Permanent Records/Photo: Kristine Sherred

Permanent Records

In a classic Chicago storefront space, the size of an average apartment, Permanent Records is the young version of what you’d expect from mom-and-pop joints. Ever-friendly and well-informed Lance Barresi and Liz Tooley are exemplars of the think globally, act locally ethos: the biz plan of the big bad bricks-’n'-mortar stores has fallen, but the possibility of sweet, unpretentious local enterprise lives on. Vinyl! CDs! Newsletters! Podcasts! In-store appearances of bands you’d likely see drop into joints in the owners’ old stomping ground of Columbia, Missouri! Plus, of course, a cool cat calls it home.

1914 West Chicago
(773)278-1744
permanentrecordschicago.com

Audience choice:

Reckless Records

26 East Madison
(312)795-0878

1532 North Milwaukee
(773)235-3727

3126 North Broadway
(773)404-5080
reckless.com

Best of Chicago 2010

“The Brother/Sister Plays” at Steppenwolf Theatre

In a very good year for Chicago theater, snowbirds missed its pinnacle in January, when 29-year-old playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s three-generation Louisiana family trilogy set Chicago on fire. Loosely structured through a series of vignettes, dreams, songs, dances and so on, McCraney’s work, brought to life by a superb cast under the direction of McCraney’s lead interpreter Tina Landau, managed to play every key on the emotional piano, from the highest hilarious joys to the most heartbreaking mournful lows. We left convinced we’d just seen the emergence of a major new voice in American theater, an August Wilson for the twenty-first century. Apparently Steppenwolf agreed: they offered McCraney a coveted ensemble membership shortly thereafter.

Audience choice:

Wicked
Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 West Randolph
(312)384-1502
broadwayinchicago.com

Teavana

If Lipton is as far as your tea knowledge goes, Teavana is the perfect place to discern your oolongs from your rooibos. If you’re ready to free yourself from your mom’s old-fashioned tea bag, the steeped boutique offers wall-to-wall displays of the most preserved leaves prime for tea time. The drinking potpourri comes in traditional black, green, white, oolong, herbal, rooibos and maté varieties but what really makes you feel like a kid in a candy shop is mixing flavors to create superblends that bring your mouth to a whole new state of bliss.

520 North Michigan
(312)527-3584

835 North Michigan, Water Tower Place
(312)335-9802
teavana.com

Audience choice:

Argo Tea
16 West Randolph
(312)553-1551

819 North Rush
(312)951-5302

958 West Armitage
(773)649-9644
argotea.com

Best of Chicago 2010

“Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and his Spheres of Influence” at the Sullivan Galleries

Ray Yoshida forged a distinctly mid-century Chicago style and this retrospective proves it. Curators John Corbett and Jim Dempsey once again tapped their deep knowledge of Chicago art history by including Yoshida’s circle of influences and peers within the exhibition. What emerges is not only a comprehensive survey of how Yoshida developed Imagism, but also how it stuck in the works of his friends and became a new milieu that artists still learn from today.

33 South State, 7th floor
(312)629-6635
saic.edu/exhibitions

Audience choice:

“Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy”
220 East Chicago
(312)280-2660
mcachicago.org

Best of Chicago 2010

Bitchpork Fest

Pitchfork Fest is a local treasure, presenting a smorgasbord of rock, electronica, hip-hop and more in a friendly, affordable setting. It’s certainly a great alternative to the expensive mob scene that is Lollapalooza. But after witnessing a particularly overblown set at Pitchfork, it was refreshing to head down to a Little Village warehouse for Bitchpork Fest, the three-day, totally illegal extravaganza that’s an alternative to the alternative. With more than sixty acts, Bitchpork featured more bands than its namesake, including more local musicians and louder, edgier sounds. We’ll take Chicago garage duo White Mystery’s red Afro-ed headbanging over James Murphy’s caterwauling any day.

2106 South Kedzie

Audience choice:

Lollapalooza
lollapalooza.com

Best of Chicago 2010

Vivere/Italian Village

The 83-year-old Italian Village, Chicago’s oldest Italian restaurant, has been collecting wine all that time. Second-generation owner Ray Capitanini was a bon vivant of the first order and spent a lot of time buying up first growth Bordeaux and robust Italian reds in the seventies and eighties. Many of those bottles are still drinking well (1959 Chateau Lafite Rothschild anyone?) and at value prices considering you can barely find any of this stuff other than at the rare auction anymore.

71 West Monroe
(312)332-7005
italianvillage-chicago.com

Best of Chicago 2010

Russian Tea Time

Chef/Owner Klara Muchnik, originally from Uzbekistan, serves Ukrainian borscht at her 14-year-old eatery in the Loop, Russian Tea Time. She makes it with chunks of bright red-colored beets, carrots, cabbage, onions, potatoes and tomatoes cooked down and topped with a dollop of rich sour cream that melts into the sweet-sour soup. Spasibo!

77 East Adams
(312)360-0000
russianteatime.com

Best of Chicago 2010

RUI: Reading Under the Influence at Sheffield’s

We’ve all seen authors, writers and babblers, but imagine if they were drunk. There you have the concept of RUI: Reading Under the Influence. Every first Wednesday stop by Sheffield’s for a night of alcohol-fueled readings. The organizers cull from the young emerging writer to the established, pulling in local and traveling talent. The series cross-promotes by inviting readers who also are curators or hosts themselves. The Wrigleyville bar, right off the Red Line, lets the literati brush shoulders with Cubs fans for a real-life lesson in suspension of disbelief.

3258 North Sheffield
(773)281-4989
readingundertheinfluence.com

Audience choice:

Harold Washington Library
400 South State
(312)747-4396
chipublib.org/branch/details/library/harold-washington

Best of Chicago 2010

Reckless Records

Pity the snap case, pity the jewel box. Pity the shiny silver data disk. Streaming data wants to have its invisible, non-tactile way with you. Even the Criterion Collection, the “film school in a box” that directors don’t have to die for to be included in has taken note of the change in collecting and viewing of movies past, cutting prices by ten bucks on most of their standard editions. Prices are even cheaper on good stuff on the racks at Reckless, and while the selection is serendipitous rather than title-specific, there’s not much choice when the electronics box stores continue to compact their CD and DVD sections to but a small portion of their floor plans.

26 East Madison
(312)795-0878

1532 North Milwaukee
(773)235-3727

3126 North Broadway
(773)404-5080
reckless.com

Audience choice:

Reckless Records

Best of Chicago 2010

Millennium Park debut

We were hopeful for a good turnout when we heard that Maestro Muti was going to make his debut as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new music director with a free concert at Pritzker Pavilion on September 19. Hopeful, but realistic, since so much is made of classical music’s ever-shrinking share of the cultural consciousness. That may be the reality in the rest of the world, but not in our town, baby. The night turned into a rock-star moment for Muti, with tens of thousands of fans clustered inside and around the Pavilion, on the bridge, everywhere an ear could hear. The crowd-pleasing repertoire was performed with energetic verve, but it would not have mattered if the CSO had covered Lady Gaga. It was not just a Muti moment, it was a great Chicago moment, which only made the maestro’s sudden departure from Chicago due to illness shortly thereafter all the more heart-wrenching, though we’re looking forward to a happy ending with his planned return in the coming months.

220 South Michigan
(312)294-3000
cso.org

Audience choice:

Free concert at Pritzker Pavilion

Others that were mentioned a few times, amused us or seemed especially weird:

“Wait a sec, he was there? No, seriously, he actually was there?”