It's Memorial Day weekend which marks the unofficial start of summer - and the weather is cooperating. Our pals at Gapers Block were kind enough to point out that both The Reader and NewCity have their summertime issues up for your perusal of what to do this summer. And don't forget Metromix Chicago's fest guide to plan each weekend neighborhood exploration this year. You know, besides just Lollapalooza. Check back later when Carrie has a few more great grilling suggestions for your weekend and let us know if there are other great local summer guides we missed. more ›

• Bond was set at $1 million for Marcy Cruz, half of the duo charged in last week's bat attack in Bucktown.
• A Facebook photo leads to a stolen phone.
• Desiree Rogers breaks her silence on her time in the White House.

Serial killer Andre Crawford will serve a life sentence with no chance of parole for the rapes and murders of 11 South Side women, Chicago Breaking News reports. more ›

• On again, off again: the abortion notification law is on hold once more after a judge issued a restraining order on it this afternoon at the request of the ACLU.
• According to prosecutors, the man accused of causing a wreck that killed a pregnant mother and the baby - delivered by emergency c-section after the crash - had cocaine in his system at the time of the crash.
• Mick Dumke breaks down Mayor Daley's interview with WBEZ from earlier in the week.

So are the fruit flies buzzing around the basket of tangelos and peaches on your kitchen counter, and your Aunt Kathy, and your Cousin Melvin, and your landlord. Even the Amalgamated Union of Lolcat-Artists, Local 12 — one of Chicago's most cutting-edge arts organizations — is throwing a group show (theme: "Kittehs H8 Scaree Glenn Beck"). Chicago Gallery News' comprehensive list of openings should help you find what's what and where, as should Newcity's list. but here are some highlights (i.e., emailing us about your upcoming events works!) to help you along: more ›

• Starting off this week with a bit of a review. We slugged back our share of Original Schlitz Friday night at Green Mill. Guess what? It isn't that bad. Actually, as far as clean lagers go, we prefer it over Pabst Blue Ribbon (coincidentally, Pabst brews both). At $4 a bottle, it's also priced perfectly (PBR on draft at Green Mill runs $4.50).
• Louis Glunz Beer Company has formed the "Glunz Beer Culinary Council." This Justice League of culinary greatness includes Paul Kahan, Mindy Segal, Richard Camarota of Custom House, MIke Roper and Ben Sheagren of Hopleaf, Cooper's - A Neighborhood Eatery owner Craig Foss, Siebel Institute of technology faculty member Randy Mosher, author Lucy Saunders, and chariman Jim Javenkoski. Not coincidentally, the restaurants represented also carry Unibroue beers.
• Mike Nagrant waxes on about "green market dorks" in this week's New City

We've been sort of "meh" about the news of Roundy's Supermarkets coming to town, mainly because, rather than set up stores in neighborhoods that need them, the enormogrocer instead decided to set up shop in a neighborhood that wasn't exactly clamoring for another grocer. more ›

• Drew Peterson Watch: the Cowardly Lion's attorney says a racy message recently found on missing wife Stacy's phone is proof that she was having an affair, and ran off.
• The mini Wrigley Field formerly at the New City YMCA is being relocated to Humboldt Park.
• If you're a Streets and San worker around 53rd and Union, be careful that woman you offer money for sex isn't an undercover officer.
• Kanye West, blogger.

There's a wonderful video at Crain's website, under their "Entrepreneurs in Action" section, on Englewood-based organic wholesaler Goodness Greenness. Goodness Greenness provides organic produce to scores of stores and restaurants throughout the area. Goodness Greenness also has a handy feature on their website that makes it easier for those of you who want to eat organic to find stores and restaurants that carry their produce. Simply enter your ZIP code and enter a search... more ›

We told you it was happening; now it has, and both the Food Chain and The Stew stopped by to take their respective looks at the new Pastoral in the Loop. Food Chain asked owner Greg O'Neill about the popularity of fancy cheese: "People have the sense that 'if I’m going to be bad, I might as well be bad with something good.'" Indeed, my friend, Indeed. Handlebar owner Josh Deth has been all over... more ›

Here's what happened while a punk rock choir distracted us from Doomsday: Fall arts season preview season is here. If you didn’t pick up a Reader over the weekend, you can still bookmark their A & E preview online. The Trib’s writers chose their 10 most promising in theater, art, dance, music (rock and otherwise), comedy and architecture. The Bright One previews Broadway in Chicago and upcoming rock concerts and CDs (remember those?). New City... more ›

No witty introduction this week. Our fault for trying to impress the new staffers with barleywine ale and Dalmore. Thank God for French-pressed coffee. The buffet is now open. A Good German to the End: The closing of Delicatessen Meyer should have been a story we weighed in on earlier in the week and not relegated to the Buffet. To that end, Chicagoist extends a sincere mea culpa. Anyhoo, for those who haven't heard, the... more ›

"How stupid are the drivers in this parking lot?" via kudzuplanet. more ›

The North-Clybourn shopping district is about to get a lot more congested. Crain's ran a piece this weekend about more retail development in the areas around Clybourn Avenue between North Avenue and Division Street, including a massive 350,000-square-foot shopping center at the New City YMCA site. That complex will be joined by the new home of the British School of Chicago on Halsted, which will include 90,000 square feet of retail, redevelopment of two industrial sites, and undisclosed plans for a lot near Kingsbury and Division. more ›

Milwaukee-based Roundy's Supermarkets Inc., owners of the Copps, Rainbow Foods, and Pick 'N Save grocery chains, is expanding their area presence in a big way. A company press release announced yesterday that Roundy's plans on opening an 80,000 square-foot store on the site of the New City YMCA. This follows speculation that Roundy's is one of the companies with an eye on fouling the form-follows-function feng shui of the soon-to-be-shuttered Carson Pirie Scott building. more ›

