This Saturday, GlitterGuts will celebrate four years of prolific and quality work by throwing the fourth annual Jukefest and Underground Dollar Store at Lincoln Hall. more ›

We thought there was an awful lot going on at the grand opening of the Southside Hub of Production (SHoP), a brand-new cultural center in Hyde Park, until we saw that the space the organization will be occupying was the Fenn House, a 16-room Victorian mansion across the street from the University of Chicago Campus. With that kind of square footage, there is room to offer something for everybody, which is what SHoP is aiming to do--and from a decidedly local perspective. more ›

Beer more ›

A new national multimedia exhibit debuted downtown Saturday, featuring images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by 22 top-rate combat journalists and military veterans. This is the first stop for the exhibit on its nationwide tour. more ›

Lillstreet Art Center celebrates a milestone, Rock For Kids and a food fest at the French market this weekend. more ›

Given how inventive Chicagoans get for events such as The Chiditarod Urban Iditarod, we have high hopes that people will just as creative for the cause of literacy at Open Books first annual bookcase decorating contest, Make The Case, a sort of pinewood derby for literary furniture to benefit local literacy programs. more ›

The shuttered Lakeshore Theatre is getting a new lease on life thanks to a legendary Los Angeles comedy club. The Laugh Factory has signed a lease to renovate the space and turn it into a traditional comedy club. That's a lot better than the dental offices that were planned for the space after Chris Ritter pulled the plug on the space last April. more ›

Chicago is losing one of its biggest — arguably its biggest — cultural advocates at the end of the month with the retirement of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg. The 85-year-old Weisberg is best known for organizing the wildly successful "Cows on Parade" public art exhibit of more than a decade ago, but her legacy runs deeper than that. Weisberg was also the driving force behind the Chicago Cultural Center, Taste of Chicago, Gallery 37, most of the major music festivals along the lakefront and neighborhood festivals throughout the city, and Friends of the Parks. Weisberg's knack for networking was the subject of a Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker profile. In short, Chicago could still conceivably be a cow town without Lois Weisberg. more ›

Way before politicians co-opted the term "Main Street" to mean "Real America," author and former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky lived in a small town where the main street was named Broadway and he captured the highs and lows of living in Long Branch, New Jersey in his 2009 book Thousands of Broadways: Dreams and Nightmares of the American Small Town. more ›

Last week we brought you some cool contemporary shows to check out. This week, we’ve rounded up a list of exhibits that look a little further to the past. more ›

As with so many cultural events lately, the Andersonville Arts Weekend was slated for cancellation. Luckily, a handful of local businesses swooped in to rescue it. With only a month to plan it, they’ve managed to pull together an impressive line-up, from photographers to painters to potters, who will be displaying their work at coffee shops, restaurants, thrift stores, and the ubiquitous interior design stores on Clark Street between Hollywood and Winnemac. We’re excited about a few of these featured events... more ›

Redmoon's Joyous Outdoor Event included, as promised, a pretty stellar lineup. Our choice to attend in the sunshine hours meant we experienced a truly kid-friendly festival, but, bless our stone cold hearts, we love watching street performers make kids laugh. Although we wish we'd been able to catch some of the later performances, being able to spend some time in the seriously awesome Luminarium was enough to make us feel joyous all weekend. more ›

Here at Chicagoist, we have a deep fascination with bizarro, pencil-mustachioed director John Waters, and it is only natural that adoration extends to one of the most talented actors from the wacky ensemble that starred in cult classics such as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble: Mink Stole. Just prior to Stole's arrival in the Windy City to promote her new black comedy horror film, All About Evil, Chicagoist spoke with the cult legend. more ›

Along with the longstanding permanent exhibition of 20th Century American Decorative Arts, Konstantin Grcic: Distinctive Design in the modern wing and Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago completes a sort of triple perspective on crafts and design at the Art Institute. more ›

