Lots of options if Jazz Fest isn't your thing this weekend. more ›

We were sitting around the table during the Chicagoist summer retreat last night (a.k.a. happy hour) and the question was posed: Remember when each neighborhood had a single street fest? It's come to the point where not only do neighborhoods throw multiple street festivals, but they're growing so dense you need never leave the three block radius around your home all summer and still continually stumble across one! For music lovers this has created a happy conundrum. In order to attract the crowds the food and the freedom of drinking overpriced brews in the street is no longer enough. Now we demand good music too! Luckily for us this street fest season has gifted us with a ridiculously rich number of line-ups and this weekend's bill at West Fest is no different. more ›

Street festivals are in full effect this weekend, but May Fest is always on our mind. The Lincoln Square event celebrates ten years in 2009, featuring the same lively mix of local entertainment and the consumption of bunches of beer out of giant novelty plastic beer steins. (The gargantuan cups are great for watering your plants during the year, or nursing particularly spicy hangovers.) more ›

As of today, we are in full Summer Mode, kids. No, really: it's the summer solstice, which occurs this evening at 6:59 p.m. Huzzah! We're right in the thick of festival season and sweet Blago on a stick, there are a lot of 'em. Chuck covered some earlier in the Friday Buffet (we're super stoked for Joe M500's trade-in at Tour de Fat and the Drive By Truckers at Taste of Randolph), so here's the best of the rest. more ›