By Ben Joravsky In the next few years ABLA probably will disappear, squeezed out of existence after being written off by urban experts as a social experiment that failed. But Farley doesn’t see it that way. He thinks society failed ABLA, not the other way around. “They took a good neighborhood and let it die,” he says. “You can’t call that progress. It’s something, but it ain’t progress.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Vicente Pascual: Paintings From the Exilio The mix of shapes and rough surface in Exilique Reus is too elaborate for a wall design, and Pascual’s signature at the lower right asserts that, yes, this is meant as art. Alternating triangles create zigzags, and there are four bulbous curves near the center. Each area of color–mostly thick, dark greens, browns, and yellows, plus white–is rough and mottled, as if part of a decaying frescoed wall....

Hey, Faggot: –Freeing to Be Me Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thank you for printing the letter from Don’t Use My Name, the male teacher with a crush on a young woman who was recently one of his students. Thank you for giving me an insight into the mind of a dangerous and manipulative man, a man who is indirectly responsible for making my life more difficult....

So much for promise. The Cubs’ fading fortunes paralleled the fickle Chicago weather in the weeks leading up to Monday’s home opener at Wrigley Field. Hopes for a speedy return by Kerry Wood proved to be as unrealistic as that 70-degree heat wave in March. Wood’s return was pushed back, and his rehabilitation regimen at times seemed confused. General manager Ed Lynch promised an early return–perhaps because he’s the one whose job is on the line this season, after he fired manager Jim Riggleman last year–but new manager Don Baylor promised not to hurry Wood and said a June season debut wasn’t out of the question....

Terra Firma Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Neff’s background is in modern art. From 1978 to ’83 he served as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art; he then spent the next 14 years as director of the art program at First Chicago Bank-NBD. The First Chicago job may not have provided as much of a challenge as museum management, but during his tenure Neff added some 4,000 objects to the bank’s 6,000-piece collection....

Last year drummer Bill Stevenson clocked his 20th year with the hardcore outfit that began as the Descendents, and while his band has never really grown up, his concept has never really grown old either. SST labelmates Husker Du, the Minutemen, and Dinosaur Jr mixed hardcore with psychedelia, funk, and 70s guitar rock, respectively, but through numerous lineup shifts and a name change in 1987, Stevenson and company stuck to a more elemental formula....

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Two years ago Cornershop’s When I Was Born for the 7th Time reminded us here in the States that Britpop could encompass more than sulky white boys in suede jackets. Now Asian Dub Foundation, a quintet of Anglo-Indian rabble-rousers, has crossed the pond with its first major-label release, the high-powered Rafi’s Revenge (Slash/London), and its “Asian jungle punk”–an overtly political mix of dub, hard rock, and traditional Indian melody–smashes even more musical and cultural barriers....

reese.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I am reasonably sure that when selecting a writer to review some form of artistic expression, you are not likely to choose someone so gung ho on the particular genre that they have no objectivity to speak of; what has me puzzled is the selection of someone who apparently knows little of the subject they are writing about and, to add to that, seems to actually dislike it....

By Deirdre Guthrie The Gutkoskas sell lots of cards and T-shirts with grim reaper logos. One shirt says, “Danger’s No Stranger to an Englewood Ranger.” Others say “Feel Safe Tonight: Sleep With a Cop” and “Dial 911 and Make a Cop Cum.” A powder blue shirt intended to appeal to female cops reads, “I’ve got a badge, a gun, and PMS…Any questions?” It hasn’t been a big seller. “We should have more designs for women,” Pat concedes....

Cafe Universe Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though Ernest Hemingway was once one of the most famous and fashionable writers in America, his reputation has been in steady decline since his suicide in 1961. In fact, 38 years after his death it’s far easier to find people who loathe the man than love him. Which is a shame, because behind the writer always out to prove his manhood by killing big game with big guns was an artist: especially early in his career–before he got the knack of imitating himself–Hemingway wrote some of the most graceful, heartfelt stories in 20th-century literature....

miller2.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » John Schmitz and Fred Solari’s production of several dance companies in one show is one where “no one is truly served, and least of all the artists.” Does it occur to her that various companies are put together to draw a larger audience? To enable patrons of one dance company to see another? That even with six dance companies performing together the theater was only half full on a Saturday night?...

