“Chance is going to be with you tonight,” said the hostess as she guided us to the wide-open front windows of the large and largely empty Refinery. Er, at least that’s what I thought she said, and her words stayed with me until the end of the meal, when I saw the check and realized that the word “chance” sounded almost identical to the name of our server, who was as polished and dependable as the food she brought was a crapshoot....

If ever there was a community in need of economic development, it’s West Englewood. On the other end of the spectrum are the three wards that encompass downtown Chicago. They shared roughly $626 million of that $1.5 billion, or about 43 percent. So we conducted an analysis to get a sound estimate of where the money’s going, applying the city’s formulas to the district totals. For example: $1,548,011 was spent in the Bronzeville TIF district during this period....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After watching the all-white roster for Let Freedom Hum: An Evening of Comedy With Martin Short at the Vic on Thursday, I was curious to see how the place would be transformed for the predominantly African-American lineup of David Alan Grier: Comedy You Can Believe In, featuring Ralph Harris, Marina Franklin, Mark Curry, Bruce Bruce, Aries Spears, and Filipino-American Jo Koy....

“Mom,” Karen Tipps’s 12-year-old son Simon said on a Wednesday afternoon late last year, “our quiet little home isn’t gonna be so quiet anymore.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Karen Tipps and her husband are the shrine’s caretakers—a task that became far more intense after it received a rare designation. On December 8, the Catholic church affirmed the shrine as one of about a dozen sites worldwide—and the first in the U....

Currently OPS is housed within the police department–which only makes sense to those who remember that it was created because allegations of police abuse were once investigated by the department’s Internal Affairs division, which reported to the police chief, which reported to the first Mayor Daley. That didn’t work. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Channel 7’s Andy Shaw then directly asked Brookins if the aldermen were saying that Daley has too poor a track record–as mayor and as the state’s attorney who did nothing about police torture under former commander Jon Burge–to be responsible for the agency that polices the police....

After months and months of begging, pleading, and cajoling by the public—and harassing calls and e-mails from the Reader—city officials finally came clean with the God’s honest truth about how and why they entered into the parking meter lease deal. Yes, that Paul Volpe. Gene Saffold, the city’s current chief financial officer, who wasn’t involved in the parking meter deal. He came on about three months ago; the meter agreement was forged in 2008 and went into effect this past February....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This afternoon he announced that the agency will borrow and bond its way to improving service. This will be welcome news to riders who have watched the transit system deteriorate dramatically over the two decades Daley has been in office, and perplexing news to everyone wondering why Daley has been unable to find a management team interested in doing this before now....

It’s no secret that bass players don’t get enough respect. Most jazz groups depend on the bassist as the structural anchor, tracing out the chord changes and keeping time. Jason Roebke does this about as well as anyone in the Chicago jazz scene, and he fulfills this role in countless ensembles. He even leads and writes the tunes for his own terrific +Octet—named thusly because it always contains more than eight members—yet even there he rarely steps out to grab the spotlight....

The Perfect Cup at Asado Coffee Company from mike sula on Vimeo. asadocoffee.com Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In addition to espresso, cortado, cafe con leche, and iced coffee, former navy vet and self-taught roaster Kevin Ashtari sells hot, made-to-order manual-drip coffee. Every step he takes to get his raw green beans into that cup is small-scale, hands-on, and lovingly methodical. He invested in a custom-built 12-kilo roaster from the U....

A few years ago, I inadvertently joined a mosh pit during a Suburbs show in Minneapolis. At first I didn’t get it: I’d been on crowded dance floors before, but this one was out of hand. I got mad and started shoving back. Then I realized how fun it was, unleashing anger, being part of the wave. It was a group effort. Sometimes others even protected me. Humor and satire lighten the mix....

The Nature Play Center at Indian Boundary Park is transformed at night: in the half light the three tiny houses, the sand garden and low bridge, the ring of short wooden rails appear ominous, a tableau of totemic objects grown large. Once a small zoo, the play lot feels unsettlingly liable to transform itself without warning—and you with it. Amid the clutter of themes, abjection remains the one indispensable concept, and we’re confronted with it throughout, as when Chih-Hsien Lin, facedown on her belly, pulls her body up into a miserable hunch, tormented by the accordion’s grueling polka, her arms and legs and forehead still pressed to the ground....

