Bars C & S Four booths and a rail are all that make up Chuck and Sharon’s cozy if unremarkable dive, where the ’85 Bears remain the heroes of the day. Darts, video bowling, and a jukebox provide the entertainment. Cash only. Mon-Sat3 PM-2 AM, 5053 N. Lincoln, no phone. Hidden Cove Anyone who’s been out too late north of Irving Park Road has at one time or another been pulled (or pulled someone) into this late-night karaoke bar, most likely with mixed results....

Coins, aka Angela Mullenhour (Sybris) and Ellen Bunch (Reds and Blue), are dropping their debut full-length, Recital Pressures, this week on local cassette label Plustapes; the release show is December 17 at the Hideout. This kicks off a busy season for Plustapes—possibly the most prolific label Chicago has seen in years—with the debut of Grey Ghost (Brian Griffith from Very Truly Yours) in January and another live cassette from Disappears (with Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums) in February....

On June 11, ten days before the first performances of Mary Zimmerman’s much-anticipated new show, The Jungle Book, at the Goodman Theatre, Silk Road Rising artistic director Jamil Khoury fired a missive into the blogosphere that got the attention of the local theater community by blasting the writer-director. In 2007, when Khoury’s company was hosting a conference of south Asian theater professionals, he’d taken a couple dozen attendees to a performance of a Zimmerman play at the Goodman....

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Plenty of movies strive for topicality, but occasionally something like The Kids Are All Right slaps you in the face with the world you’re actually living in. The first sperm bank in the U.S. opened in the early 70s—almost two generations ago—but this is the first movie I can think of that’s treated artificial insemination not as some sort of gimmick for comedy or melodrama but as an established fact of American life....

In 2002 you said, “Long a target of fringe groups, fluoridation is widely considered one of the great public-health achievements of the last century.” My wife has shown me a lot of Internet back-and-forth suggesting a host of problems that can be blamed on fluoridation. Some say fluoride is industrial waste and that the mining industry duped us into thinking it’s healthy so we’d want it in our water. So is ßuoride deadly or healthy, or do we just not know?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Does a restaurant exist if Google can’t find it?” Mike Sula philosophically asks this week. Well, yes, in the case of West Town’s Two, a new neighborhood bistro from Yamandu Perez, chef-owner of Hinsdale’s Zak’s Place. Nevertheless, the place suffers from something of an identity crisis, distinguished by neither its concept (locally sourced, eh? what else is new?) nor its execution....

Matt, your friendly Bulls blogger from BlogABull.com, is tuning in to: The Ricky Gervais Show cartoon An animated version of the best bits of HBO’s Ricky Gervais Show features the exuberant wit of its titular ringleader and his equally brilliant writing partner Stephen Merchant. But its real star is (as they call him) the “round-headed buffoon” Karl Pilkington. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Karl’s unique, bizarre view of the world is so unintentionally hilarious that you’d almost think it was scripted if it wasn’t so perfect....

The University of Michigan’s newspaper, the Michigan Daily, has a good article that uses the microcosm of the Ann Arbor record-store scene to talk about the business of selling music on a macrocosmic level. Most of the piece isn’t too encouraging, as you’d expect, but I still got a warm feeling just from thinking about the great Ann Arbor music stores I used to spend so much time in. Wazoo Records was huge for me when I was growing up near the city, and I’ve probably bought more music from them than from any single other record store....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Now that the 12 O’Clock Track has been a Reader staple for a couple of years (I’m guessing on the time frame, but it feels about right), I’m sure the various contributors have developed different ways of tackling the weekly responsibility. If you hadn’t noticed, my turn comes each Wednesday. Sometimes I come across something during the week that I tag as my next pick, but things don’t always work out—I had an amazing song from a new reissue I intended to use today, but this morning I learned it wasn’t possible to get permission to do so....

The titular copier in Herman Melville’s short story is a polite but obstinate man. Asked to perform a task, Bartleby considerately replies, “I’d prefer not to.” His boss can’t fathom this eccentric behavior–and smartly, this stage adaptation by director Alexander Gelman and the Organic Theater Company ensemble doesn’t seek to explain it. Instead the focus is Bartleby’s impact on his mild-mannered, well-intentioned employer (Bryan Wakefield, brightly amusing). As part of the show’s inventive, funny high jinks, the bothered boss has gained two clownish shadows who embody his agitation or soothe him....

