September 26: Make your way to Funky Buddha for the Fair Trade Fiesta. Support their marathon runners who are raising awareness of Fair Trade issues. Appetizers, a raffle, music, dancing, and all you can drink organic beer and wine. Buy your advance tickets here. 8 - 11 p.m. 722 W. Grand Ave. $35. September 27: Rib-A-Que Smoke Out! Don't give up your summer without enjoying some ribs at this event, sponsored by Moonshine and......

Longtime "BotW" readers might remember that we reviewed a barley wine last spring from Louisville's Browning's Brewery. We bought it retail in town but, after making a phone call to the brewmaster in Louisville, didn't disclose where we made the purchase for fear of outing the store in question for selling booze outside the three-tier distribution system. During a New Year's Day discussion with the store owner, Mitch Einhorn of Lush Wine & Spirits,......

Asking for salt and lime with a premium tequila has long been a pet peeve of ours, but since we regularly found ourselves behind a bar, we bit our tongue. Not anymore — we're demanding you shed the "training wheels." It isn't as though we're talking about mixtos here, where nearly half of what's in the bottle is cane sugar. These days every major tequila brand seems to be launching a 100-percent, pure agave line.......

Q: Where in Chicago can Daley’s Addiction share the table with a Lakeview Barhopper? A: Bobtail Ice Cream on Southport! Bobtail Ice Cream offers a handful of ice cream flavors as well as creative coffee drinks at this packed location on the Southport corridor. They don’t have the richest ice cream we’ve ever tasted, but we love their inventive flavors and the atmosphere is perfect for families. Daley’s Addiction is vanilla with just the right......

This whole CWM history deal is something of a learning process. Well, hopefully it is for you, Constant Reader, as well as for us. For example, we were well aware of the incredible and ever-swelling numbers of Chicago history books, with their tremendous photographic accompaniment. Hell, we practically have the Dewey Decimal reference number for the "HIST-CHICAGO" section at Sulzer memorized. (It's F548 something something.) So when we were doing a little research at the......

There happen to be dueling reports of when the tickets actually go on sale for this – it’s either tonight at 9 pm or tomorrow at the same time. We thought we’d give advance warning either way. Bobby Bare Jr’s Young Criminal Starvation League will be shooting a video on Monday the 21st at The Hideout ($10, 9 pm). Finding the perfect hipster/non-hipster outfit for this should be an adventure. Chicagoist first stumbled upon......

Do you love love songs? Sure, we all do (except for you Mr. Drinking Jack Daniels In The Dark). So does the Sun-Times. Just in time for your Valentine’s Day mix tape, they’ve published a list of great and not-so-great love songs. How’d they do? Well…the whole idea of lists like this is to spur discussion right? Then spur we will! It’s their Best of the Best list that we have the biggest quibbles over.......

This is usually the place where we’re supposed to tell you what excellent bands or movies are playing on New Year’s Eve. But you probably already have your plans sketched out, right? You don’t? Dear God! Don’t you know you HAVE to have major plans on New Year’s? It’s the end of the year! Therefore, you have to be at some huge party with lots of people, find someone to kiss at midnight, and have......