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At the third annual One-Minute Play Festival, a large and diverse group tells stories in the time it takes to sit at a red light. The concept allows for a lot: this two-day fest sports one curator (Dominic D’Andrea), ten directors, and productions by more than 50 playwrights. And some serious pedigree: Neo-Futurists art director Bilal Dardai; Laura Jacqmin, the author of the comedy Dental Society Midwestern Meeting; New Dramatists resident Carlos Murillo; Hell in a Handbag Productions impresario David Cerda; horror writer Scott Barsotti; Usman Ally, slated to appear later this month in Mary Zimmerman‘s adaptation of The Jungle Book; Philip Dawkins, a Jeff nominee for his play The Homosexuals; Seth Bockley, playwright in residence at the Goodman (who directed Dawkins’s play Failure: A Love Story); and another Goodman fellow, Tanya Saracho, author of El Nogalar and Our Lady of the Underpass....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From Germany, Max Zähle’s Raju is a nicely calibrated thriller that takes an unexpected left turn into moral conundrum. A handsome, blond young couple (Julia Richter and Wotan Wilke Möhring, both excellent) arrive in Kolkata, India, to adopt a child; as their cab pulls them into town, long pans from the back window reveal squalid neighborhoods and piles of garbage....

Julia Thiel The negroni slushy at Parson’s It’s been a rough spring for outdoor drinking—cool weather and torrential rains don’t make for ideal patio-sitting conditions. But now that it’s almost summer, the weather is starting to cooperate a little better, and the forecast for the next week looks almost perfect (except for that chance of rain). I’ve gotten a chance, in between downpours, to check out a few bar patios recently; below are my current favorites for outdoor imbibing....

Although I’ve written derisively about its customer service before, Reckless Records must be doing something right. While stores continue to board up their doors—Dr. Wax in Edgewater recently closed, leaving its Hyde Park location its sole outlet—Reckless has recently announced expansion. In the next four to six weeks it’s opening its third Chicago location. Surprisingly (to me, at least) the new store is in the Loop (26 E. Madison); aside from students at the Art Institute of Chicago most of the potential clientele downtown would appear to be business people and tourists—not the obvious customers for a store that focuses on indie music....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For a man whose creative life is centered on the value and pleasure of craft, self-taught artist George Kagan seems awfully preoccupied with modern mass production. “Ex-Static,” Kagan’s solo exhibit at Intuit: the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, features dozens of the fully functional radios he’s built in his kitchen since 1997, working with such eclectic materials as car parts, floor tiles, cosmetic cases, and upholstery....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I know I might sound repetitive when I say menswear is all about the right fit, but yeah: menswear is all about the right fit. Not too loose, not too tight, just right. Check out Freddie and Frank. Notice how their jackets hug their shoulders snuggly, how their pants fit them precisely, how their hems stop exactly where they should, giving their charming shoes a chance to shine....

Funk It Up About Nothin’ Chicago Shakespeare Theater Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The show’s Chicago-bred author-director-stars Jeffrey and Gregory Qaiyum—aka JQ and GQ—are smart young men, and their stated goal of putting “Shakespeare in the hands of everyone, from profs to pimps to punks to poets” is admirable. If you believe that the Bard is the bedrock of Western literature, it’s even necessary....

TV ON THE RADIO | METRO 3/12-13 The appeal of TVOTR is hard to pin down. Image-wise, they completely suck. Onstage they look like a graphic-design team on a weekend outing, rocking a half-assed indie-casual style that involves khakis. Except for vocalist/guitarist Kyp Malone–who sports maybe the second most famous Afro in popular music after ?uestlove’s–any member of the band could’ve probably watched the opening act from the club’s main floor without being recognized....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Friday night I swung by the Rocking Horse in Logan Square for a birthday party, but instead of catching up with friends I spent a portion of the evening stationed beneath a TV screen, craning my neck to watch the latest installment of R. Kelly‘s never-ending opus, Trapped in the Closet. I stood next to a couple strangers, all of us transfixed by the images of Kelly’s strange world despite the fact that the TV was on mute....

