The Reader’s Guide to the 30th annual All the other action is in Grant Park as well, and as always the music is free. Afternoon sets are at the Jazz on Jackson stage (on Jackson near Lake Shore Drive) and the Jazz& Heritage Stage (south of Jackson near the Rose Garden), where the programming includes family-oriented shows and concert-demonstrations. Friday through Sunday the New Orleans All-Star Brass Band—a group assembled especially for the fest from members of several Crescent City outfits, including the Pin Stripe, Paulin Brothers, and New Birth brass bands—plays two sets on Jackson between Columbus and Lake Shore Drive, one at 11 AM and the other at 4 PM....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When, for example, the 42nd Ward’s Brendan Reilly asked for further explanation, an official from the city’s Department of Buildings told him: “Basically we’re trying to follow the IECC 2006, and basically we give our permit applicants two ways to apply, and one is prescriptive. And the prescriptive method basically follows this little chart, and this little chart basically tells you what you have to have your building systems at if you’re going to comply with the code, and if your building systems have these ratings you comply automatically....

A few weeks ago the Art Institute opened “Windows on the War,” a show of domestic propaganda posters produced by the Soviet Union during World War II. It was just the tip of a sizable cultural iceberg. Thanks to a 16-month project called The Soviet Arts Experience, there are eight other, similar exhibits opening in the Chicago area this summer and fall—including one with the fascinatingly agrammatical name, “Adventures in the Soviet Imaginary....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As Steichen sees it, the strike was the most formidable resistance by progressives, activists, working people—call them what you will—against the mayor’s feed-the-rich-rob-the-poor policies, still very much on display with the so-called DePaul b-ball project in the South Loop. “You have to view this in the wider context of speaking up to power,” says Steichen. “The teachers’ strike is an example of that....

Lorca in a Green Dress and A Shroud for Lazarus Halcyon Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of the 20th century’s preeminent poets, Federico García Lorca also became one of its many martyrs when, in 1936, the 38-year-old Spaniard was executed by the Franco regime. Cruz sends him to a kind of nonreligious purgatory, which in Juan Castañeda’s production consists of an unadorned stage flanked by benches....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Plans are already being made to empty Guantanamo. Some prisoners would be released, some would be tried in U.S. criminal courts, but it seems there will be a third category for high-value detainees, a “a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases.” It’s obviously better than permanent detention, but a lot will turn on the specifics of the court, and given the past few years there will be resistance to anything that isn’t done in the criminal courts or a military tribunal....

Alliance Bakery Formerly a Polish bakery, Alliance was sold to a French pastry a few years back and is now turning out wonderful-looking (and affordable) French pastries in addition to offerings like quiche and, in a nod to the neighborhood, kolacky. Strong Intelligentsia coffee and espresso drinks are available, in addition to Naked juices, hibiscus lemonade, and a few upscale sodas. The well-maintained 1930s interior is warm and charming, and the coffeehouse space next door has free WiFi....

There are almost 300 professional theater companies at work in Chicago today, ranging from big-name institutions like Steppenwolf and Second City to fringe stalwarts like the Curious Theatre Branch. Yet scholars still consider New York the epicenter of drama in the U.S. Columbia College’s International Symposium on Chicago Theatre is calculated to change that. “This is the first attempt to really shake the trees, as it were,” says Reader critic and Columbia lecturer Albert Williams....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In Korea, tableside grilled pork belly, or samgyeopsal (literally “three-layer pork”) is a revered piece of the pig, often matched with equally special partners like raw fermented skate or superaged kimchi and eaten wrapped in sesame leaf with schmears of soybean or red pepper paste. At Kim’s it is treated with a similar seriousness, marinated in one of five seasonings: wine, herbs, soybean paste, powdered bamboo leaf, or garlic-curry sauce....

ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS THE CRYING LIGHT (SECRETLY CANADIAN) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Spiritually, though, he and his idol are poles apart. Unlike George, Antony doesn’t do winking flamboyance or irony—his music is earnestly, languidly, overwhelmingly romantic. In fact it’d probably be more apt to call it Romantic, with a capital R, and his new album, The Crying Light, makes that even clearer: Antony moves away from explicit discussions of gender, instead casting himself as a poet of nature....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of Lee’s dispatches from Singapore included the news about the book contract as well as this nugget: “I was worried that they might not get some of the references — I had a great image of the original Star Trek with Kirk and Spock disguised as Nazis — but I asked one of the museum curators beforehand and he promised me that everybody in Singapore knows Star Trek....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Host of WBEZ’s show-biz interview feature Studio 312 for seven years, Carrane will use the Q&A format first to create a scene between himself and his guest and then to delve into the process behind how the scene was made. Carrane has some of local improv’s heaviest hitters scheduled for Improv Nerd‘s first month of Sundays: Noah Gregoropoulos (9/18), Susan Messing (9/25), TJ Jagodowski (10/2), and Jet Eveleth (10/9)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But that doesn’t mean the lieutenant governor won’t receive donations at other times. Interest in Quinn has grown in proportion to disgust with embattled governor Rod Blagojevich; expect the money to flow in even faster if impeachment proceedings against Blagojevich move along. But Quinn does have his loyal supporters, led by unions, developers, and some wealthy and connected Chicagoans....

Ever since the ramen revolution swept through town and every third working chef starting channeling Tampopo, I along with the other Pharisees have felt compelled to charge most of them with blasphemy. I’ve become so tired of repeating the assertion that a dilettante’s ramen can’t hope to compete with the lush, porky goodness of the tonkotsu ramen at the Santouka kiosk in Mitsuwa Marketplace—chain ramen, for chrissakes!—that I was afraid it would lose all meaning....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Then again, I’m eager to see one of the hip-hop acts in part because of a fond memory of the first time I saw the group in concert. Nearly a decade ago I went to Warped Tour** with the explicit intention of seeing only a few bands, including the Minneapolis indie-rap outfit Atmosphere, which at the time was on the rise after releasing Seven’s Travels....

Presented by Chicago Filmmakers, the 28th Reeling festival runs Thursday, November 5, through Sunday, November 15, at Chicago Filmmakers, Columbia College Film Row Cinema, Landmark’s Century Centre, and Music Box. Unless otherwise noted, tickets for all screenings are $10, $8 for matinees (before 4 PM), and passes are available for $45 (five shows), $80 (ten shows), $125 (all shows, excepting special admissions), and $175 (all shows and events). Tickets can be purchased online at reelingfilmfestival....

Q I love the wife I married two years ago, but she absolutely can’t come unless she uses a vibrator on herself. She’s asked me to let her use it during sex or for me to use it on her, but I’ve refused. It’s bad enough knowing I can’t compete with that thing without having to look at it. —Let’s Insert My Prick And now an important message for all straight guys everywhere: Some women need vibrators to get off....

The five major food groups provided the loose organizing principle for our annual food issue. It’s an elementary concept, and maybe even corny, but also pleasingly broad, leaving room for a wide range of stories on developments in Chicago’s culinary scene that reflect the larger culinary culture. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mike Sula’s piece on a local effort to raise rare Mangalitsa pigs spotlights the growing farm-to-table movement and ongoing interest in local, artisanal, and sustainable agriculture, as does Lisa Shames’s piece on Wisconsin’s citywise Harvest Moon Farms....

Mike Sula Black salt, aka kala namak I’m a bit surprised that after all this time that no chef has been challenged with kala namak, or Indian black salt, in the Reader’s long-running Key Ingredient series. To me, it has just the right balance of savory goodness and aggressive fetor to make it controversial among those who’ve never tried it. The latter is due to its high sulfur content, which produces an odor strikingly evocative of hard-boiled egg yolks, so much so that vegans often use it to season things like mock egg salad and faux deviled eggs....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Many of these were people I had never heard of; none of them had I knowingly invited. A handful sent me puzzled messages wondering why I’d asked—one was from a PR executive in Las Vegas who recalled that a year and a half ago she’d pitched me a story about some company’s 30th anniversary. “Never heard back,” she snippily advised....