Hop heads in search of the latest high have lately been clamoring for beers made with the aromatic variety Citra, developed in 2007. Three Floyds’ beloved Zombie Dust pale ale is probably the best-known local example, but I’ve also reviewed a world-class double IPA from Pipeworks called Citra Ninja. Given that the Pipeworks beer cost $10.99 when it came out last fall (a second batch is imminent), I was intrigued to see a Sprecher release called Citra Bomb priced at $6....

The most exciting things to happen to restaurants in Chicago this year didn’t happen in any brick-and-mortar space. Food trucks—along with shared kitchens, underground dinners, and pop-ups—have offered creative entrepreneurs new ways to get their food in people’s faces. Both Matt Maroni (Gaztro-Wagon) and Phillip Foss (Meatyballs Mobile)—two fine-dining chefs kicked out of their kitchens—bounced back, delivering food far more creative than the premade cupcakes and sandwiches other trucks have been pushing....

Joe Crede missed the first game of the recent interleague series between the White Sox and Cubs after he was hit in the face by a bad-hop grounder during batting practice. Crede had been taking grounders at third base, and Channel 9 actually captured the shot — chairs had been set up for the pregame show near the third-base coaching box, and Crede could be seen in the background. The station showed the incident during the game, and all week long I waited for someone to post it online — on YouTube, if not on the Channel 9 or White Sox web sites — but nothing doing....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Tribune has just endorsed Barack Obama for president in a graceful editorial that advises anyone thinking the Democrat is an empty suit that the Tribune has seen inside the suit and found an extraordinary person. The Tribune shrewdly invoked Abraham Lincoln, in whose presidency the paper’s rooted. “The Tribune in its earliest days took up the abolition of slavery and linked itself to a powerful force for that cause — the Republican Party,” the editorial recalls....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Dante is one of our great cult stylists, a proponent of irreverent and kinetic cinema. Despite having substantial proponents in Jonathan Rosenbaum and others, he’s still in a marginalized position overall, but I think that suits him. After all, even his most mainstream work takes its cues from the lowest rungs of the genre ladder, a place few directors willingly go....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though the ballots had been counted and the downtown revelers had all gone home, Everett Whitfield was still politicking early Wednesday morning. “I happen to believe that there are two Americas. Mr. Obama can tell me to forget the past, but then he goes to Israel where the Jews’ mantra is ‘Never forget, always remember your past,’ and he’ll tell them they’re right....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you’re studying this photo of barbecued brisket from Blackwood BBQ and thinking something’s a bit off (besides lighting, composition, focus, etc), it’s because it’s been sliced parallel rather than perpendicular to the grain of the muscle. Who does that? Amateurs, that’s who. It all too frequently results in tough, stringy slices. When I asked owner John Naylor if this was standard operating procedure at the Loop quick-serve joint, he immediately made reference to a Yelp review some aggrieved whinger had posted complaining of the very same thing....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m no expert when it comes to comics, but I have always liked the work of Ben Katchor, particularly his old strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. He made news in 2000 by becoming the first cartoonist to land a MacArthur Fellowship, but the year before he’d achieved another first—creating a comic-book opera. Composers David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe—all key members of Bang on a Can—had been invited by Turin, Italy’s Settembre Musica Festival to create an opera, and they approached Katchor about collaborating....

RESTAURANTS Readers’ Choice: Lula Cafe Readers’ Choice: New York Bagel & Bialy a3800 N. Pulaski, 773-545-7427, smoquebbq.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Standing in line for 45 minutes to eat overconceptualized, overpriced French toast with hungover hipsters is not my idea of a blissful weekend morning. Dinerphobes don’t know what they’re missing in the Golden Nugget on Lawrence, which serves reliably good, rib-sticking breakfasts around the clock....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Television/radio personality Glenn Beck has promised that his “Restoring Honor rally” tomorrow in the nation’s capital will be an “American miracle,” the “Woodstock of the next generation,” the “anti-Woodstock,” and a “turning point in America,” all packaged into one “unforgettable” weekend. Billed as a benefit for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation (“the troops”), the event is taking place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr....