Then I got in touch with Coleen Davison. “We’d been [Tribune] subscribers for 12 or 13 years,” she told me. “Obviously we’ve seen changes we weren’t thrilled by, but the last redesign was the final straw. It was sound-bite journalism — all pictures, no stories.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last September 29 the Tribune, exclaiming “It’s a whole new day,” presented its recreated self to Chicago, the fanfare and visual razzmatazz intended to mask the blunt reality that for financial reasons the Tribune was shrinking its news hole....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But for some time I’ve been meaning to give a shout out to a lesser known and lamentably rare La Quercia pork product. A few weeks ago a friend returned from the Norwalk, Iowa, prosciuttificio with several pounds of luscious, fatty guanciale, the dry cured jowl of the hog (thanks Joel). It’s indispensable for a true spaghetti alla carbonara, or anything that calls for pancetta....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Part thriller, part social history, this tense 2008 drama traces the rise and fall of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, a violent communist terror group whose track record of carnage across West Germany in the late 60s and early 70s made the Weather Underground look like a tea party. Adapting a book by Stefan Aust, writer-director Uli Edel takes the time to particularize the German political climate beyond the usual 60s boilerplate before plunging into the heated personal politics inside the gang, whose opposite poles were a ruthless criminal, Andreas Baader, and an intellectual journalist, Ulrike Meinhof....

See our reviews and live coverage of the bands playing on: Friday · Saturday ·Sunday Afterparties Pitchfork main » Peter MargasakReader staff writer 5:15 PM But let’s face it—my day is reserved for three strong-voiced women: 1) Angel Olsen . . . Gwynedd StuartReader social media manager 3:20 PM If the Fresh and Onlys had a baby with Broadcast, I think it would sound kind of like Frankie Rose. Also, I like the Vivian Girls and she used to be one....

Chicago Green Festival Hundreds of green businesses hawk their wares, including organic beer and wine and vegetarian food. Activities include workshops, films, yoga, kids’ programs, and talks by Bill Ayers (see the Business), columnist Jim Hightower, conceptual artist Damali Ayo, and others. aFri 5/15, 11 AM-6 PM, Sat 5/16, 10 AM-7 PM, Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand, 312-595-5184, greenfestivals.org, $15, $10 students, bike riders, and union members. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This will make it 18 years for the big crafts fair on Navy Pier. SOFA (aka the Sculptural Objects and Functional Art show) has come down in size from the good old days before the economy crashed, when the number of participating galleries reportedly topped 100. As we go to press, the fair’s website lists a comparatively modest 58 exhibitors, with another 11 joining in under the aegis of SOFA’s sister event, the Intuit Show of Folk & Outsider Art....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Radiohead front man Thom Yorke’s band, Atoms for Peace, plays UIC Pavilion tonight. The Reader‘s Peter Margasak says that on the band’s debut album Amok, “Robotic grooves and beats dominate the cryptic, minimalist music, but thanks to its constant metamorphosis . . . and the emotional strength of Yorke’s introverted, nasal croon, it opens up like wine with repeated listens....

QYou usually get mail about the sex lives of your readers, being a “sex advice columnist” and all, but I have a problem that has nothing to do with sex. I have a parenting problem, and given that you are a fellow parent, I’m hoping you have some insight. Is there an ethical problem with me trying to convince George to adopt my values, in spite of my brother’s intention to raise his son with “his values”?...

Seven years ago, drummer Mike Reed and cornetist Josh Berman launched a weekly jazz series at the Hungry Brain, a cozy little bar on Belmont Avenue. That was nothing new—since the mid-90s members of the local jazz community had been setting up weekly gigs at all kinds of places that weren’t jazz clubs per se. But Reed was thinking bigger. Not only did he register the duo as a not-for-profit, Emerging Improvisers, with the idea of securing grants down the road, he began investing his own money into the series....

HIP-HOP | Vic Spencer goes in on Odd Future Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Spencer, a member of Naledge-led collective the Brainiac Society, says he’s been listening to Tyler and Odd Future since 2008’s Odd Future Tape. Like many OF fans, he downloaded Goblin when it leaked May 5; he released “Asshole” as a free download the next day. Lifting another rapper’s backing track is a time-­honored mix-tape tradition, but it rarely happens so fast....