next to me was reading the text on my laptop screen....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’d been hearing ominous rumblings from agents in the field about the demise of Tori Shin, one of a handful of legitimate Japanese izakayas out in the northwest burbs, but it wasn’t till I read John Greenfield’s account of owner Toshiro “Tony” Koneko’s relocation to rural Rochelle that I realized there was a bright silver lining. Moving into the Mount Prospect strip mall was Ramen Misoya, the first midwest outpost of a large Japanese ramen chain that specializes in miso-based ramen....

The South Loop was a much more likely location for an underground music and arts space in 1999, when Griffin Rodriguez first moved in. McCormick Place West didn’t loom over the block, and the neighborhood wasn’t enveloped in the scaffolding of what seems like dozens of concurrent construction projects. Back then the loft known today as the Shape Shoppe, 4,000 square feet in a former warehouse, was headquarters to the local Truckstop label and housed a couple recording studios—one run by the Truckstop guys and the other by saintly soundman Elliot Dicks....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I know LA’s Lucky Dragons only through some of their recordings, an ecumenical bricolage of laptop fuckery, sing-songy pop, broken-down folk, and plenty of unidentifiable noise and clutter. The band, which currently consists of founder Luke Fischbeck, Sarah Rara, and a large, revolving cast of collaborators, has created a cottage industry of small-run releases–check out their discography and you’ll see that most of their catalog is out of print....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Not the best week to have a lot to do and not a lot to say, but GRod’s TV tour just doesn’t interest me, weirdly. It’s clearly designed to draw as much attention from the impeachment trial as possible (lending some credence to John Kass’s belief that he’s of sound mind), and judging from coverage, it’s working. I don’t exactly know what the goal is, but he’s pitting readers against television watchers and he clearly has the numbers....

Now in its third edition, this touring anthology concocted by animators Don Hertzfeldt (Rejected) and Mike Judge blows the doors off the recent Spike and Mike packages: its 12 shorts are funny and entertaining but also artistically impressive. In the British Rabbit Run Wrake animates children’s primer images that are followed around by basic spelling words; a boldly colored 2-D experience, it pits a boy and girl with a yen for animal slaughter against a crazed little idol that can swat wasps and turn them into precious gems....

No Exit The Hypocrites Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In Sartre’s 90-minute one-act, three people have been struck dead in their prime and sentenced to eternal damnation. A womanizing journalist who hid his cowardice behind pacifist rhetoric when he deserted the army, Joseph Garcin has been executed by a firing squad. Inez Serrano, a lesbian postal clerk who took malicious pleasure in turning people against one another, has been murdered by her lover....

thursday18 Thursday18 Lionel LouekeWild Beasts Friday19 CougarsFour TetMathew JohnsonLionel LouekeRetribution Gospel ChoirWild Beasts Saturday20 Chicago Underground DuoLionel LouekePatti Smith Sunday21 Bela Fleck: The Africa ProjectMerle Haggard & Kris KristoffersonLionel LouekeMars Monday22 Taken by Trees Tuesday23 Masters of Persian Music Wednesday24 In the Country WILD BEASTS When I first heard Wild Beasts‘ 2008 debut, Limbo, Panto, I dismissed them as overdramatic Morrissey enthusiasts, trying and failing to wed theatrical vocals to minimalist indie pop the way Antony & the Johnsons can....