The return of the Queen’s Landing crosswalk

The Daley administration made a number of anti-pedestrian “dick moves” in a losing battle against auto congestion: fencing off crosswalks on Michigan Avenue, shortening walk-signal times and adding right-on-red arrows for cars. But the kicker was the 2005 removal of the stoplight and crosswalk at Queen’s Landing, where in 1959 the city rolled a red carpet across Lake Shore Drive so Queen Elizabeth II could stroll from the lakefront to Buckingham Fountain. While the removal saved motorists a minute or two of wait time, it forced walkers to take a ten-minute detour. As part of a wave of pedestrian improvements under Emanuel, the city reinstalled the crosswalk on Thanksgiving Day—definitely something to give thanks for.

500 South Lake Shore

Audience choice: He speaks coherently

Best audience comments: “Seeing Rahm’s ass on the Brown Line every morning with his security detail. Daley would NEVER have done that”; “He can’t have all his fingers in the pie, can he?”; “He was at the Adele concert at the Riv”; “That 50-0 budget approval vote. Oh, wait.”

Best of Chicago 2011

She Doesn’t Shill for Toxic Cults

On November 18, self-help guru James Arthur Ray was sentenced to two years in prison for negligent homicide, the result of a poorly planned “sweat lodge ceremony” gone awry. Ray was one of many new-age hucksters who gained celebrity and influence in the wake of “The Secret,” a simplistic positive-thinking fad that became an enormous cash cow after receiving The Big O’s powerful seal of legitimacy. Rosie O’Donnell may be an ostentatious do-gooder and a sucker for Hollywood glitz, but she retains a comedian’s nose for blatant BS. One can hope she won’t introduce the world’s desperate housewives to another dangerous con man like Ray.

Audience choice: Who cares?

Best audience comments: “She frequents Boystown bars”; “She said Soldiers Field and Wrigley Park or something like that”; “You don’t want to see what Rosie has put under your seat”; “Um… is there one?”

Best of Chicago 2011

Mana Food Bar

At this fusion small-plate restaurant on Division, you’ll be too busy diving into caponata, bi bim bop and vindaloo to notice the place is vegetarian. Rather than wasting time trying to fake meat, Mana does veg well. Somehow, magically, the wide range of international flavors go together, especially paired with sake, straight up or in a cocktail.

Mana Food Bar
1742 West Division
(773)342-1742
manafoodbar.com

Audience choice:
Chicago Diner
3411 North Halsted
(773)935-6696
veggiediner.com

Best of Chicago 2011

William J. O’Brien at The Renaissance Society

The multi-level table-display created to showcase William J. O’Brien’s ceramic and assemblage heads looked, at turns, like an alien ethnographic museum and a buffet of nightmares. O’Brien is one of Chicago’s best emerging artists, and The Renaissance Society gave him the space to prove it.

5811 South Ellis
renaissancesociety.org

Audience choice:
Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad at the Art Institute
111 South Michigan
(312)443-3600
artic.edu

Best of Chicago 2011

Cedille Records

When one thinks of legendary Chicago-based record labels over the years, its jazz and blues companies often come to mind. And yet, with one of the country’s oldest and most reputable symphony orchestras, Chicago had been a mecca for recording firsts virtually since the dawn of the industry. Some of the earliest acoustic recordings were made here nearly a century ago, some of the first electrical recordings, the earliest high fidelity, the first stereo recordings, even early digital recordings, all within the classical genre. In 1989, then-University of Chicago law school student James Ginsburg created Cedille Records, the first Chicago-based classical music label since Mercury Living Presence some thirty years earlier. Ginsburg never did become a lawyer (there are three in his family, including his mother, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) but he did go on to create a Grammy Award-winning record label internationally known for its consistently high-quality recordings that fill in huge voids of repertoire and boast of imagination and innovation at a time when the industry by and large prefers to play it safe. As compressed and inferior-sound-quality downloads have become the status quo, Cedille bucks that trend by offering its downloads in true full-file CD-level quality bit rates that are twice the size of those sold on most download sites. Recent Cedille releases figure in six just-announced Grammy Award nominations for 2011 and the label shows no sign of slowing down. And while Cedille continues to showcase the best of Chicago classical artists performing underground repertoire by and large neglected by the major labels, its reputation has become such that it is actually bringing artists to Chicago to work with the label.

