Before the city approves one dime for the massive Lincoln Yards redevelopment project, I propose we have at least one public hearing somewhere outside the north-side community where the project will go. Lincoln Yards is the glitzy $5 billion redevelopment project proposed by developer Sterling Bay for 70 or so acres of land between North and Webster on the North Branch of the Chicago River. Then he sold that vacant fleet facility land to Sterling Bay....

Brian O’Mahoney / Sun-Times Media Children who undergo religious education are more likely to have a broader view of what’s possible. The trouble with scholarly papers is that the scholars who write them don’t know how to write catchy headlines. They need to be shown. HuffPo: “Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds” My advice: if you want to be outraged—as so many of us do—stick to the abstract, which keeps it simple....

The most obvious indication that there’s a taproom inside the Plant is that the P on the Peer sign atop the former Peer Foods meatpacking plant in Back of the Yards has been flipped to spell “beer.” Though Whiner Beer has been brewing inside the massive building since fall 2015, it still looks like an unlikely spot to have a drink, much less a tasting flight of craft beer. But walk in the front door and up a long ramp, and chalkboard signs direct you toward a spacious room filled with Edison bulbs, massive concrete columns, and wood tables with built-in planters....

The Inspector and the Prince In the past year, the University of Chicago Film Studies Center has played host to many of the city’s finest film revivals and film-related events. This week brings two more great programs to the center—admission is free for both. On Thursday at 7 PM Three Women (1924), one of director Ernst Lubitsch’s first Hollywood productions, will screen from a rare 35-millimeter print. (U. of C....

The Chicago theater community will come together Saturday for the first Chicago Theater Memorial Bike Ride to commemorate actors, playwrights, critics, and other colleagues who have recently passed. The ride’s opening ceremony will commence at 9:30 AM at Rainbow Beach, and will include a reading of names and a minute of silence before participants set off on a 12-mile route that begins at 79th and Michigan Avenue, continues up the lakeshore bike path to the southern tip of Burnham Park, at which point cyclists will head back south....

Love noise but not the dank, claustrophobic basements that often host noise shows? Concepts in Noise, a brand-new series from Chicago collective Music for Downers and West Loop gallery Jacket Contemporary, hosts those sounds among white walls and hardwood floors. The monthly performances are also meant to complement the current exhibit at the gallery. Concepts in Noise debuts Friday, October 23 in conjunction with Matt Rutt and Sylvie Hayes-Wallace’s found-­object installation, “I Want Something Beautiful....

In honor of the latest bright idea to pop out of Mayor Rahm’s brain, Mick and I will be wearing our favorite Star Wars costumes for Tuesday’s show at the Hideout. So the first question we’ll discuss is why would aldermen agree to a deal without knowing what they’re agreeing to? I mean, that practice didn’t exactly work out too well with the parking meter deal. Before I forget, let me give a shoutout to our illustrious lineup from last month’s show, which featured lobbyist Adrienne Alexander, state rep-elect Will Guzzardi, and state rep Christian Mitchell from the 26th District on the south lakefront....

Having spent months reading about how Lillet Blanc served over ice is the perfect summer drink, I finally picked up a bottle several weeks ago. (I’ve always been a procrastinator.) As much as I liked the floral, citrusy flavor of the fortified wine, it turned out to be too sweet for me to drink straight, even when topped off with sparkling water. I figured I could always use it in cocktails, but I was curious about another bottle I’d seen on the shelf next to the Lillet: Cocchi Americano, an Italian aperitif wine that I’d heard was similar to Lillet....

Michael Gebert Iliana Regan at Elizabeth, with frog leg Yesterday I wrote about going with Iliana Regan to forage frogs—the precise name is frog giggin’—on a golf course in Indiana, near where she grew up. It was three days before I got an e-mail saying that she would have a dish to show off. I wanted to see it—and hopefully taste it—because an essential part of the story, for me, was seeing how Regan took something that has roots in a childhood of hunting and foraging in semirural Indiana, and turned it into something reflecting her experiences in the world of fine dining—which most recently included attending the international Mad Symposium devoted to cutting-edge cuisine, and dining at Noma in Copenhagen....

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times If Rahm’s looking for a steady flow of taxes to pay off the city’s pension obligations, look no further than the invisible tax hike that starts with a T and ends with an F. As part of my mission to help Mayor Emanuel get out of his predicaments even if they are of his own making, I’m trying to figure out a way for him to finance his great pension scheme without pissing everyone off....

