It's a good day outside and with the combination of springing forward the clocks, the South Side Irish Parade Sunday, and warmer temps next week there are plenty of weeks to go out. Start the weekend off by leaving work early and heading to the Artisan Cellar at the Merchandise Mart, where they'll be having a tasting of the new-to-the area Graham Beck wines from South Africa. The free tasting runs from 3:30-6 p.m.,......

The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Music The Abbey Pub will be rocking the 18-and-over goodness this evening as Flosstradamus kicks off their third annual "FlosstraPROMus," a fundraiser for the Chicago Indie Radio Project. The featured Djs for the evening are Murderbot and DJ C. Video mixing will be handled by Thunderhorse, while Clayton Hauck of everyoneisfamous.com is providing the photo......

The dog days of August are here. And we've got some ways to beat the humidity or, even better, give it a big ol' raspberry. We've also got some food news for you. Let's get started. - From Crain's, Jon Young and Helene Albert, the folks behind Kitsch'n and Volo have a new gastropub opening later this month. The two-story Paramount Room at 415 N. Milwaukee in River West will center on pairing upscale pub......

Since our hipster cred went down the drain last night when we saw The Police at Wrigley, we decided to just join the ranks of our parents and give up. The on-sale listings from Ticketmaster confirmed this for us when all we found were shows at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. Shows that would have excited us about forty years ago, but who's to say grandpa and grandma don't deserve a great night out. The......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

As the temperature is expected to hit 90 degrees again today, we’re having a hard time getting into the sweater-weather mindset of fall that usually hits us around this time. Luckily, the Tribune and Sun-Times have some fall arts previews to get us in the mood. We’ve already given you the lowdown on the upcoming fall seasons at various theaters around town. But two shows out in the ‘burbs have pushed our fey and geek......

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......