Like Saying Best Sunburn And Other Highlights From The Best Of Chicago Readers Poll

• Joe Marinaro
• Kuma’s Corner, winner and still champion

The Best of Chicago readers’ poll is great for a bunch of reasons. For starters, it provides us all with a comprehensive overview of the city’s collective unconscious. With such disparate categories as Best Filmmaker, Best Charity, and Best Dentist, the readers’ poll runs the gamut of the Chicago experience, and even if the winners tend to repeat themselves—let’s face it, we might as well permanently reserve Best Burger for Kuma’s Corner—at least we know where we stand as a city. The next best thing about the readers’ poll: it’s a write-in ballot, which means all you weirdos, malcontents, and keyboard comedians can have a heyday with the system. It’s become something of a tradition to collect our favorite reader votes, so without further ado, here are, for lack of a better term, the best and the brightest.

Of course, there were also some sincerely cast votes. The potentially racy category Best Photobooth to Make Out In got a wistful vote with RIP Bonny’s Photobooth where I first made out with my lady, and wherever you want, it’s your wedding was a pragmatic answer to Best Place to Get Married.