Oct. 24 is Food Day. Enter to win a huge gift basket full of goodies and join Stop Foodborne Illness in front of the Hancock Building to win fabulous prizes. more ›

For this round, we're looking for a feature that will be relevant to our complete network audience of over four million readers in large American cities. more ›

Gothamist is interested in adding more long-form non-fiction features to our websites. Last month, we premiered the results of our first call for features, "Confessions of a 'Rape Cop' Juror", on our New York site. We are happy with the results: Sales have been good, the feature and writer were covered on numerous blogs and newspapers (even on TV), and we learned a lot about how to publish e-books. more ›

Baskins Robbins is hosting a "Create Baskin's Next Favorite Flavor" contest! One lucky winner who submits a new flavor combination on BR's website will get a free trip to Boston and their concoction will be sold in BR stores everywhere. So, that's fun. more ›

Chromeo somehow takes the sleekest of dance grooves and pumps them up with melodies that would make Hall & Oates proud. Hell, they've collaborated with Darryl Hall and the results were, and we're gonna punch ourself in the mouth for even typing this but truth is truth, FUN-KAY. The duo makes some of the sleekest, sweetest dance music in the land and their shows are always sexy and fun affairs. Some electronic pop makes you want to lose yourself in yourself but Chromeo keeps you grounded and makes you want to lose yourself in the person swaying next to you. more ›

This year's annual poster challenge from the Chicago Public Library celebrates the tenth anniversary of the "One Book, One Chicago" program. more ›

We give a lot of love to Green City Market, but there are so many other great farmers markets in Chicago. One of our regular haunts, which we profiled last year, is the Glenwood Sunday Market in Rogers Park. Already a fixture of the community, the market doesn't just sell food - it holds classes and demonstrations and works on anti-hunger initiatives, like matching LINK funds so people on food assistance can get more for their money. And, they have a chance to be America's Favorite Farmers Market, in a contest held by the American Farmland Trust. more ›

Balsan, the restaurant in the Elysian hotel that Penny Pollack called "Shockingly creative and delicious" is giving away a Grand Seafood Tower to one of its Twitter fans. The tower, which normally costs $130 and is pictured over on the right, includes a whole lobster, king crab, prawns, clams, mussels and oysters. The thought of it makes us want to fall over in a happy coma. It can be yours, for the low low price of nothing. more ›

If you can write a convincing argument for the Foo Fighters playing a show at your garage in 25 words or less, you and 50 pals might have a chance at hosting the Chicago stop of their "garage tour" on April 19. The word count makes it so anyone who enters practically has to communicate their argument in grunts and emoticons, but we're hoping fans can pull off some creative Foo haikus given the constraints. more ›

Great. Valentine's Day approaches. Those of you happy souls, who, with starry eyes, gaze into the velvety adoration of your one and only, a stare that exists outside the mortal constraints of time and space, only broken by the promise of greeting supple lips in an expression of love whose ardor brings you to the brink of your soul, well, freaking good for you. more ›

This weekend is the first Green City Market of 2011. Schwing! To kick things off, GCM is holding a food photo contest for all of you Chicago foodies out there, and the prizes are pretty sweet, in our humble opinion. The contest is “Farm to Table,” and the idea is to show the raw ingredients you buy at the market and how you transform them into your dinner. You should take pictures at the market, while cooking, and of the finished product. more ›

Chicagoist is a sponsor of the Tomorrow Never Know 2011 music festival held at both Lincoln Hall and Schubas. What does this mean for you, of loyal reader? Over the last couple of days we've been giving away a pair of tickets to each of the festival's shows at Lincoln Hall to one lucky winner! Today we're switching things up. Enter below for your chance to win a pair of tickets to one of the following shows.