Cedille Records
1205 West Balmoral
(773)989-2515
cedillerecords.org

Audience choice:
Bloodshot Records
3039 West Irving Park
(773)604-5300
bloodshotrecords.com

Best of Chicago 2011

Clybourne Park at Steppenwolf

Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, an homage of sorts to “A Raisin in the Sun,” achieved the formidable task of bookending Lorraine Hansberry’s classic without gimmickry. This two-generation story about a home—first changing due to white flight (the flip side of “Raisin”) then, a generation later, transitioning again via the forces of gentrification—managed to put a fresh and thought-provoking spin on the still-evolving subject of race. And by centering it on a home, it managed to skewer America’s notions of class and the middle class as well. Norris’ text is funny, heartbreaking and dramatic, attributes brought into their finest light in the hands of Steppenwolf’s director Amy Morton and a superlative cast. A perfect night of smart theater.

Audience choice:
5 Lesbians Eating A Quiche
The New Colony at the Dank Haus
4740 North Western
(773)561-9181
thenewcolony.org

Best of Chicago 2011

Five Guys

Five Guys’ burgers are pretty fine, but what makes the place is the fries. Their fries are natural cut, with skins, from fresh potatoes. Fried right in front of the customers, their scent wafts and tantalizes everyone within a block radius. And when they are finished cooking the fries, Five Guys doesn’t just give them to you, they stuff the bags with them: a large order easily serves four.

Five Guys
1456 East 53rd, (773)363-6090
2140 North Clybourn, (773)327-5953
2368 North Clark, (773)883-8930
3219 North Broadway, (773)327-1453
6477 North Sheridan, (773)262-9810
816 Church, Evanston, (847)491-6921
fiveguys.com

Audience choice:
Five Guys

Best of Chicago 2011

The Snail Thai Cuisine

The beautiful thing about Thai cuisine is that, unlike other food from that region of the world, most chefs know it doesn’t have to be fancy or arranged in a superficial way for the experience to be amazing. The Snail does just that. Keeps it simple, but keeps it authentically and amazingly delicious.

The Snail Thai Cuisine
1649 East 55th
(773)667-5423
snailthai.com

Audience choice:
Opart Thai House
4658 North Western
(773)989-8517
opartthai.com

Best of Chicago 2011

@governorblagojevich

It would be a cinch to switch voices from one foul-mouthed politico to another, so this is an effing golden opportunity. Blago is scheduled to report to the Big House on February 16 to serve his fourteen-year sentence for corruption, so Sinker could start out by predicting what the disgraced governor will do with his last precious weeks of freedom—lots of jogging, we presume. Once Blagojevich is locked up it’ll be easy to imagine his jailhouse pursuits: learning the harmonica, making license plates and desperately trying not to become ex-gov George Ryan’s bitch.

Audience choice: Richard Daley

Best audience comments: “@MayorDaley2020 A monday morning quarterback by Daley of Emanuel”; “Nothing can replace @MayorEmanuel ever. But I’d be ok with a Quaxelrod and Hambone joint twitter.”

Best of Chicago 2011

Paul Konrad

While Chicago has more than its fair share of likeable weather reporters, only one has his own power-polka theme song. Paul Konrad is the seven-time Emmy Award-winning, Polish-American forecaster on WGN Morning News. When local oompah kingpins The Polkaholics appeared on his show they honored him by performing the Paul Konrad Polka: “He is such a happy guy, telling us what’s in the sky / He knows if the rain will come, or if it will be the sun / Hot or cold he’s always right, with degrees in Fahrenheit / He’s our favorite weatherman—who?  Paul Konrad!”

WGN9 Morning News, 5:30am-9am

Audience choice:
Tom Skilling, WGN9

Best of Chicago 2011