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The Era’s Lab Sessions 2233 S. Throop highconceptlaboratories.org Last year footwork collective the Era launched Lab Sessions, an intermittently operating club night that brings the hyperfast, athletic style of dance to High Concept Laboratories, an “arts service organization” cum gallery in Pilsen. It’s an informal gathering, with members of the Era chopping it up with attendees and Teklife producers, who pop up to DJ the affair. Footworking circles break out at random, pros show newbies the basic breakneck moves, and those who just want to take it all in meander around the rectangular portion of the gallery (which Lab Sessions considers their “home base”)....

While “city of the big shoulders” has long served as a sobriquet for Chicago, Brian Doyle may have found its successor: “that middle knuckle in our national fist.” The phrase pops up in the first sentence of Chicago, Doyle’s charming tale of a young man’s brief residency in this “rough and burly city in the middle of America.” It will be especially charming to north-siders who know the area bounded by the lake, Broadway, Belmont, and Addison, where the narrator shows up to rent an apartment, arriving with not much more than a job offer, some clothes, and a well-worn basketball....

Chicago art-pop wizard Sen Morimoto made national news in July, when the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events removed him from its Millennium Park at Home virtual summertime music series. Morimoto had prerecorded a series of mystical, gentle musical movements, but he began his set by delivering a brief statement lightly criticizing Mayor Lori Lightfoot for her inaction in the face of public protests about police brutality. DCASE asked him to remove the statement, and when he refused, the department chose not to broadcast his set....

In Chicago, the year 2016 really began on November 24, 2015—the day the city released the infamous dash-cam video of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year old Laquan McDonald. “Sixteen shots!” would come to be the mantra of the protesters flooding the streets the night the video was released, and for the year to come. 2016 thus also became the year that many city residents stopped believing police reform was possible, with some calling for police to be abolished altogether....

Scooterworks Chicago 5410 N. Damen 773-271-4242 scooterworks.com Runner-Up: Motoworks

Balutan still doesn’t like carrot juice—”but at least I can drink this,” he says. “What doesn’t alcohol make better?” *Onion puree: Caramelize onions, add Dolin dry vermouth and lime juice, and puree.

There’s an old saying that if you’re more fortunate than others, it’s better to build a longer table than a higher fence. Loosely, that’s the principle on which the new website Equity at the Table is based; it describes itself as a “practical and proactive response to the blatant gender and racial discrimination that plagues the food industry.” The site’s founder, Julia Turshen, chose the name “equity” deliberately; it’s not the same as equality....

Mike Sula Falafel platter, Pita Alsharq Just over the city limits, in west-suburban Harwood Heights, the Lawrence Court strip mall is home to eight different restaurants, representing the food of Poland, Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, Italy, China, and the Middle East—specifically, Palestine. Friend of the Food Chain chef Alan Lake recommended it if only for its falafel. The fritters are fried to order and hit the table piping hot, with a thin, greaseless, crackly crust that practically shatters under pressure to expose an unusual interior....

When we last checked in with Mr. Harlan’s fifth-graders at Brentano Math and Science Academy in Logan Square back in December, they were putting the finishing touches on the monster stories they’d been working on all semester under the editorial guidance of volunteers from 826CHI, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Wicker Park. Now they, and a few fourth-graders, are published authors who will be making their public debuts at the Printers Row Book Festival, reading from the new anthology of their stories, The Monster Gasped, OMG!...

Michael Gebert Matt Ryan at the Talking Farm Matt Ryan looks and sounds the part of a lifelong farmer. He’s lanky, soft-spoken, a little weatherbeaten, and clad in flannel—so even with that look being popular among urbanites right now, I’m still surprised that he’s only been a full-time farmer since January. After volunteering for the Talking Farm in Skokie for the last couple of years, he became the urban farm’s first official farmer, as part of its five-year plan for developing a sustainable teaching farm selling locally grown vegetables to area restaurants....

Last month, DePaul University philosophy professor Jason Hill wrote an opinion piece for the Federalist, a conservative online magazine, that argued for Israel’s “moral right” to annex the West Bank and Gaza. The petition, which also cites tweets made by Hill, charges that “[h]is comments create unsafe and uncomfortable spaces for everyone, especially Palestinian and Muslim students who now all refuse to enroll in a class that is taught by Professor Hill....

Ciphers + Axioms Tonight, sludgy local postrock five-piece Anatomy of Habit celebrate the release of their Relapse Records debut, the epic and excellent Ciphers + Axioms, at the Empty Bottle. The record is made up of two album-length songs, and today’s 12 O’Clock Track is “Radiate and Recede,” the disc’s A-side. It’s a massive, swinging, slow-burning track that gradually builds from a disjointed, clanky spoken-word piece into a full-on heavy-metal battering ram careening out of control....

There’s a notion in Jewish mysticism that the Torah appears in different forms in different eras, depending on how much the people of that era can absorb—a collection of fables, say, at one time, the pure presence of God at another. Something similar seems to apply to Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel Anna Karenina. Interpreters have treated it as everything from a bodice ripper to a deep philosophical treatise. For her stage adaptation, getting its world premiere production now at Lifeline Theatre, Jessica Wright Buha turns the tale into a meditation on the nature of love....

Singer and songwriter Ashley Monroe has built a career with one foot deep inside Nashville orthodoxy as a member of Pistol Annies (with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley) and a Warner Bros. solo artist, and the other staunchly outside of the middle-of-the-road sentimentality typical of mainstream country. Monroe made her latest album, Sparrow, with de rigueur producer Dave Cobb, who’s helped fashion a rich blend of countrypolitan gloss with sleek soul undercurrents....

Slo ‘Mo slomoparty.com Runner-Up: Glitter Creeps

Tank Noodle Nhu Lan Bakery Finalists: Le Colonial, HaiSous Vietnamese Kitchen, Hai Yen Restaurant

Robyn Beck Just the facts, sir. Brian Williams has got himself in a spot. The NBC news anchor admitted that his brush with death covering the war in Iraq in 2003 didn’t actually happen. The military helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade? It wasn’t the chopper Williams was riding in, despite the story he’s told for years—it was a chopper ahead of his. “Why is Williams so desperate to be considered a hero?...

The brief missive that appeared on the AIA Chicago website August 13 was mystifying. It didn’t take long for the actual collective voice of the architectural community to respond. Architect Mark Schmieding posted a petition headlined “Call to reverse dismissal of Zurich Esposito from AIA Chicago” at Change.org. It quickly attracted about 300 (and counting) signatures from the likes of James Goettsch and John Vinci.