It’s one thing to understand the sound of rock ‘n roll, but it’s another thing to understand the look of rock ‘n roll. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz manages to capture both. more ›

Your theme this week, in honor of Earth Day/Week/Month: "Being Green." This is the song that Kermit the Frog made famous, but Ray Charles did a knockout version of it, and our favorite take on the song has to be Van Morrison's version from 1973's Hard Nose the Highway. It's so good, we insist on this song being played while our casket's being lowered to the ground. Let's dive in, shall we? Moo Moo, I... more ›

Wishing to extend our summer fun by one more weekend, Chicagoist headed down to the Live Music Capital of the World for the 5th Annual Austin City Limits Music Festival. The lineup was similar to that of Lollapalooza and gave us a chance to see a couple of bands we missed there, as well as enough new ones to keep us running from stage to stage. The ACL Music Fest is set up in Austin's... more ›

Chicagoist loves bees. They do great group dances, they pollinate flowers, and they make honey. Honey alone has inspired some of our favorite things, from beautiful Van Morrison songs to cute little bears whose bodies we used to mutilate for a little altered state of our own, if you know what we mean. more ›

Herman's Gem-Bar Lounge and Grill has been a staple of Bridgeport since 1920 and yet in the six-plus years we've lived in the neighborhood we never patronized the place. Maybe it was their tag line: "the 'gem' of Old Bridgeport", which to Chicagoist harks back to the days of male-dominated ethnic "sports clubs", political deals made at the end of a bar and a beer, and racial epithets casually tossed about like the first words of a child. Maybe it was its location in the largely industrial Loomis Street corridor linking Bridgeport with Pilsen, or the slight musty and polluted aroma rising from the Chicago River's south branch located yards from the front door. Upon passing the place we often joked that the gem in question was cut from zircon. Regardless of the reason we left there yesterday cursing that we hadn't visited before. more ›