Do film directors really walk around peering at the world through the frame of their joined hands? They do it often enough in the movies—but that’s where it counts, because the rectangle of fingers resides inside the larger frame of the film itself, turning the character into a camera and his experience into a movie within the movie. The final shot of Paolo Sorrentino’s commanding philosophical drama Youth shows an elderly filmmaker making a viewfinder with his hands in just this fashion, and it’s appropriate to a film that, while dwelling primarily on the discontents of old age, also considers the creative problems of movie people and, more specifically, the friction between their work and their own sense of self....

To date, most of director Robert Greene’s films have been self-reflexive documentaries about the creation of performances. Fake It So Real (2011) looked at a group of amateur wrestlers in North Carolina as they worked on a WWE-style stage show; Actress (2014) profiled stage and TV performer Brandy Burre; and Kate Plays Christine (2016) followed actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she learned about the late TV news anchor Christine Chubbuck in order to play her in an imaginary film....

If I’m talking to the right people, I can score some “I was there” points by bringing up the time in grad school—probably 1995 or early ’96—when I saw Bikini Kill at a roller rink in Springfield, Oregon. The bands played in one corner of the rink, and to get out there and watch them you had to put on skates. (Kathleen Hanna wore hers for Bikini Kill’s entire set.) Lots of people skated laps the whole time, so that they could only see the band when they were headed in the right direction....

A new study published by the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance claims that “aldermanic prerogative”—a customary practice that isn’t articulated anywhere in city law—is being used to reinforce the boundaries of Chicago’s historically segregated communities. Local zoning committees created by aldermen and made up of homeowners in the ward can also limit and revise proposed plans for affordable housing, forcing developers to invest in new architectural plans and zoning requests. The study argues that aldermanic control over zoning policy has resulted in the disproportionate use of downzoning in predominantly white wards, citing that 55% of all downzonings since 1970 have happened in 14 majority-white wards....

Buzzed Broadway The best improvisers keep it simple and make it look easy. The folks behind Buzzed Broadway try too hard and make improv look impossible. It’s challenging enough to create a fully improvised parody of a Broadway musical, but this Laugh Out Loud show junks it up with an additional gimmick, a drinking game that invites audience members to lift a glass every time a performer says a particular line or does a particular dance move....

Near the end of Cap’n Jazz’s riotous Riot Fest performance, frontman Tim Kinsella snuck a glance at the massive video board above the stage to glimpse a supersized black-and-white version of himself. Covered in sweat, his shirt half ripped off, he was holding a tambourine aloft in one hand and a microphone in the other while crowd surfing. “I need to find a real job,” he cracked. Then he offered a dismissive rebuttal: “Pfft....

Decline & Fall We’ve done a lot of coverage on the return of the almighty Godflesh, and earlier this week we finally got what we’ve been waiting for: the first recorded original material from the industrial-metal forefathers in 13 years. The band’s live set at Metro back in April proved that they’re still as loud and brutal as they’ve ever been, and luckily that carries over to their new EP Decline & Fall....

Until a couple of years ago, Jordan Rome saw herself only in front of the camera, not behind it. The actor, a 2014 DePaul University graduate originally from metro Detroit, is part of the local theater and film scene. She was always interested in social justice and women’s issues. But a couple of years ago, when stories about police brutality started to take over the news, Rome felt she needed to do more to challenge the systems of power and authority that afflict black and brown communities....

Chicago apartment buildings have fire escapes in the back, the story goes, because after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 the new city fire code stipulated that every apartment have at least two means of escape. The alley system allowed plenty of room for solid staircases in the back of the buildings instead of rickety metal structures in the front, as in New York. But those back stairways were meant to be used as entryways only!...

I’ll be honest that the name Campdogzz—which conjures some third-rate hip-hop crew from the end days of No Limit Records or an indie band that makes songs for toddlers—left me without interest in the group’s music for a long while, but I’m glad I ignored that and checked out the brand-new second album, In Rounds (15 Passenger). There’s something about the raspy tone and breathy catch in the singing of Jess Price that’s hard to resist, especially when her dusky melodies split the difference between humid folk and crisply played indie-rock grooves....