As if the gorgeous weather wasn't enough reason to call out sick for the week, Columbia College give you another with its 11th annual Story Week: Cities of Words. Sunday kicked off the week of words with an alumni reading, and Monday's reading by Anchee Min about Maoist China was tender, raw and funny. With fifteen events over five days, you can't go to everything, but here's where Chicagoist will be: Tuesday: the Graduate Student... more ›

Tower Records will soon be no more. It seemed almost inevitable with the ability to download music that the brick and mortar stores would slowly disappear. This weekend the chain that got us addicted with their deep catalog was auctioned off to the highest bidder. A lowly $134.3 million and she could have been all ours. more ›

The easy story told about the artists opening galleries in Pilsen is: white north side art students are forcing Latino and Latina residents out of the neighborhood. There might be some truth to that, but gentrification, like art, is rarely so simple. That story assumes Latinos have no interest in new galleries, and vice versa, and that Important Art requires the approval of rich white folks. Thankfully, those assumptions are way, way off. more ›

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Way to go Chi-Town! We may have lost the coveted title of "America's Murder Capital" in 2004, but the showing we gave across the entire city Saturday night and early Sunday morning is proof that we aren't about to give the title up again without a fight—a blazing gunfight that is. more ›