All right, readers, time to test your knowledge of Chicago politics. Now a new TIF district, called the Calumet River TIF, has been proposed for the area that runs roughly from 134th Street south to 138th and from Torrence Avenue west to the Bishop Ford Expressway. At the moment, much of the land in the proposed district is either vacant or underdeveloped; a big chunk of it is an old Waste Management landfill....

Seriously, folks: have you heard the one about the Roosevelt University professor who was fired for telling a joke in class? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “After college Robert settled again in Chicago. Even though he was gay, he began work at R. J. Daley College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. When the liberals came to power in the nineties, with their polices [sic] of Affirmative Action in education, Robert ran into political and labor union difficulties....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After the big DJ Drama bust a lot of DJs and rappers are looking at free online mix-tape downloads as a way to get around the RIAA, which seems to think that the most effective hype-building tactic in hip-hop promotion since the wheatpasted poster is no better for business than flat-out bootlegging. No one’s really sure yet how well the move online will hold up against the Fun Police, but for the time being it looks like the real hotness for 2007....

In the beginning Shawn Smith created two creatures, a snakelike thing and a puffier thing. And they were stuffed animals without much form, with faces on neither. And the spirit of art student Shawn was compelled to make more, from sketches he had drawn while attending Illinois State University in Normal. And Shawn said Let there be polyester stuffing between two soft pieces of fabric, and let them be soft edged, or featureless so each can imagine what they are....

Gossip Wolf hears that Hideout talent buyer Michael Slaboch is leaving to join Pitchfork producer, jazz drummer, and man-about-town Mike Reed at Constellation, a new venue in the old Viaduct Theater space; filling his shoes at the beloved dive will be improvising comedian and soon-to-be-former Reader ad coordinator Seth Dodson, aka SpokesMom from the Show ‘n Tell Show. He’s already working alongside Slaboch, and as of Wed 4/3 he’ll be flying solo....

QA friend of mine on the opposite coast is a cross-dresser considering transitioning. He came out to a female friend he had known for a long time but hadn’t seen in a while, and she told her that she wanted her to come to her house fully dressed for some hot sex to “explore her bi-curiosity” or some shit. I told her to go for it, saying gender-transgression play is potentially hot....

Check out our photos and video recap of the festival after its third and final day. See our previews and photo/video recaps of bands playing on: Friday · Saturday · Sunday Afterparties Lollapalooza’s website has plenty of useful practical information—re-entry policy, locker rental, prohibited items, directions, et cetera—so there’s no need to rehash it all here. Every type of single-day and multiday pass is sold out, with the exception of the Platinum Pass, which requires you to e-mail a request just to find out how much it costs....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In this week’s issue of the Reader, cartoonist Lynda Barry, who’s a critic of the turbines, and I, an agnostic, examine the dispute over wind farms. Local opposition to wind turbines is so intense in Wisconsin that no new wind park has been approved since March of 2007. The sticking point is setbacks — that is, the distances that turbines are set back from the nearest houses....

In her new collection of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Knopf), Karen Russell continues her exploration into the fantastical with characters including the eponymous bloodsuckers, human silkworms, and dead U.S. presidents reanimated as farm horses. But her real subject matter here (as in an earlier book of stories and a novel, Swamplandia!, that was a finalist for last year’s Pulitzer) is storytelling—specifically the role of memory at the intersection of personal and national histories and the ways in which stories can both harm and heal....

Q My wife and I have been married for a few years and are expecting our first child. I’m really into the idea of being sprayed with my wife’s breast milk. The other night she was fretting about when her boobs are going to start leaking. This seemed like a good time to bring it up, so I told her about my newly discovered lactation fetish. She freaked out—her comments were along the lines of “Gross!...