In today's listings: the Eye on India Festival kicks off tonight. Also, Woman Made Gallery's latest exhibit. more ›

Today's listings include an anniversary reading for CHIRP Radio and a Thursday panel looking at the rebirth of Polish Jewish culture. more ›

The Sun-Times reports that attendance at area museums and zoos was down 3 percent over 2009. Which probably explains the spate of free days that kicked off 2011 at the Art Institute and other museums. more ›

Chicago is losing one of its biggest — arguably its biggest — cultural advocates at the end of the month with the retirement of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg. The 85-year-old Weisberg is best known for organizing the wildly successful "Cows on Parade" public art exhibit of more than a decade ago, but her legacy runs deeper than that. Weisberg was also the driving force behind the Chicago Cultural Center, Taste of Chicago, Gallery 37, most of the major music festivals along the lakefront and neighborhood festivals throughout the city, and Friends of the Parks. Weisberg's knack for networking was the subject of a Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker profile. In short, Chicago could still conceivably be a cow town without Lois Weisberg. more ›

Are you that person who thinks of ketchup on a hot dog and says, "Eww!! Cooties!" Do you get a smug look on your face when someone says they're from Chicago, only so that you can throw it in their face that the suburbs don't count (some of you readers definitely do this). more ›

Burned out on the evening singles events at the museums, but want something cultural to celebrate the work week's end? This Friday evening, April 16, the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust will host their monthly Robie House After Hours from 6:00 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. For $35 ($30 for FLWPT members) guests can explore Wright's Hyde Park masterpiece while enjoying cocktails and light hors d’oeuvres. Advance tickets are suggested. more ›

Once each year, the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust expands beyond their stewardship of the Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park and Hyde Park's Robie House to give architecture fans a bigger taste of Oak Park architecture with their Wright Plus Tour. more ›

Tribune sportswriter Mike Downey briefly departs from the sporting world to announce the end of a glass ceiling today in his "In the Wake of the News" column, True equality: Both Sexes can be Ingrates". The column includes a roundup of "publicly humiliating stunts that female TV personalities have pulled" in recent months, beginning with ESPN's Dana Jacobson, who got liquored up at an off-air "Mike and Mike" roast last week and laid into Notre Dame's sacred "Touchdown Jesus" (she's an alum of rival Michigan). more ›

The jibarito is a cross-cultural gem with a very American story. It was invented in Chicago (circa 1993) at Humboldt Park’s Borinquen Restaurant, a tricked-out plantain sandwich inspired by Puerto Rican culture and named after its peasant class, then embraced across strata at local Cuban, Mexican, and South American joints. more ›

...than Ed Smith's video blog? As alderman of the West Side's 28th Ward, Smith has a reputation as (sort of) an independent. Coming into office with Harold Washington in 1983, Smith was behind the smoking ban, has pushed for federal prosecution of former police commander Jon Burge, and generally annoys Mayor Daley. Now he wants to be Cook County Recorder of Deeds. As The Reader's Mick Dumke pointed out, this election may be the Year... more ›

The Trib rolled out Part II of its damning investigation of Chicago police officers shooting civilians, and it's just as intensive as Part I--plus it's accompanied by a harsh, determined editorial. God, agreeing with the Trib's editorial board...this is a whole new feeling. Today's report focuses on Officer Phyllis Clinkscales, who shot and killed 17-year-old Robert Washington in June 2000, which sets up an analysis of how thoroughly police shootings are investigated. Guess what?... more ›

Made in Chicago's taken a short hiatus, but now we're back, full of turkey and thankful for the artists and artisans in our town. Dolan Geiman grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia on his family's Christmas tree farm. Dolan started making things from an early age and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains near his home. His work reminds us of traipsing around old barns and making tree forts back in Tennessee. Dolan and... more ›

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the... more ›

Kind of a CPD-heavy day today. University of Chicago Law School professor Craig Futterman released a new study today titled "The Use of Statistical Evidence to Address Police Supervisory and Disciplinary Practices: The Chicago Police Department's Broken System." (Download the .pdf here.) The report is only 40 pages long, and it's un-fucking-believable. In it, Futterman and his co-authors H. Melissa Mather and Melanie Miles outline a blistering analysis of the CPD's "fundamental and systemic" problems, a "culture of not knowing" and a "machinery of denial" when it comes to charges of police abuse. We'll pull out some highlights here, but the entire report is really, really worth reading: more ›

We're embarrassed to admit that when it comes to Korean culture, beyond bulgoki and kimchi we sort of draw a blank. (But oh how we love bulgoki!) So it's great to know that DOC Films at U of C is on the job: this week they're hosting the Korean Film Festival, a traveling tour of contemporary and classic cinema. 1958's A Flower in Hell is described by Jonathan Rosenbaum as "potent and grim," but... more ›

blog on the New York Times. Convinced you need to know her? more ›

Twenty new restaurants, including Chicagoist favorite Smoque, (chow pictured) were named Great Neighborhood Restaurants (GNR) today by our favorite (and the only) Chicago-based culinary discussion board, LTHForum. LTH members give the yearly awards to restaurants they believe "contribute to their neighborhoods' and the city's character by offering outstanding food, an authentic experience of their ethnic culture, and/or a welcoming (or in some cases, belovedly cranky) atmosphere for guests." more ›