This month is National Novel Writing Month — Nanowrimo for short. A time for cranking (crunking?) out 50,000 words of elegant prose — or crap, depending. A time (30 days, to be precise) within a time (that lacks a foreseeable end, to be depressing) of widespread unemployment among writers, many of whom used to get paid to wordsmith. Damn, man. Those were the days. more ›

UR Chicago has just announced they are going on indefinite hiatus and that this month's issue will be the last to appear in print. They will still maintain an online presence, and publishers En Prise Entertainment will continue to promote music and art events around town, but we're sad to say that the magazine itself is kaput due to obvious economic factors facing the print media industry. We thought it was one of the best independently produced arts and entertainment periodicals in Chicago, so we're rather bummed to see it become another casualty. (Full disclosure: A number of Chicagoist writers have freelanced or been employed by UR Chicago in the past.) more ›

These ads for Americans for the Arts were created by Chicago's own Leo Burnett agency. It's goooood! more ›

">he also smokes! He even believes the smoking ban was never "intended to limit artistic expression. It would be wise for us to ... allow theater productions to obtain a special waiver when smoking is a critical component of their performance." While Reilly wants the cast of to be able to light up, as scripted, Alderman Ed Smith (28th) disagrees, and the council specifically did not approve an exemption to the ban for live theater. more ›

WBEZ's Sunday arts show has gotten the boot. This is what happens when you don't pledge, people. Ever since Edward Lifson left the gig, the show's been sort of adrift, but WBEZ's getting pretty light on local arts coverage. [S-T]
more ›

Well, that anti-promoter ordinance the City's kicking around sounds worse with every passing second. The vague language means it may limit live comedy in Chicago, too. You can hear Alderman Eugene Schulter try to defend the ordinance on 848 from this morning, but we'll warn you that it'll just make you grumpy. more ›

Goccos are the holy grail of the crafting world—simple, handy, solid—so when the Japanese-made printing machine (sort of like silk screening, but easier) went out of production, print fans were crushed. Since 2005, Goccos have been tough to find, but today, local stationary go-to Paper Source got some of the "big daddy" Goccos in stock. Ayee! The $395 PG6 can make prints up to 6.5" x 9.3", and Goccos can print on paper and cloth. more ›

There's plenty going on this weekend in Chicago, like UFO symposiums, science fairs, and no shortage of places to eat. But if none of those things float your boat, maybe one of these events will. more ›

It's gonna snow tomorrow. Expect 6 inches by Friday. Joy! [Trib] more ›

How many dance troupes in Chicago can claim that they dance off the ceiling as well as the floor? AMEBA can. Billing themselves as an acrobatic and aerial dance company, AMEBA’s choreography uses the trapeze, suspended scarves, bungee cords, rope ladders … and they climb all over each other, too. more ›

We were grabbing a granola bar from the Walgreens by our office this morning and came across these amazing treats. It was then we realized that we've been so caught up in the Leap Year excitement that we nearly forgot that it's time to get excited about St. Patrick's Day. While most of our non-Irish friends celebrate this time of year by getting drunk on green beer and acting like idiots, we like to think we actually do pay proper respect to our Irish ancestors by cooking up a nice Irish stew and flipping through our family tree notes. Of course, our great, great, great grandfather was an Irish moonshiner (true story!) so there is some overlap. more ›

more ›

All week, Chicagoist will be breaking down the Schubas Tomorrow Never Knows Festival by day to take a look at the sometimes raw, always promising talent that's creating some of most deafening buzz on the independent music horizon. more ›

We all know that Chicago has a little something for everybody. As far as dance classes go, there are bountiful opportunities throughout the city to try something new, develop a new skill, or just plain old embarrass yourself in front of your significant other. We went ahead and found some of the more interesting offerings in the way of dance classes: more ›

Saturday night at SketchFest was bigger, better, rowdier, drunker. Performers might have found audiences more forgiving (when friends and family came) and tougher (when the front row was soused). Groups filling the most coveted slots brought energy, harmony, and a bizarre hilarity to the stage. more ›