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Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Media Wouldn’t Rahm just love to announce Obama’s library is coming to Chicago? With parents and students up in arms over the state’s insistence on shoving another dumbass standardized test down their throats, I thought it would be as good a time as ever to come up with a multiple-choice quiz of my own. For the last year or so, President and Mrs. Obama have been courting sites competing for the library, weighing them against one another to see which most deserves it....

Revolution Brewing Half Acre Beer Company Finalists: Off Color Brewing, Marz Community Brewing Company, Begyle Brewing Company, 18th Street Brewery

Dispensary 33 MOCA: Modern Cannabis Dispensary Finalists: Zen Leaf, Bliss CBD, Mission Dispensaries

Ike Holter Runner-Up: Tracy Letts Runner-Up: Tracy Letts Runner-Up: Tracy Letts

Soho House Chicago boxing gym There are plenty of aging gyms in Chicago—and some new gyms pretending to be old-school—but the 17,000-square-foot workout facility on the second floor of Soho House Chicago feels like a portal back to a time when a damp mustache and a fat lip were signs of a good workout. Here you can jump rope on the sweat-stained slats of a parquet floor and do your best impression of Swiss gymnast Louis Arnold Zutter as you work a leather pommel horse....

There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts happening this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Mon 7/9: Yob’s new album uses the darkness of doom metal to show us what to cherish, says Reader music editor Philip Montoro: “Our Raw Heart (Relapse), evokes the renewed vision that settles onto survivors of near-death experiences, when every leaf on every tree seems freshly miraculous and radiant.” 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S....

This weekend, as part of the Cinepocalypse festival of genre films, Ernest Dickerson will appear at the Music Box Theatre to introduce revival screenings of two movies he directed, the horror comedy Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) on Saturday at 5 PM, and the adolescent crime drama Juice (1992) on Sunday at 2:15 PM. Dickerson has enjoyed a long career in both film and television. He began as a cinematographer in the early 1980s and shot over two dozen films, the most famous being Spike Lee’s first six features (among them She’s Gotta Have It and Do the Right Thing)....

Subterranean Metro Finalist: Deadbolt

Hamilton (ongoing at CIBC Theatre) Second City’s She the People Finalists: The Infinite Wrench, Southern Gothic

Editor’s note: Chef John Asbaty left in August 2015. At a glance his menu doesn’t seem much more inspired than those at the dozens of newer middling restaurants trafficking in the standard charcuterie, burgers, roasted chicken, and house-made pasta, but the kitchen is operating on a different level. Take a seasonal vegetable tartare: a sizable deposit of finely brunoised multicolored root vegetables (someone got an A in Knife Skills) crowned with a golden sous-vide duck yolk and piled atop of a slice of fried bread schmeared with cool, creamy quark cheese....

Open Books Pilsen open-books.org Open Books Pilsen isn’t hidden, exactly. But since it’s camouflaged as a garage on a quiet block of 19th Street, a few minutes’ walk from the taquerias and bakeries and thrift shops of the commercial strip on 19th, you could easily walk right by—unless you happen to peer through the door and notice the colorful rows of book spines, the universal sign of welcome to any bookworm....

Red Scare Industries Sooper Records Finalists: International Anthem, Hausu Mountain

Hamilton Six Finalists: Come From Away, Miracle

In the center of an empty stage, in an empty room backlit in red and blue, west-side artist, organizer, and prison abolitionist Bella Bahhs spoke into the camera. Her first in-person performance of this poem, which was commissioned by WJI, was for a small group of women at Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison about 30 miles north of Springfield, in mid-March. Bahhs and two of her WJI colleagues, Melissa Hernandez and Alexis Mansfield, drove down to the prison to perform the poem and talk about the impact of the census with the women, who were set to be released within the next 30 days....

Diversey River Bowl Waveland Bowl Finalist: Timber Lanes

Ballet is an art form steeped in discipline and tradition—a stereotypically tall and slender ballerina floats across the stage in pointe shoes, dancing through a fairy tale accompanied by a classical score. Yet when Robert Joffrey started the Joffrey Ballet in 1956 with cofounder Gerald Arpino, he set out to build a new type of ballet company that broke free of convention. Joffrey opted for dancers of different body types rather than filling his company with cookie-cutter performers....

Crap is a fun and easy word to say. But what crap is is a lot harder to pin down. In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (University of Chicago Press), Wendy Woloson’s heavily researched book devoted to the many objects and ideas under that moniker, she does her level best to find a definition but doesn’t quite nail it down. But it’s not for lack of trying. Crap, it turns out, is an elusive target....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, November 24, 2017. John Lausch starts working immediately after being sworn in as U.S. attorney John Lausch was sworn in as the U.S. attorney in Chicago Wednesday, less than two weeks after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, according to the Tribune. Lausch, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in August, started working immediately after the swearing-in ceremony. Despite being a Trump pick, Lausch is well liked by Democrats and Republicans, including Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth....

The Owl Runner-Up: Continental Lounge