Friday 4/30 – thursday 5/6 George Balanchine, widely considered one of the greatest choreographers of our time, preferred to call himself a craftsman. Tonight Violette Verdy, who danced with Balanchine’s New York City Ballet for 20 years, will discuss what it was like Behind the Scenes With Balanchine, part of the Alliance Francaise’s monthlong “Fete des Arts.” Verdy speaks at 6:30 at the Alliance, 54 W. Chicago. Tickets are $8. For reservations call 312-337-1070....

When my friend Michael Burton first started talking up bikes and bugging me to get on one, I told him my most recent encounter with a cyclist had been with a bike messenger who spat on me because I was in his way as he ran a red light. Michael was just starting to get involved in a group known for its spotty regard for traffic laws. Critical Mass, an informal agglomeration of cyclists, is named after the unwritten rule that governs bike traffic in Chinese cities–cyclists wanting to cross the prevailing flow gather at intersections until there are enough of them to burst through to the other side....

Fusion cooking is taking so many twists and turns that one day there’s just going to be one big cuisine–a true global village of fine dining. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nevertheless, imaginative chefs keep coming up with intriguing new ethnic and regional combinations to grace the palate, as two recent openings illustrate. In the elegant new Wyndham Chicago hotel in Streeterville, John Coletta marries northern California with Tuscany at Caliterra....

ROYAL TRUX Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When the swaggering glam-rock guitar kicks in on “Waterpark,” the first song on Royal Trux’s excellent new Veterans of Disorder (Drag City), the last thing that comes to mind is chaos–this stomper could be an outtake from the band’s 1993 album Cats and Dogs, when its raw bluesy clatter first coalesced into a sleazy, Stonesy groove. In fact, with strains of John Lennon wafting through the second track and a one-handed Professor Longhair mambo decorating the third, it would seem that Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema have never sounded less disorderly in their career....

Based on a slide-illustrated stage monologue by writer and photographer William Yang, Tony Ayres’s complex and moving Australian video interlaces the AIDS-related deaths of Yang’s friends with his experience reclaiming his Chinese-Australian identity. Yang tries to unravel the mystery behind the 1922 murder of his uncle; he hears many conflicting stories, but when he learns that the culprit was acquitted, apparently because of anti-Chinese racism, he understands why his mother played down their Chinese heritage....

Hey, Faggot: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What are your thoughts on a married man who decides he no longer wants to wear traditional men’s underwear and wants to wear women’s underwear instead? My husband says he is tired of wearing plain white cotton briefs. He says it’s no big deal because he is only interested in the fit and feel of women’s underwear and nothing else....

The Outpost Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » All things being equal, Peter Gothar’s Kafkaesque allegory (1994) periodically suggests a Hungarian variation on Tarkovsky’s Stalker, albeit one in which both comedy and sex play much more substantial roles. In the 1980s a divorced design engineer (Mari Nagy) learns she’s been “promoted” to run a remote branch office for the company that employs her; she leaves her hometown in good faith, knowing next to nothing about her new job or destination, for a journey through industrial devastation that gets progressively weirder and creepier....

ARTHUR DODGE & THE HORSEFEATHERS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I first heard Arthur Dodge & the Horsefeathers only a few weeks ago, but I’ve heard everything they do many times before: in their rugged, countrified rock sound are traces of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, the Faces, Gram Parsons, the Rolling Stones, Wilco, and the Bottle Rockets. Of course these days the used-CD bins are chockablock with groups that sound like this, but Dodge is a better-than-average songwriter and he’s blessed with a distinctive, raggedly soulful voice....

COMADRE FLORZINHA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Most of the Brazilian music that makes it up to the U.S. is rooted in the samba and bossa nova traditions, which thrive in big southern cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. But this young all-female quartet, from the northerly Atlantic seaport of Recife, concentrates on forro (pronounced faw-haw), the best-known tradition of the northeastern region of the country, which stretches from the lush, verdant coastline into rocky, desolate hinterlands....