Aaron Arnett (sous chef at Davanti Enoteca), who challenged Peter Coenen of the Gage with sun-dried tomatoes, hates the dessicated fruit. As it turns out, so does Coenen. “They smell like old shoes and dirty feet,” he said. “It’s just not the most pleasant smell.” Coenen also made a vinaigrette with sun-dried and Roma tomatoes smoked with olive oil and garlic and pureed with sherry vinegar, salad oil, and basil. The last use was a chutney of sun-dried tomato and confit orange, made by his sous chef to accompany smoked meats on the current Gage menu....

Rising television writer and producer Craig Wright has mastered the art of keeping an audience from flipping to another channel. But as a playwright he rarely delves deeply into his characters or their motivations. The story, about three middle-aged high school buddies on a hunting trip, is fraught with comic and dramatic possibilities, and Wright juggles various plotlines skillfully. But in true TV fashion he teases more than he enlightens. The political discussion at the center of his post-9/11 play, about how current foreign policy affects ordinary citizens, is lightweight....

The Recycling Report Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m reading this story and I’m thinking how completely out of touch Mr. Dumke is with reality. If people are upset there is nowhere to put the glass bottle that once contained the salsa they bought, why don’t they make their own salsa? If they’re “frustrated” they have to throw their empty plastic Coke containers in with the rest of the trash, don’t drink Coke....

Lollapalooza afterparties fill many of the city’s music venues over the weekend, allowing music aficionados lacking a masochistic side to enjoy a good chunk of the Lollapalooza lineup—plus some decent talent that’s not appearing at Grant Park at all—under far less oppressive circumstances than the festival affords. As far as I know, Lollapalooza hasn’t inspired an explicit counterfest analogous to Bitchpork, but Sat 8/4 happens to be the date for Gnarfest, an all-ages, all-day punk blowout at a new DIY venue (use the Google if you must know)....

Our five picks for readings and lectures Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne PhillipsScribner (October 15) A peek into Chicago’s thriving live-lit scene Junot Diaz and others on what animal they’d be New blood at the Poetry Foundation Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Quiet Dell isn’t so much a whodunit or a whydunit as a howdunit. Phillips’s account of the investigation and trial is spooky and compelling....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A new law sponsored by state senator David Luechtefeld of Okawville requires schools in Illinois to hold a full day of classes on the first and last days of the school year, “rather than a shortened day that critics say offers little substance. “But,” the Tribune continued, “in a textbook case of legislative complications, the new law didn’t get rid of some of the language in the old law that allowed for shorter days....

These guys have the goods to be 2007’s Spank Rock, or maybe even 2010’s Beastie Boys. On their full-length debut, She’s Mature (Free News), their ingratiating everydude chemistry is simultaneously funky, playful, smart, stoopid, ear-opening, and hilarious. The album’s my early pick for livest rap release of the year, and the pasted-together camcorder footage on the accompanying DVD is flat-out classic. The Philly foursome radiate an easy charisma in two proper videos, but the live clip of them turning out a nightclub stage–complete with the off-camera sounds of crashing chairs and bottles and a club employee threatening to bounce them and their friends if they don’t “chill the fuck out”–makes you feel drunk just watching it....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fewer people appeared to be hitting the polls at 48th and Winchester. According to election officials, less than half of registered voters had shown up by about 5:30. But as people got off work, lines started to form again. One of those who made sure to cast a ballot was Rose Velasco, who credited her 11-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son with inspiring her to come out....

In the Neighborhood Blackbird619 W. Randolph | 312-715-0708 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » rrr This sterile white-and-steel space would make a lab rat feel at home. But for fine dining with a rotation of top-notch seasonal ingredients, served by a crack cadre of skilled food-service ninjas who would die for your smallest whim, Blackbird’s still at the top of its game. Don’t do what I did last time, succumbing to my basest instincts and ordering course after course featuring a cured pork product....

