Mindy’s Hot Chocolate Runner-Up: Sweet Mandy B’s

The Gold Web @TheGoldWeb Plenty of local bands can work up a groove, but few give you as much to look at as the Gold Web. The glam-rock quartet put out their self-titled debut album at the end of 2014, though the studio takes of their songs seem to be largely a formality—the Gold Web are meant to be seen onstage. All four members dress like it’s Halloween every time they show their painted faces in one of Chicago’s rock clubs, and like a troupe of Jim Henson creations, these guys don’t make it entirely clear what they’re supposed to be....

Mushrooms, I tell ya, they’re everywhere. Full Circle Fungi and Windy City Mushroom couldn’t have more radically different business models, each run by dudes with pretty different ways of talking about our future fungal overlords. But early on, Furman gave Smurawa a tour of the place, and both recognize each other’s rightful place in Chicago’s steadily spawning fungal network, in which it’s all connected. v

Despite plummeting temperatures last week, about two dozen people filled a classroom on the seventh floor of the School of the Art Institute one evening for a workshop on the basics of “cop watching.” While the idea of observing police has become tightly linked in recent years with bystanders filming officers, the organizers of the training emphasized that cell-phone cameras aren’t required to keep an eye on cops. Last week’s workshop focused on how to conduct oneself if one chooses to observe a police stop, and what to do if the cop being watched turns his or her attention to the watcher....

If you’re planning to skip the Air and Water Show on Saturday and Sunday, there’s plenty of other goings-on far from the lakefront hoards, sonic booms, and the gratuitous displays of military might. Here’s some of what we recommend: Fri 8/19-Sat 8/20: Catzilla 4: A Cat Fest at Prop Thtr (3502 N. Elston) features cat-inspired dance performances, spoken word, music, and more, plus the feature act starring real felines: Science Fiction Cats....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, November 1, 2017. Lobbyist accuses state senator Ira Silverstein of sexual harassment State senator Ira Silverstein allegedly sexual harrased an Illinois lobbyist multiple times, causing the lobbyist to seek medical attention. Denise Rotheimer made the allegations against the Chicago Democrat in a hearing on sexual harassment in Illinois politics Tuesday. She said she filed a complaint with Illinois senate president John Cullerton’s office about a year ago, and nothing had come of it....

Hopleaf Map Room Finalists: Beermiscuous, Funkenhausen

Kevin Coval kevincoval.com Runner-Up: Ladan Osman

A human being, Bertolt Brecht once wrote, is the sum of his social circumstances. In mounting Brecht’s great 1943 drama The Good Person of Szechwan, Cor Theatre has managed, against all odds, to create a world in which social circumstances barely exist. In true parable fashion, the social circumstances in Szechwan are simple and straightforward: poverty abounds and goods are in short supply, making everything costly and poverty worse (not coincidentally, Brecht wrote the play in exile from Germany as World War II raged)....

I pay the guy no mind the first couple times he comes up. Young, kind of conceited-sounding, typical. He sits toward the back of the bar with a couple acting like they are on a date. But as the night wears on, he becomes a problem. He begins to linger at the bar, chatting up whoever is nearest. He acts in a way that forces us to watch him. But he isn’t the only distraction this night....

To view Nora Helmer’s girlish high spirits as proof of immaturity is as much a mistake as viewing Blanche DuBois’s flights of nostalgia as proof of weakness. Both of these indelible dramatic heroines reach their breaking point (or in Nora’s case, a breaking-away point) only after making huge—and unsung—sacrifices for their families. True, Nora’s forgery of her dying father’s signature in order to get the loan she needed to save her husband Torvald’s health is technically a crime, whereas Blanche drowned in legal debt shepherding sick relatives on their “long parade to the graveyard....

Wilco wilcoworld.net Runner-Up: Twin Peaks

Black Dog Gelato Runner-Up: Bobtail

Samantha Irby @wordscience Runner-Up: J.R. Jones

If you’d stumbled unawares into one of Joanna Connor’s regular gigs at the House of Blues or Kingston Mines in the 2010s, the blues singer and guitarist might’ve seemed like some sort of hidden treasure. But Connor has been playing all over the local blues scene for almost four decades, and she’s attracted devoted fans drawn to her forceful stage presence and fiery slide guitar. When she moved to Chicago from Massachusetts in the mid-1980s, she started out as a guitarist for Dion Payton’s 43rd Street Blues Band, then the house band for the storied Checkerboard Lounge....

Kava is like a combination of weed, booze, and caffeine,” the barista behind the counter informed me on my second visit to Tropikava Kafe and Juice Bar. A chalkboard on the wall described it as a “magical root” from the South Pacific, Hawaii, Fiji, and Tonga. WebMD, on the other hand, warns that it can cause liver damage, concluding, “Kava is POSSIBLY UNSAFE when taken by mouth. Don’t use it.” (Emphasis theirs....

Last year Dirty Projectors released a tortured breakup album, Dirty Projectors, that chronicled the acrimonious 2016 split between band mastermind David Longstreth and singer-guitarist Amber Coffman. Its heavy-handed retelling was from Longstreth’s point of view, since Coffman had quit the group—joining Angel Deradoorian and Olga Bell on the list of crucial members who’ve left Dirty Projectors since 2012. Most of the songs feature vocal cameos, from folks as disparate as the sisters in Haim, Odd Future’s Syd, and the team of Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) and Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend)....

Montrose Dog Beach Horner Park

Thibaut Idenn Aaron McManus Finalists: Joseph Carnahan, Joe Fiely