Three Dots and a Dash The big day’s nearly here—National Crab Rangoon Day! Frankly, I have no idea if there really is a National Crab Rangoon Day or not (the kids didn’t get the day off of school, I know that much), but Three Dots and a Dash will be celebrating it anyway given the dish’s possible invention by, and close association with, Polynesian and tiki restaurants in the 1950s....

As a member of virtuosic progressive bluegrass outfit the Punch Brothers, banjo whiz Noam Pikelny long ago established his technical chops, fitting superbly into the band’s ambitious arrangements and elaborate compositional gambits. He’s used his solo recordings to chronicle an interest in more traditional modes, whether essaying the music of Bill Monroe or veering into 70s-style newgrass turf. The brand-new Universal Favorite (Rounder) casts his playing in another new light, because unlike his previous solo records there’s no one complementing his fleet picking—though he does often step up as a low-key vocalist....

Q: I have a secret: For the past three months, I’ve been attending a local Jacks club (a men-only masturbation event). As someone recovering from sexual abuse, I find the party to be safe, therapeutic, and just sexy fun. I feel like I need this! Unfortunately, I spotted one of my employees at last week’s event. Although I’m openly gay at my workplace, being naked, erect, and sexual in the same room as my employee felt wrong....

If a tree falls in Jackson Park these days, you can bet it’ll be noticed. It will instead be a museum, community hub (with gym and auditorium), and training center for political leaders, both local and international. It’ll include a library, but nothing like a National Archives-managed research facility. Instead, according to an agreement reached this spring, it’ll house a 5,000-square-foot Chicago Public Library branch in a rent-free space leased from the Obama Foundation and staffed by CPL....

Zvuloon Dub System If you’re looking to enjoy the long Fourth of July weekend in a big way there are plenty of musical options available. If you’re a fan of electronic music you might want to check out the first annual Riverwest Music Festival when it kicks off Friday or you can head down to 63rd and Hayes on Saturday for the Chosen Few Old School Reunion Picnic. Of course there are also plenty of nonfestival concerts worth checking out this weekend....

It’s been more than three months since I last wrote about our need for a financial transaction tax on the city’s exchanges. But in that short time Mayor Emanuel’s given us roughly 700 million new reasons for supporting it. My inspiration in these matters is Joan Kufrin, a retired freelance writer from Chicago, who had a revelation earlier this year about the potential benefits of the so-called LaSalle Street tax as she watched Mayor Emanuel inch closer to her pocketbook....

When he’s given a second to ramble about Vanderbilt football, it’s clear that there’s nothing comedian Nate Bargatze loves more—and that steadfast loyalty is a testament to how genuine and down-home he is on a stage. A good ole boy from Old Hickory, Tennessee, Bargatze is refreshingly untouched by the influences of New York and LA, where he’s spent recent years doing comedy. He keeps a natural, calm demeanor—and a sweet southern accent—as he lets you in on his life story....

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost,” goes the old proverb. So too, it turns out that an ongoing citywide epidemic of Divvy bike thefts is the result of a short-sighted decision to remove a small but critical piece of security hardware from Chicago’s docking stations. Last week when I asked CDOT and Divvy for an update on the theft problem, Divvy general manager Michael Critzon e-mailed me the exact same statement I was sent more than two months ago, suggesting that the situation is under control....

The reason for the popularity of Hellcab, Will Kern’s evening-length one-act set in a Chicago taxicab right before Christmas, has long eluded me. Famous Door’s original 1992 production, initially slated for 12 performances, ran for ten years, a nearly unheard-of feat for an off-Loop show. In the middle of that streak, Chicago’s New Crime Productions turned it into a movie, featuring Gillian Anderson, John Cusack, and Julianne Moore, no less. This millennium, Profiles Theatre staged it for four consecutive holiday seasons, and now the Agency Theater Collective offers its second annual take on the seemingly indefatigable piece, this time with a female cabdriver....

Novos Baianos formed in 1968, during the height of Brazil’s Tropicalia movement, but they came to maturity after that multiarts revolution was on the wane (though it’s impossible to imagine the group without the innovations of Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Ze). The combo moved between a dazzling hybrid of psychedelic rock and Brazilian roots music with utter grace and nonchalance, as if it were the most natural thing in the world....