• Freddie Gibbs, Rita J, and Shad at The Metro on January 14
• Handsome Furs, Jaill, Oberhofer, and Cloud Nothings at Lincoln Hall on January 15
• Tanlines, Reptar, Young Empires, Yawn, and Kid Color at The Metro on January 15
• Little Dragon, Alex Winston, Billygoat, and Mister Joshua at Lincoln Hall on January 16
more ›

Chicagoist is a sponsor of the Tomorrow Never Know 2011 music festival held at both Lincoln Hall and Schubas. What does this mean for you, of loyal reader? Over the next couple of days we'll be giving away a pair of tickets to each of the festival's shows at Lincoln Hall to one lucky winner! Today we kick off the giveaway with a pair of tickets to the Thursday, January 14 show at Lincoln Hall featuring Mister Heavenly, Screaming Females, Title Tracks, and The Dig. Enter by 5 p.m. today for your chance to win! more ›

Chicagoist is a sponsor of the Tomorrow Never Know 2011 music festival held at both Lincoln Hall and Schubas. What does this mean for you, of loyal reader? Over the next couple of days we'll be giving away a pair of tickets to each of the festival's shows at Lincoln Hall to one lucky winner! Today we kick off the giveaway with a pair of tickets to the Thursday, January 13 show at Lincoln Hall featuring Chicagoist favorites The Besnard Lakes, Frankie Rose & The Outs, Lia Ices, and A Lull. Enter by 5 p.m. today for your chance to win! more ›

Chicagoist is a sponsor of the Tomorrow Never Know 2011 music festival held at both Lincoln Hall and Schubas. What does this mean for you, of loyal reader? Over the next couple of days we'll be giving away a pair of tickets to each of the festival's shows at Lincoln Hall to one lucky winner! Today we kick off the giveaway with a pair of tickets to the Wednesday, January 12 show at Lincoln Hall featuring The Helio Sequence, Sun Airway, Houses, and California Wives. Enter by 5 p.m. today for your chance to win! more ›

We were cleaning up the office today and we found two tickets to tonight's Archie Powell & the Exports show at Darkroom tonight. It was hidden under the couch cushions in the staff pstchiatrist's office. And next to it was a prize package including CDs from Archie Powell & the Exports, Color Radio and Son of the Sun along with a bunch of fun buttons and stickers. more ›

The third and final film based on Steig Larsons' best-selling "Millennium" triology is premiering this weekend, and we're giving away three pairs of tickets and one copy of the book to some lucky Chicagoist readers. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is already out on DVD and The Girl Who Played with Fire is being released on DVD tomorrow. more ›

Blur's Damon Albarn heads up Gorillaz and their latest, Plastic Beach, is high on the list as a possible best album of the year. Albarn brings his merry touring version of his hip-pop art project to UIC Pavilion on October 16 and we have a pair of tickets to give away to a lucky Chicagoist reader! Enter before 5 p.m. CST on Friday Ocotber 1 for your chance to win. more ›

To say that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is excited about Riccardo Muti, who turns 69 today, taking over as music director this fall is to plunge to the depths of understatement. The CSO has been without a full-time music director since Daniel Barenboim's departure in June 2006, and while the orchestra hasn't been rudderless - eminent musicians Pierre Boulez and Bernard Haitink have been frequent guests - having a consistent leader will help the ensemble evolve its unique voice. And Muti's virtues go far beyond just filling a void: in Muti, the CSO is getting an established musical presence at a time when other major orchestras are rolling the dice on promising whippersnappers with shorter track records, like the New York Philharmonic's 43-year-old Music Director Alan Gilbert, the Philadelphia Orchestra's 35-year-old Music Director Designate Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's 29-year-old Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. So, there's good reason for the CSO to be excited, or borderline obsessive, even. We won't be so understanding if we happen upon a creepy shrine in some tucked-away corner of Orchestra Hall, but for now there's only this benign, if goofy, video sending Muti birthday well-wishes. more ›

While we were big Soundgarden fans back in the day, they were also one of the Seattle bands we felt far overstayed their welcome. We know lots of folks went gaga over their last two studio albums but we lost interest in them after Badmotorfinger. Yeah, it's totally a matter of personal taste, but we admit that they were the one reunion we were not excited to see grace a Lollapalooza headline slot. Nothing against the boys personally -- we once won a dance off with Kim Thayil so he's O.K. in our book, and while Chris Cornell's post-Soundgarden career has been largely laughable he's still got that voice -- but the idea of getting this particular band together didn't seem to be driven by a mission from God. more ›