We're not gonna lie. We're suckers for a survey. We're flattered to be asked to take a taste test, review a product, to fill out a questionnaire. When we found out in our 20s that you could get *paid* to do just such a thing, we were tingly all over. And we promptly signed up with as many places as would take us. We were always bummed as kids that our house wasn't one of the Nielsen families and we always wanted to know how to get them to sign us up for a Gallup poll. Seriously.
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The DCA is down with the streets, as the Cultural Center’s latest exhibit features celebrated graffiti artist Dzine. New City Chicago previews the Fall Arts Season. CPS’ Back to School party at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion runs tonight through Friday and features rockin’ kids ensembles, a Chic-a-Go-Go dance party, and school marching bands. Here's a good ol' fashioned arts/media brawl. Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss pans the Stages 06 musical showcase. The response from... more ›

Ask and ye shall receive, commenters; today is the day that you requested. Today we push aside big book fairs and corporations and their easy-to-buy books. Today we shun the traffickers of false memoirs and mammoth book advances. Today we say, WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ BORDERS! We'll begin with the Reader Book Swap. Tonight, at the Hideout, from 5:30PM-8:30PM, you can bring as many as 15 used books, and exchange them for 15 other... more ›

New City’s annual list of "who rocks Chicago" is out with some minor changes for this year. more ›

Chicagoist needs to pull its corduroy jacket out of the closet, our elbow pads are looking a little too new. Good thing it's Story Week so we can start rubbing some elbows. Story Week is Columbia College’s week of lectures, readings, panel discussions and performances, from authors large and small, local and from away. There’s way too much cool stuff to list here, so we’ll list some of the highlights, but make sure to check... more ›

In our saturated local media landscape, it’s easy to forget the slender but succinct New City Chicago. This week’s edition turned us on to a new podcast covering the Chicago art scene: Bad At Sports. Michael Workman’s review dubs BAS the diamond in the rough of lunatic hackery too often abusing the mics. Chicagoist has listened to quite a few podcasts this summer and we share his skepticism. But the podcast doesn’t disappoint. With only... more ›

While most people think Cinco de Mayo is Mexican independence day, Chicagoist is telling you it's not. It's a day for eating food and doing tequila shots, silly! To figure out where to eat and drink tonight check out Citysearch, Metromix or do a search for Mexican eats on the LTH Forum. New City says Adobo Grill and Frontera Grill are the spots to hit for good guac and Citysearch has a good list of... more ›

This week’s New City cover story “Music 45: Who Rocks Chicago” features 45 artists, talent bookers, and executives who rock Chicago. Though the awkward punctuation had us scratching our heads for a while, that was nothing compared with how we got our dander up over the list itself. Trust us: things get ugly when our dander is in the up position. more ›

Try as we might, Chicagoist has failed miserably in our attempts to catch The Hi Hi Puffamiyumi Show on Cartoon Network. Mostly because we’re hosting our own show called The Happy Fun Time Drink The Memories of the Work Week Away Tavern Hour on Friday nights. Ever since a Pizzicato Five comp dropped into our laps several years ago, we’ve been suckers for all manner of J-pop. You can keep your Ashlees and Hillarys; our... more ›

If you read Chicagoist with any regularity � in which case, we love you � you know that we're always reporting about Hollywood coming to Chi-town (or just pretending to come here). Most prominently, we've bitched about Josh Hartnett posing as a Bucktown hipster and fawned over the caped crusader chilling on Lower Wacker. (We always knew Wacker Drive felt like another world and now we know it is: Gotham City.) This week's New... more ›

Oof. We�re getting off to a late start this morning here in the Chicagoist offices; we blame the humidity and last night�s late showing of Ah, sweat and confusion, thy name is laziness. more ›

Hey, kids! The Chicago Underground Film Festival is coming soon and Chicagoist knows you want to get in on all the esoteric cinematic goodness. One of the fest's most noteworthy events is the world premiere of Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? � a documentary about Christian rock, featuring interviews by the local (The Detholz!), the semi-famous (Pedro the Lion), and, not, fortunately, the shitty (Creed). The film even managed to net the cover story in this week's New City, an article that provides an entertaining look into the film's production and its secular approach to a very spiritual subject. Also noteworthy is the fact that Heather Whinna, Chicagoist's boss, codirected this film. (You should've seen the looks on people's faces yesterday after picking up New City in the lobby... Priceless like a MasterCard commercial.) more ›

Has the funniest director-film critic feud in history (er... the funny director-film critic feud in history) been resolved? New City's Ray Pride reports that after the recent Chicago critics' screening of The Brown Bunny, one of the most critically maligned films in history after its Cannes Film Festival premiere, director/asshole extraordinaire Vincent Gallo and Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, perhaps the film's most vocal opponent, emerged from a closed-door meeting "with quiet smiles, seeming to have buried the scalpel." more ›

Chicagoist thinks it's interesting that our city seems to specialize in certain art forms - namely comics, improv comedy, and music. And the cover story of this week's New City offers a peek into that latter group, the great local music scene. In an article listing "Ten Bands on the Verge" � Chicagoist wonders on the verge of what, exactly? � music critic Dave Chamberlain calls out his favorite up-and-coming hometown acts. While sorting through the fray, he makes a few pithy, dead-on remarks about Chicago music, like "The rest of the world lumps Chicago's indie-rock bands together � and that's not necessarily a good thing" and "Chicago is strewn with with the corpses of bands that burned out and fractured before their star rose." more ›