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Stan’s various locations, stansdonutschicago.com Runner-Up: Glazed and Infused

Michelle Green, G & G Law Joey Mogul, People’s Law Office 

Band of Bohemia 4710 N. Ravenswood 773-271-4710 bandofbohemia.com Runner-Up: Headquarters Beercade

Steven Luros Holliday stevenlurosholliday.com Runner-Up: Jefferson Pinder

Friends of the Parks fotp.org, @FOTPChicago The fight to keep the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Obama Presidential Library off land owned by the Chicago Park District was a David and Goliath match from the get-go, with the tiny nonprofit Friends of the Parks facing off against the mayor of Chicago and a billionaire maker of iconic movies on the museum project and the mayor, the University of Chicago, the president of the United States, and virtually the entire south side on the library....

The General Yesterday, the Silent Film Society of Chicago presented a special screening of Buster Keaton’s 1928 film The Cameraman at Saint John Cantius Church, complete with organist Jay Warren’s accompaniment on the church’s vintage 1924 Wurlitzer. Few cinematic experiences are as joyous as watching Keaton’s films with fresh eyes. His shorts and his incredible run of features during the 1920s are revelations, filled with clever social insights and, of course, an array of how-did-he-just-do-that stunt work....

Andrea Bauer Kitchen with refurbished lamp and vinyl tape floor design Andrea Bauer Totem by Meg Gustafson and light fixture by Neal Miller An 80s-themed home isn’t complete without some neon (and, OK, a bust of a dude with a slick haircut, a piece the couple also own). Pink-and-green neon tubes beam on the dining-room wall. From the street, the apartment emits a hot-pink glow. “We’re those crazy people,” Gustafson says....

If Chicago theater has a high priest, a white-ponytailed president of the underground, that person is Beau O’Reilly, cofounder and artistic director of Curious Theatre Branch. His latest show, A Packet of Holiness and Joy Will Come to You? (A Fable), is a ragtag six-hander about making do and being weird in dark times. Gentrification, marginalized artists, youth protest brigades with enthusiasm and no vision: the landscape is familiar. Only instead of a diatribe, we are treated here to reality as warped in the elongated mirrors of Beau’s fun house....

Q: I’m 28 years old and live in the Midwest. I’m intersex, but I identify as female. I’m not out about being born intersex. Due to surgeries and hormones, I look like a fairly attractive female. I’ve been hanging out with a chill hetero guy, and things are getting very flirty. Is it unethical of me to not disclose my intersex-ness to him? —In New Terrific Erotic Romance So that chill hetero boy you’re thinking about disclosing your intersex-ness to, INTER?...

Austin Psych Fest has changed the name of its annual blowout to Austin Psych Fest presents: Levitation, and the show is going on the road and coming to town. Levitation Chicago hits Thalia Hall next month, and Empty Bottle Presents announced the initial lineup for the two-day bash back in January—postpunk outfit the Pop Group and shoegaze band Swervedriver are the big, attention-grabbing groups and easily worth the price of admission....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, September 25, 2017. Alderman Lopez calls CPD gang database “deeply flawed,” calls for overhaul Alderman Ray Lopez is calling for an overhaul of the Chicago Police Department’s “deeply flawed” gang database, which includes more than 398,000 residents. Lopez has suggested that Chicagoans on the list should be allowed to challenge it. “The current system is overly cumbersome and does not help individuals who may have no idea they are on the list,” Lopez said....

The sandwiches at Xi’an Cuisine xiancuisinechicago.com I read a quotation once to the effect that people who eat sandwiches have given up on life. I don’t agree with this. In fact, I think in many ways we’re experiencing a sandwich renaissance in Chicago, where any bored office worker can hop on the Red Line, get off at Cermak-Chinatown, and eat a lamb and cumin sandwich at Xi’an Cuisine, a joint that offers an accessible introduction to the cuisine of the Shaanxi province....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here.

When Russell Harrison, bassist of Chicago hardcore band C.H.E.W., first replies to my interview request, he signs the e-mail “c/o Courageous Horned-toads Escape Wasps.” Harrison and his bandmates have suggested several other possibilities for their acronym over the years: Cocaine Heroin Ecstasy Weed, Crying Heavily Every Week, Cold Hands Elicit Worry, Chill Hard Every Weekend. By the time you finish this story, they’ll probably have come up with a few more....

As I’ve watched the coverage of the mass shooting in Orlando, one story that has stayed on my mind is that of Eddie Justice, a 30-year-old man who texted his mother from the bathroom of Pulse. This kind of parental behavior has dire consequences for the LGBTQ population as a whole. The Trevor Project reports that queer youth from highly rejecting families are 8.4 times more likely to report suicidal ideation than queer youth who reported little or none....

Hyde Park resident Karen Bradley has been asking for her neighbors’ help in finding her beloved mourning dove Bobo, who escaped from a window in her home last month. Many Hyde Park residents have reported potential sightings of Bobo on a Google group called Good Neighbors. Bradley herself is a frequent poster, consistently encouraging her neighbors to keep looking out for Bobo. “Please call me if you spot him,” she wrote....

If you ever use Twitter to express your fandom of a famous rapper and have the “good” fortune of said rapper retweeting you, you’ll likely experience the bad fortune of receiving replies meant for the superstar from aspiring MCs thirsty for any inkling of attention. Rap spam is as common and easy to ignore as the ads that eat up space on your favorite website, so it takes a little something special to find your audience by plastering your work in online spaces where it’s generally seen as unwelcome—and 24-year-old Berkley MC Caleb Parker, aka Caleborate, has “it....

Gene Siskel Film Center This probably sounds like a backhanded compliment, given that Film Center presents some of the most substantial and adventurous first-run programming in town. Yet over the past couple years, as the movie exhibition business has contracted, Film Center has carved out a new niche for itself by bringing back to Chicago art-house releases that couldn’t gain a commercial foothold in their first runs at Landmark or Music Box or River East 21....

“I anticipated giving an entirely different lecture today,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, told a standing-room-only crowd at the University of Chicago Law School yesterday. “I was hoping to tell you that America was entering a new era of reproductive rights defined by possibility and progress. But the rug was pulled out from underneath us. The future of reproductive rights is more fragile than at any moment in my lifetime....