Entries for the Chicago Public Library design contest entries are now up for viewing. Anyone could submit a library-inspired poster design using the URL "chipublib.org." A panel of judges will determine the grand prize winner. The library will use the winning design in the Chicago Public Library’s public awareness campaign. But there's also a people's choice award. Everyone else can vote for their favorite design on the People's Choice Award 2010 flickr page. We couldn't include all 54 designs here, so head over and "favorite" the design you think deserves to win. The People’s Choice Award Winner will receive a printed, framed poster of his or her work. Voting closes at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, May 23. more ›

Things are likely going to get wild when the Gogol Bordello brings their wild gypsy-tinged rock and/or roll into town this Friday to play The Congress Theatre, and chances are they'll create a spectacle both memorable and shocking. When you add Devotchka, Jesse Malin and St. Mark's Social to the bill you know you're in for an evening that will do its best to stun the senses and leave you exiting with a glazed smile on your face. Tickets are still available but we have a pair to give away to one lucky Chicagoist reader! more ›

If you're not involved in the Chicago school system, you may not have heard of Music National Service, a San Francisco-based nonprofit started by a former Clinton White House staffer who helped create AmeriCorps in the early 1990s. MusicianCorps, MNS's inaugural fellowship program, models itself on preexisting programs like its namesake and Teach For America, with twenty-one fellows in the Bay Area, Seattle, New Orleans, and, of course, Chicago charged with developing educational programs, both in-school and extracurricular, in underserved communities. The seven Chicago fellows, managed locally by Urban Gateways, are working in schools and park district locations in Back of the Yards, Bucktown, Englewood, Garfield Ridge, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and South Chicago. more ›

Now that the lads in OK Go have roused talk around their excellent new album by dissing their label's video sharing policies, they're recruiting the fans to make a video of their own. Take the raw footage from the green-screened "WTF" video and put your own spin on it and win a ... well, they list no prozes so maybe you just win some small amount of online infamy. Anyway, grab the footage and get to it! more ›

If you're a driver in Chicago, get used to the image to the right because you'll be seeing a lot of it soon. The image is by 16-year-old Lookman Muhammed, a junior at Lawrence Hall's Therapeutic Day School, and it's been selected as the winner in the city's annual city sticker contest. Lookman was up against several other talented young artists from around the city but city drivers voted his design a cut above the rest. And the rest includes over 300 students from 39 city schools. Lookman was also a finalist in last year's design contest as well. Congrats! more ›

Just like the right to vote for the mayor, aldermen, and congressmen, Chicago residents also have the right to vote for the vehicle sticker art design that will appear on 1.3 million windshields beginning Jan. 1, 2010. Every year for the last 15 years, the office of the city clerk asks Chicago high school students grades 9 through 12 to submit a design for the sticker that fits with a certain theme (remember last year's awesome dog theme?). This year, the theme was Burnham's Chicago, and over 300 students from 39 area high schools submitted their ideas. A panel of judges chose their top-10 designs, above, and you get to vote on which you prefer. Vote through Sunday online or through Friday in person at the city clerk's office in City Hall (121 N. LaSalle St., room 107). The winning student gets a $1,000 savings bond award, so choose wisely. more ›

Last month, we stumbled upon the wonderful photo collection of Quinn Dombrowski, showcasing the various scribbles and graffiti scattered about the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. At the time, Quinn let us know the photos were being compiled for a book. Now, it's here for you to own and she's also having a fun little contest to promote its release: a remix contest. Quinn says: "Do something nifty with the graffiti- you choose the medium (video, song, poetry, essay, digital collage, mashup, something physical that can be photographed or mailed, etc)." You can submit entries to her at quinn(at)crescatgraffiti(dot)com through December 20; check out the contest's website for more details. more ›

We've got a pair of tickets to go see Deadmau5 with Ghostland Observatory and Burns at the Congress Theatre this Friday, November 20. The contest closes at 5 p.m. CST on November 18 so enter for your chance to win after the jump! more ›

Most folks are familiar with The Meat Puppets' hit "Backwater," but those in the know are more familiar with the band's more out-there sonic explorations across sun-bleached desserts and murky swamp haze. more ›

The Men Who Stare At Goats -- based on an actual government program dedicated to the results of some REALLY intense goat staring, is one of the few meetings we're anxiously awaiting. Well, a lucky reader of Chicagoist need not wait like we mere mortals! We have a pair of tickets to the screening in Chicago on Wednesday at 7 p.m. that includes access to an exclusive after-party! No word on if goats will be present at either event. more ›