Drawn from the Anthology Film Archive in New York and the National Film Archive in Prague, this series examines modernism in Czech films from the silent to the postwar era. A dozen features screen at Facets Cinematheque through Thursday, February 22; for a complete schedule visit www.facets.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » RCrisis This 1939 documentary about Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia still packs a wallop, though certain passages of earnest commentary, like the paeans to labor solidarity, now feel dated....

Daníel Bjarnason, Over Light Earth (Bedroom Community) For his second album, prodigiously talented Icelandic composer and pianist Daníel Bjarnason conducted the Reykjavik Sinfonia and played piano on three of his recent works. The title piece, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was inspired by New York abstract expressionist painters such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. More exciting are the clashing layers of shimmering strings and turbulent horns on the three-part Emergence, whose lumbering, ominous melody hits its conclusion without resolving the piece’s unsettling harmonies, making for a tension-riddled trip to the very end....

Honorable Mention Blue 13416 W. Ontario | 312-787-1400 If we truly lived in a town that cared to eat well, restaurants like chef Chris Pandel’s beercentric the Bristol would be distributed evenly instead of concentrating in overcrowded, gentrified ghettos like Bucktown or Lincoln Square. The seasonal menu at this new arrival promises interesting variety at accessible prices, including of late a broiled eel sandwich, a perfect pairing of grilled mackerel and romaine in the Caesar, and “Scotch olives,” a mutation of a Scotch egg (a boiled egg encased in sausage and deep-fried) and Italian olives all’Ascolana (fat green olives stuffed with pork and veal and deep-fried)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The first week of the new year is coming to an end, but I’m still processing the deluge of music that came my way in 2011. Over the past few months certain albums have consistently found their way into my play pile. In September the reissue label Sundazed released three classic albums by Gene Clark, cofounder of the Byrds....

Rahm Emanuel had gone so long without making an overt play for national attention that I hadn’t been in a decent is-he-or-isn’t-he-running debate in weeks. The thing is, the mayor’s race—for which Emanuel is ostensibly raising money—is in 2015, and it doesn’t have any primaries. It’s the presidential hunt that occurs in 2016. “I’m not interested,” he said. “I love what I’m doing. I think being mayor is the best job promotion I’ve ever gotten....

Let’s be honest—a camera crew on the side of the street fawning over a righteous-green, 1970s-era van is bound to raise some eyebrows. Within the first 20 minutes of our loitering around Becka Joynt’s sweet ride, two different passersby stop to make an offer. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Joynt discovered the ’77 Dodge Tradesman 200 on eBay in 2002. Once a tailgating getaway for Notre Dame football games, the van still has Fighting Irish decals gracing the exterior....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The novel premise of the documentary Antarctica: A Year on Ice, which Chicago Filmmakers will screen at its Andersonville location this coming Saturday and then at Columbia College the following Wednesday, is that it doesn’t focus on the wonders of Antarctica or the scientists who study them. Rather, it centers on those people who work year-round on scientific-research bases in nonresearch roles....

The Reader’s guide to Tony Bitner, Amy Cole, Marianne Murphy Orland, Erica Rodgers, Dan Stetzel, and Lauren Wolf a 8 and 10:30 PM, Davenport’s Piano Bar & Cabaret, 1383 N. Milwaukee, 773-278-1830, davenportspianobar.com, $20. Chicago Afrobeat Project a 9 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 2105 S. State, 312-949-0120, reggieslive.com/musicjoint, $20. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Joey DeFrancesco Trio a 7 PM, Andy’s, 11 E. Hubbard, 312-642-6805, andysjazzclub....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The NHL’s Winter Classic, played at Wrigley Field on New Year’s Day, turned out to be a real game, better than almost anyone could have expected, but the play was perhaps too rooted in reality — and the dominant Detroit Red Wings’ precision team play — while the setting was magical to the point of being ridiculous. As expected, the seats closest to the action in baseball tended to have the worst view of the hockey rink....