Three years ago the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations published Global Chicago, a collection of essays by local leaders and Chicago Tribune writers that painted a glowing picture of a city robust and cosmopolitan enough to hold its own with the likes of London and New York. But independent scholar Paul Street says his book, Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (published this summer by Rowman & Littlefield), demonstrates what Global Chicago left out: that the city continues to be gripped by racism....

I should just carry around a copy of Avagami’s debut, Metagami (Lens), so I can pull it out the next time a cabbie or one of my uncles asks what kind of music I like. These two locals–Eric Lebofsky on vocals, electronics, and saxophone and Matt Espy (ex-Atombombpocketknife and the Reputation) on electronics and drums–are a nonstop hoot, and their album is an absurd delight, like a Super Soaker filled with Cool Whip....

Stefen Robinson is in the middle of a pitched battle on the dance floor at Open End Gallery, doing his part to help raise money for the local Raizel Performances troupe. A remix of the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” pumps out of the sound system, and he and his rival–both wearing workout clothes that’d make Richard Simmons proud–shuffle, grind, lunge, and flail. Robinson busts out one of his big moves: he leaps into the air and crosses his legs Indian style, then lands hard and starts bouncing on his ass across the floor....

Even among modern drummers, who long ago shed their stereotypical role as mere timekeepers (or “guys who hang out with musicians,” as the old joke goes), Dana Hall stands out. He’s currently teaching jazz at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign while he completes his doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago, studying soul music as a product of the African diaspora. He’s also anchored bands led by Ray Charles, Branford Marsalis, Kurt Elling, and plenty others....

About a dozen men stand shoulder to shoulder against a long, bubble-gum pink table at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard on a hot Wednesday afternoon. The table is decorated with strings of multicolored pennants and bright, hand-painted signs, luring passersby on their way to Taste of Chicago a block to the east. As “Sweet Home Alabama” pours from homemade speakers suspended on metal rods decorated with red and yellow plastic pinwheels, 48-year-old Cecil Locke, the table’s creator and proprietor, goes head-to-head against a man half his age in a serious game of chess....

Exhibit Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Heather Ronkoske belongs to the “just do it” school of business: in June she opened her boutique, Exhibit, despite having no previous experience in retail. “I signed the lease in the middle of April, flew to LA, and just hit the showrooms,” she says. “I had no idea what I was doing.” The leap of faith extended to her choice of location: a storefront on Lincoln Avenue, a street known more for secondhand stores and bars than boutiques....

Scoop Unlike some of his more commercial contemporaries–including Harvey Weinstein pets Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino–Woody Allen has always had the final cut on his movies. But then what are the corporate honchos risking with this indulgence? They know familiarity is one of many things that draw us to movies, and they know with Allen not to expect any surprises. Unfortunately the industry often behaves as if familiarity were the only attraction....

Garland Green’s career exemplifies the paradox of plying one’s trade in a “golden age”: sometimes there are so many second-tier talents riding the cultural tide that exceptionally gifted artists get pushed below the waterline. Born in Dunleith, Mississippi, in 1942, the soul singer arrived in Chicago in the late 50s. In the 60s, the heyday of the Chicago “soft soul” sound, he was discovered singing at an amateur show by deejay Mel Collins and his wife, songwriter Joshie Jo Armstead, who signed him to their Gamma label; he was eventually picked up by MCA....

A teenage boy and his young sister struggle to survive the Allied assault on Japan in this wrenching antiwar drama (1988), which rivals the films of Hayao Miyazaki in elevating anime to the level of fine art. After their mother dies in a firebombing, the children move in with their paternal aunt, hoping in vain that their father will return from the emperor’s navy. Eventually the aunt’s harsh treatment drives them to a bomb shelter in the country–where dancing fireflies mirror the incendiary devices dropped from Allied planes–and as starvation pushes Japan toward surrender, the little girl begins to die from malnutrition....

Given how far-flung its members are, Jim and Jennie & the Pinetops barely seems like a full-time band these days: moving away from their Philly roots, singer-guitarist Jim Krewson lives in upstate New York, while singer-mandolinist Jennie Benford and banjoist Brad Hutchison live in North Carolina. But the change of scenery clearly has its benefits: the group’s new album, Rivers Roll On By (Bloodshot), is its most open-ended effort, and while traditional bluegrass remains its core sound, the group makes some credible excursions into country rock....