Read Aimee Levitt’s story on the migration of Chicago hipsters from 1898 to the present. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Whether funny or defensive, the responses turned out to be revelatory: you guys basically told us what “hipster” means at the moment. So thanks. And sorry in advance to the people we call out (including ourselves) for so obviously fitting the profile. All right, so, hipsters definitely have tattoos....

I saw The Brothers Bloom tonight–Rian Johnson’s new one, and though I think it probably isn’t as good as Brick, it pulls the same rabbit out of a different hat and I’m pretty floored by it. Here’s my notes toward an essay I think wants to come out of me. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Do you know what Rian Johnson does? He scares you–and then he saves you....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Wrote John Markoff: “There is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over. What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a ‘gated community’ where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety....

Alexi Kaye Campbell’s drama The Pride begins and ends with parallel images of two men onstage together. Oliver and Philip are handsome Londoners in their late 20s or early 30s, palpably attracted to each other but unable to consummate the feeling. But the Oliver and Philip in the first scene aren’t the Oliver and Philip in the last scene; though they share names, the two pairs are separated by 50 years....

It’s been more than two years since Mayor Daley squelched an attempt by activists to force the city to build more low-income housing, pressuring several aldermen into dropping their support for the Balanced Development Act. But the activists are back, badgering aldermen to give affordable housing another go. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the last go-round the Balanced Development Coalition, a citywide group of housing activists, proposed that the city require developers to set aside 25 percent of all new development or rehabbed housing units for those with low and moderate incomes....

Hunter beef is the Pakistani version of corned beef, a brisket cured in a masala that—depending on the recipe—may include salt, saltpeter, sodium nitrite, red chile, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, garlic, cumin, mace, coriander, and other south Asian spices. It usually takes on the pinkish hue of the familiar Jewish or Irish-American versions, but with a complex subcontinental spice profile. It’s a rare treat in the U.S. that, prompted by a recent wistful LTHForum post, led esteemed investigator of culinary oddities Dr....

The hearing was called at the behest of 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore and several allies, most of whom had voted for the deal in December but now, as an act of “repentance,” wanted a public airing of details about how it was forged, why the hand-off had gone so poorly, and what the city and its private operators could do about it. But they weren’t the only unhappy campers today: Daley loyalists like 44th Ward alderman Tom Tunney wondered whether the city got a fair price for the meter system and groused about how it’s ended up hurting local businesses....

I always thought one of the best things about the Dressing Room, the Lincoln Square women’s clothing boutique, was its collection of cute shoes. I guess I wasn’t the only one: its owners just opened an offshoot devoted to footwear, bags, and other accessories a few doors down. Certain concessions must be made to the […] I can’t even tell you how many times people have asked me, “When is Zara coming to Chicago?...

Mike Sula Brinjal moju, innala curry, Sinhalese pickle Let’s say you recently arrived in Chicago from Sri Lanka. You’re here for school, or work, or just to get the hell away from whatever unspeakable horrors warring parties have inflicted on your homeland. With only a couple thousand or so of your countrymen here, there aren’t too many community groups to bring you together, and certainly no restaurants where you can gather and feel a little more comfortable in your skin....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Chinatown empire of Tony Hu (Lao Sze Chuan, Lao Beijing, Lao Shanghai, Lao Hunan) continues to grow, with Lao Mala now open in the former Lure Izakaya space and a River North venture in the works. In this week’s Food & Drink Mike Sula reviews Lao Yunnan, Hu’s rapid takeover of Spring World, which has received less attention than its fellows....

Most artists’ sketchbooks contain three types of material. First, intriguing little gems that need no further development—deft, isolated flashes of imagination. Second, studies for larger pieces that may someday emerge, which to outsiders may have little value beyond documenting the creative process. And finally, ideas that are better discarded. Most importantly, it’s got the right scale. After 13 years, the artists involved have mostly figured out how to make seven minutes of stage time feel complete....