By my count, 18 local acts play this year’s Riot Fest, including repeaters such as White Mystery, the Lawrence Arms, and Alkaline Trio. From among the festival newbies for 2015, Reader staff picked five favorites—and we tried to spread the love around, so no offense to suburban pop-punk band Knuckle Puck (who were subject of a recent feature story) or emo mainstays Into It. Over It. (who turn up in the paper plenty already)....

The Cloakroom formula has been firmly in place since their first EP, Infinity, came out in 2013: beautiful, mournful vocal melodies backed by simple, half-time, solid-as-hell rock that shifts between subdued introspection and foundation-­cracking wall-of-sound heaviness. On their second full-length, the brand-new Time Well (Relapse), the northwest Indiana-based group expand their sound toward both ends of that spectrum. Time Well’s second track throws a curve by featuring a full-on, Cave In-style, feedbacky chugga-chugga breakdown, and on the second disc of this double LP, Cloakroom cool off with forlorn, spaced-out acoustic tracks that would sound right at home on a Flying Saucer Attack record....

In the category of fake news having nothing to do with Donald Trump, Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently released his list of victors in the city’s downtown development game. OK, so it’s not fake news on the scale of, say, Trump swearing up and down that he’s got proof that Barack Obama was born in another country. At least what the mayor says is true. But don’t be fooled: the booming development deals in and around downtown—including the North Branch of the Chicago River—are a by-product of planning strategies going back to the days of old man Daley....

The timing of Vic Mensa’s high-profile response this past weekend to a Chicago police sting operation was more than a little serendipitous. To those unfamiliar with Mensa’s past work and activism, that might sound like an appropriation of the past for the sake of street cred. It could come off as bold bluster coming from the mouth of an artist famous for incendiary songs like “16 Shots,” a track in which the Hyde Park native furiously spits rhymes about his outrage over the shooting death of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer....

Edward and Rebecca were married once, now they’re divorced. He’s seeing a woman named Tina, whom he’s in the process of disenchanting; she’s remarried, to Roger, a foppish English emigre who runs drug tests for pharmaceutical companies and wooed her on a cruise to Nova Scotia. Before they broke up (actually, before they were even married), Edward and Rebecca produced Susannah, aka Sukey, who matured into something of a monster: “She was brutal,” Edward recalls....

Much of the country’s Americana, roots rock, and alt-country may exist in living homage to what Greil Marcus famously called the “old, weird America” (as if America had somehow ceased to be weird)—but I’ve always got my ear out for the present-day weird America. It’s been exported out and brought back to us for decades; consider that strange, shamanic strain of country-gothic swagger from the likes of Fields of the Nephilim (Brits) and early/mid-period Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (mostly Aussies)....

Singer-songwriter Will Johnson rules for a number of reasons. One is that he’s a massive baseball fan—not only will he sing a national anthem, but he also picked up baseball painting a few years back. He’s also wildly prolific, hammering out solo albums as well as albums with side projects of side projects—or collaborating with like-minded talents like the late Jason Molina. However, my exposure to Johnson happened through the Denton band Centro-matic, and, more specifically, the opening track from Dual Hawks, “Rat Patrol and DJs” (the album itself is actually a split with another one of Johnson’s bands, South San Gabriel....

When a superstar rapper teams with an up-and-comer it has the potential to obscure what the latter has already built. So now that Kanye and Drake have taken interest in grime artist Skepta these past couple years, the stateside pop fan might not care as much about the reemergence of the genre as it pertains to its native U.K. In the early 2000s grime grew out of pirate radio stations that illegally flooded London’s airwaves with the sounds of jungle and garage, with DJs inviting tag teams of MCs to rap atop hard-edged, 140-BPM electronic instrumentals....

A little more than 100 years ago, Door County, that 50-mile long peninsula that juts like a crooked finger off the coast of northeastern Wisconsin, separating Lake Michigan from Green Bay, was a dangerous place. It got its name from early French explorers who called it Porte des Morts Passage, or “death’s door” because of all the ships that got wrecked trying to navigate the narrow passage at the tip of the peninsula between the lake and the bay....

HBO Not a fan of these guys hitting Hodor If you haven’t watched the finale (or the season), there are spoilers ahead, because it’s a recap, see. I have NOT read the books, which may become abundantly clear below. This isn’t to say the episode didn’t have its share of crushing (RIP Oberyn) moments, and not just the kick to the crotch the Hound gave Brienne of Tarth. There were four major deaths....