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Dark Matter Coffee Intelligentsia Coffee Finalists: Metropolis Coffee Company, Passion House Coffee Roasters, Sparrow Coffee Roastery

Chase Wintrust Finalists: PNC, Fifth Third, US Bank

Hot “G” Dog hotgdog.com During Hot Doug’s waning days last summer and fall, when lovers of encased meats mourned by waiting in nine-hour lines, it was hard to tell which aspect of the Hot Doug’s experience they would miss more, the specialty sausages and duck-fat fries or Doug Sohn’s genial presence. But now at least the sausages and fries are back, thanks to Juan Carlos and Octavio Garcia, two brothers who worked on the line at Hot Doug’s for most of its existence and who, earlier this year, received Sohn’s blessing to open up their own hot dog stand....

Divvy divvybikes.com Its pedal-powered technology stretches back two centuries, but like the latest, hottest gadget, Divvy has in two years gone from “Will anyone use it?” to “Does anyone not?” It’s not just that unlimited rides are much cheaper on Divvy ($75 for a year) than the el ($100 for just a month). The three-speed bikes are also minutes faster than the elevated trains, according to a study by the urban transportation site Transitized of the top 1,000 Divvy journeys....

The Signature Room at the 95th Runner-Up: Adler Planetarium

Billy Helmkamp, 43, co-owns the Whistler (which he opened in 2008 with Rob Brenner) and Sleeping Village (opened in 2018 with Brenner and former Whistler bartender Eric Henry). He’s been a major player in the Logan Square Arts Festival for most of its history and serves on the board of I Am Logan Square, the nonprofit that organizes it. (If this summer’s fest happens, it’ll be as smaller events, on a scale deemed safe by public-health authorities....

Listening to Chelsea Wolfe is like watching a fog roll in and wondering if a storm will follow; her music provokes an uncanny feeling that combines mystifying beauty and deep anxiety. The singer-songwriter has spent much of the past few years on the road, touring in support of 2015’s Abyss and 2017’s Hiss Spun, both of which are heavily influenced by industrial rock and doom metal. Her recent sixth studio album, Birth of Violence (Sargent House), has a calmer presence, but it’s no less unsettling....

Friday, May 22 Inspired by our James Beard award-winning Key Ingredient series, KICO Invites you to taste and vote for nearly two dozen dishes created by Chicago’s most outstanding Chefs using one of five secret ingredients featured in past columns. Must be 21+. VIP Tickets: $125 6:30-11:30PM VIP guests will have access to the event one hour early and can enjoy bites from Dave Beran, Executive Chef at Next, who in 2014 won the James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef: Great Lakes....

ARTIST: Aaron Lowell Denton SHOW: Makaya McCraven, Resavoir at the Empty Bottle on Thu 4/25 MORE INFO: instagram.com/aaronlowell

Like many millennials, I happen to occupy a demographic that helped drive the nu-metal boom at the end of the 1990s. I never owned a pair of JNCOs, but I devoured every CD that vaguely reminded me of Korn’s Follow the Leader. While I’m embarrassed now to admit that I spent actual money on a Hed PE album (hey, I was young and made mistakes), I still have a soft spot for some of that ol’ caustic, supersize pop-metal....

Gillian Flynn gillian-flynn.com Runner-Up (tie): Bruce Olds Joe Meno

Adornment + Theory, the roughly month-old boutique next to the Logan Theatre, showcases what proprietor Viviana Langhoff likes to call “wearable art.” Adornment + Theory 2644 1/2 N. Milwaukee 773-697-7090facebook.com/adornmentandtheory

Todo bien.” Electricity? So what can we do to help? The immediate need, Buchen says, is money for the organizations that are doing the work: clearing streets, getting drinkable water to the people, providing shelter. (There, on the ground, he likes Radio Vieques and Taller Salud.) (On September 28, after tweeting that Puerto Ricans “want everything done for them,” President Donald Trump temporarily lifted a long-standing federal law that had interfered with the island’s trade, driven up the cost of living, and was said to be slowing the arrival of supplies after Maria....

The problem with Oscar Wilde’s 1895 potboiler An Ideal Husband is precisely the thing for which its author is routinely praised: its flood of exquisite witticisms. They come fast and furious in the play’s opening, as a coterie of Victorian aristocratic types gather in the octagon room of parliamentarian Sir Robert Chiltern’s home, apparently for no other purpose than to skewer the superficiality and hypocrisy of London society. It’s such a giddy, farcical world that the sudden intrusion of mysterious, scheming Mrs....

It helps to think of “The Sympathetic Imagination,” Diana Thater’s new retrospective show at the MCA, the same way Hemingway encouraged readers to approach his own work—as an iceberg. Only 10 percent of the material is easily accessible, and it looks like a big, white sheet of ice that makes you say, “Yes, and?” The remaining 90 percent lies below the surface and requires special tools to excavate and appreciate....

In 1988 Roger Ailes fashioned the media strategy for George H.W. Bush’s successful campaign for president, and in 1996 he became the first CEO of Fox News. Between these two historic events, he came to Illinois. Ailes was already notorious, and Simon “had tremendous success raising a ton of money by using Ailes’s name as a scare tactic,” says Kerwin Swint in his 2008 biography of Ailes, Dark Genius. His hackles up, Ailes called a news conference....

Chicago Light Brigade chicagolightbrigade.org, @ChiLightBrigade The Chicago Light Brigade performs creative protests the group has dubbed “light actions”—using projectors, battery-powered LEDs, paper lanterns, and the like—to make literally brilliant political statements. Inspired by a similar Milwaukee-based project called the Overpass Light Brigade, CLB supports grassroots activism by appearing at various events and helping other organizations build illuminated props, the most common being boards mounted with lights, each one carrying letters spelling out calls for change: fund public education, free the nato 3, fair housing now....

Smart Paws Chicago 3916 N. Broadway 773-614-7297 smartpawschicago.com Runner-Up: Windy City Dog Walkers