Hey, kids! Chicago Artists Month is upon us! Although it may feel like there's a different festival/fair/celebration each week in the city, this one isn't one to miss, with a full slate of cool events scheduled to help celebrate one of the city's most vibrant scenes. You can get your culture fix at a number of special gallery exhibits over the next few days, given the bitchin' balmy weather, we'd recommend breaking out your... more ›

If you were looking for some new books to cuddle up with for the oncoming winter, the Chicago Book Festival is here to help. There's an events booklet available at libraries and bookstores and a PDF online. Much of the information is on readings in the city that happen anyway, but we are excited about the extra discussions for this fall's One Book, One Chicago, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which we haven't read since high... more ›

Where drivers in Oak Lawn once ignored octagonal red signs demanding they halt, they will now encounter little addendums to make them take notice and, well, stop. At least, that’s what mayor Dave Heilmann is hoping since he went balls-out with ironic nerdery by implementing a new plan to install signs with wacky messages underneath official stop signs. more ›

Two Gallants are some weary motherfuckers. Besides the strained, vagabond nature of their music — and the "holy crap, that guy is messed up!" storytelling in Adam Stephens’ serrated, whiskey-choked voice — there’s the black-and-white fact that these San Franciscans have a total of 14 days off between now and the end of the year. Indeed, Stephens and drummer Tyson Vogel seem to be living up to the title of their latest release, The Scenery... more ›

The Special Operations Section of the Chicago PD has yet another scandal on its hands: An unconstitutional sweep of a bar on March 27, 2004, was caught on video, and the officers' story does not, in any way, match what's on the tape, which is now in the hands of the Tribune. News of this perversion of the social contract comes as part of the bigger take-down of the SOS cops' style of protecting and... more ›

The city Health Department just sent out a press release announcing that Penang, the popular Malaysian restaurant and sushi bar at 2201 S. Wentworth, was shut down yesterday for "critical violations of the City Health Code" after being tipped off by a person calling 311, reporting the sight of a rat entering the building housing Penang. Among Penang's many offenses, inspectors found live fruit flies and rodent feces throughout the kitchen and "premises" (one can... more ›

The Empty Bottle, in conjunction with Britain's The Wire magazine, will host this weekend's fifth annual Adventures in Modern Music festival, a self-described "celebration of 'outsider sounds.'" The festival promises to pack 'em into the Bottle for sets by groundbreaking artists both new and historic. Daily lineups, with highlights: TONIGHT (Wednesday): White Magic, Badawi, Holy Fuck, and Graveyards & Zac Davis Drag City's White Magic is fronted by the smoky-voiced Mira Bilotte, who channels a... more ›

We admit to having mixed feelings about the beast that has become Wicker Park's Around The Coyote Festival. We don't dig all the suburbanites stumbling down the sidewalk in an effort to discover "culture" in the space of a few days. At the same time we have plenty of artist friends that look forward to the event as a chance to sell some of their work and mingle with the public. So, weighing that, we've... more ›

If you were at last night's Estrojam (warning: makes noise) opening-night Panty Party at Funky Buddha, it's likely you're familiar with the festival. You're also probably a) hungover from all the $1 beers and mango vodka shots, and b) searching for your face on Last Night's Party, hoping for a new MySpace photo. The five-year-old, woman-centric music and culture festival continues all over the city this week with a bevy of concerts, films, workshops and... more ›

The "vere" part is pronounced like "were." Now that you know how to pronounce "saveur," it is time to pick up a copy of the food and wine magazine by the same name. The October issue of Saveur is dedicated solely to Chicago; not too surprisingly, a piece of pizza is featured on the cover. And here we were pumped about getting a single article in Gourmet. Like Gourmet, Saveur doesn't put all of its... more ›

Chicagoist is a big cheerleader for the city, but there are some things that even we have a hard time getting excited about. Swimming in Lake Michigan or jumping into the Chicago River are two of them. Maybe it is the dumping. Or maybe it is (jump in the way-back machine, for a second with us) Dave Matthews Band. Or maybe it is the knowledge that every summer, the beaches are closed several times... more ›

As we posted earlier this summer there's quite a hidden history of tiki in the Chicagoland area that's been all but forgotten, which is why local author James Teitelbaum's research is so valuable. His book Tiki Road Trip chronicled his coast-to-coast quest for the best in tiki, both modern and vintage. It was so successful that earlier this year he published a new edition. This Thursday he'll be in town for a reading and... more ›

Earlier this year when we interviewed ME-TV's Neal Sabin, he let drop that cult fave series "Night Gallery" would soon be part of the weekly line-up. True to his word, the early 70's horror anthology show created by Rod Serling is now on every Sunday from 5 to 6. That's two half-hour episodes back to back. It's part of the channel's "chill" new Sunday evening schedule. "Night Gallery" is followed by a full hour of... more ›