This weekend the University of Chicago Folk Festival returns in its 53rd incarnation, with two full days of workshops and three evening concerts featuring a total of eight diverse acts. Each act will play on two of the three nights, and some of them—including Elmore James Jr., son of the late blues-guitar legend, and bluegrass greats Danny Paisley & the Southern Grass—are top-shelf quality. The order of each concert’s five sets hadn’t been finalized at press time, but among the other musicians are Irish folk duo Daithi Sproule & James Kelly, southern- and Appalachian-style string band the Reed Island Rounders, Cajun accordionist Sheryl Cormier, and gospel group the Evening Light Brothers....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The headline and accompanying editorial — which had me cheering over my morning coffee — are referring to the state’s proposal to use sales taxes to buy and rebuild Wrigley Field so whoever owns the Cubs can sell more tickets and concessions and make more money. The paper’s zeal is goosed by wanting to make things uncomfortable for its rival, of course, but it’s an encouraging turn of events nevertheless....

As the Cubs and White Sox renew hostilities this weekend, I’ve been considering their managers’ responsibility for their shifting fortunes. The Cubs have been on the rise since Lou Piniella blew up at the umpires a couple of weeks ago. The Sox have been on the decline, and it’s not just injuries to leadoff men Scott Podsednik and Darin Erstad and power hitters Jim Thome and Joe Crede that are to blame....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On her ChicagoNow blog One Story Up (my favorite in the nascent CN network), Megan Cottrell has the Dickensianly* tragic story of three orphans who are about to be booted out of their recently deceased mother’s subsidized apartment, even though there’s a legal and commonsensical basis for them to stay. Read it, it’s exemplary activist journalism. Speaking of ChicagoNow: journalists and freelancers should really be reading Chicago Bar-tender....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The vibraphone-led Wee Trio aren’t pioneers when it comes to hijacking postbop fundamentals with ideas gleaned from pop music, but over the last few years they’ve proven themselves to be impressive adepts at the game. As the group’s lead melodic voice, vibraphonist James Westfall has maintained and distilled a crisp and concise improvisational flair, and that sharpness has benefitted greatly from the dynamic, shape-shifting grooves meted out by bassist Dan Loomis and drummer Jared Schonig; driven by that rhythmic engine, he has little choice but to be fleet....

Mike Sula The Big Vic There comes a time in every professional athlete’s life when she begins to realize she can only take so many moonsaults and Mongolian chops, and she must start looking at the future. For Lisa Marie Varon, who wrestles professionally under the name “Tara” and has been known to torment vanquished opponents with a living tarantula, that means parlaying a still popular career into a Jake Lamotta-style front-of-the-house gig at Squared Circle, the wrestling-themed pizza and burger bar she owns with her husband....

With just a few weeks to go in Mayor Daley’s regime, I headed to City Hall to check out one of the last rounds of Tax Increment Financing handouts of the era—that is, the April 12 meeting of the Community Development Commission, which oversees the mayor’s $500-million-a-year TIF program. Good thing the city and schools aren’t broke. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This time, actually, I couldn’t really complain about most of their recommendations, which get passed on to the City Council for approval (and it always does approve)....

america Directed by D.W. Griffith Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With a three-hour running time and a two-dollar ticket, The Birth of a Nation made a staggering amount of money for its time—$18 million—and created an audience for longer and more ambitious motion pictures. Griffith followed it with a mammoth historical epic, Intolerance (1916), and such successful dramas as Hearts of the World (1918), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Way Down East (1920)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of my all-time favorite things about dancehall producers, deejays, selectors, and listeners is that they don’t consider any type of music to be off-limits to dancehall. If you want to loop a Bollywood sample and have a dude sing a bastardized take of “99 Luftbaloons” over it, that’s fine. You might even get a smash hit out of it....

The Lincoln Square residents who gather each summer Tuesday at the neighborhood farmers’ market, in the shadow of the el stop at Western Avenue just below Lawrence, are surely as familiar with another neighborhood amenity a few blocks southeast down Lincoln Avenue. But what few may know about their handsome regional library is that Conrad Sulzer, for whom it’s named, was a Swiss immigrant who more than 160 years ago raised vegetables and flowers in fields a little further south and east, in the area now sometimes called Ravenswood....

The historic Cinema Dome in Hollywood, currently managed by ArcLight Cinemas Yesterday morning the California-based theater chain ArcLight Cinemas announced plans to construct a 14-screen movie theater near the North and Clybourn Red Line station, with an opening scheduled for late summer of 2014. The multiplex will be part of New City, a development project that will include a shopping center and a skyscraper with 190 apartment units. According to an official press release, the theater will include all the features of ArcLight’s southern California locations, such as reserved seating, a full bar, and a strict no-talking policy during movies....