My husband and I do this terrible thing every two weeks. We call it Date Night, like we’re living fast city lives and have to designate time to have fun with each other. But here’s how Date Night goes: we go to a bar full of other couples, one of those candlelit places with red velvet on the walls and low tables made out of black marble, and we sit for hours, getting drunk and smoking and talking to the other couples....

It’s not the sheer audacity of adapter-director Lee Breuer’s concept that carries the Mabou Mines staging of Ibsen’s classic. While it’s undeniably bold to cast all the men’s parts with child-size actors while casting women of normal height and to use a dollhouse set that forces the women to crawl through doorways, what’s most astonishing is the way Breuer’s idea opens up the play. Though most commentary focuses on Nora’s growth from infantile dependency to autonomy, Ibsen was also making the point that men too are diminished by the inequities of traditional marriage....

Last fall this Peoria-based metal band released Out of a Center Which Is Neither Dead nor Alive (At a Loss), an album that radically transformed my mental picture of downstate Illinois–now when I imagine those bulbous water towers that loom over the flatlands, they’re full of giant, evil, luminescent fish. Produced by Sanford Parker, who’s done similar favors for Pelican and his own band, Buried at Sea, Out of a Center has attracted plenty of Neurosis comparisons–but though Minsk’s sound similarly balances dark and doomy metal with wild-eyed heavy psych and propulsive tribal drumming, it’s earthier, more chthonic, and less cerebral, even when the band adds traditionally proggy elements like tortured synths and tortuous sax....

Any event is automatically fun if you sneak into someplace you’re not supposed to be–like the balcony at the Congress Theater, where I found myself last Saturday night. Collaboraction, a local theater group and nonprofit arts organization known for its experimental plays, wacky theme parties, and enormous faculty for attracting money, was throwing its second annual Carnaval bash. Included in the $25 admission fee were samba dancing, a body-painting show, an open bar, and a demolition derby involving those big motorized toy cars that rich people get for their kids....

Don’t blame Bulls coaches if they begin to approach Christmas Eve with all the fearful trepidation of Ebenezer Scrooge. The Bulls sacked coach Scott Skiles on Monday, six years to the day after Tim Floyd was fired. Skiles was matter-of-fact about it and went surprisingly tamely for someone with such renowned intensity. But then again a lack of intensity was what marked the Bulls’ play this season as they got off to another slow start and, unlike the previous three years, failed to turn it around in December....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Various forms of libertarianism and anti-government conservatism share a belief that justice is defined by the imposition of impartial rules — free markets and the rule of law. If everyone is treated fairly and equally, the state has done its job. But Catholic social thought takes a large step beyond that view. While it affirms the principle of limited government — asserting the existence of a world of families, congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread — it also asserts that the justice of society is measured by its treatment of the helpless and poor....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » O’Malley, of course, is the man who moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. In that, he is the butt of a couple of the greatest jokes in baseball history. The first concerns New York newspaper writers — and Brooklyn loyalists — Jack Newfield and Pete Hamill sitting down in a bar and making a list of the three worst human beings of the 20th century....

Heartbreaking, infuriating, and above all patriotic, this documentary by Patricia Foulkrod gives voice to American soldiers who’ve returned from Iraq disgusted with the war, haunted by their own actions and profoundly alienated from the people who sent them. Following a merciless chronology from recruitment to discharge, Foulkrod focuses on the emotional price paid by Iraq vets; nothing else I’ve seen about the war better articulates the culture of savagery that helps a soldier survive on the ground but leaves him to wrestle alone with his conscience....

Ambulette Hits a Speed Bump Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “We’re constantly paranoid about getting our stuff ripped off,” says Rapsys. His kit has been stolen before, while he was on tour with Azita in Toronto in 2004. “So after we played in Philly, we made a point to drive 20 or 25 minutes out of town and stayed at this really nice Extended Stay America....

If you’ve been to Bridgeport’s Texas Ballroom or Wicker Park’s Jerkstore lately, you probably didn’t realize you were there at the end. But the past month and a half has seen the last parties ever at those work/live/play spaces. Occupants of Texas will move out by the end of the month; Jerkstore was evacuated last weekend. “I didn’t actually see this,” wrote ianchicks, “but someone told me about this guy that was sucking on some girl’s tittie when she was slumped against the wall talking on her cell phone....