Rainbow-colored pylons stand at attention along North Halsted, marking Lakeview as the city’s official gay neighborhood. The street’s watering holes do a booming business year-round, but that’s nothing, says University of Chicago history professor George Chauncey. “There were probably more gay bars in the 1950s than there are today,” he says. “But they closed, or were closed, with greater speed. Bartenders would move to another bar, and their fans would follow....

DON WALSER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Most country neotraditionalists are romantics trying to re-create a phenomenon they’re too young to have lived through–they’ve experienced the glory days of the 50s and early 60s only through revered recordings. But Austin’s Don Walser heard the hits of Carl Smith, Faron Young, Johnny Horton, and Hank Williams when they were still in heavy rotation; he even opened for Buddy Holly once in the late 50s....

Porchlight Theatre, which has emerged as one of Chicago’s best small non-Equity companies over the past couple of years, closes its superb staging of Merrily We Roll Along this weekend just in time to gear up for another opening next week. As part of the Theater on the Lake’s summer season, the troupe is remounting its 1999 production of Falsettos, William Finn and James Lapine’s funny, moving pop opera about a gay man named Marvin and his tortuous efforts to make peace with himself, his boyfriend, his former wife, and his adolescent son....

Private Parts With Howard Stern, Robin Quivers, Mary McCormack, Fred Norris, Jackie Martling, Gary Dell’Abate, Richard Portnow, and Kelly Bishop. Both men once loved to play the outsider and the outlaw, mocking their bosses in public, standing in for millions of Americans who wished they had the chutzpah or the clout to do the same. Both specialized in a somewhat disingenuous brand of self-deprecating humor, laughing at their own neuroses while at the same time making it clear they thought they were the shit....

Marcus Gray The last time the original Clash played Chicago–at the Aragon on August 12, 1982, to be exact–I couldn’t tell whether I was at a rock ‘n’ roll show or basic training. Berets, army boots, and camouflage pants were big that summer, and the Clash had played no small part in this paramilitary fashion craze, decked out in the flashy togs an English journalist had dubbed Pop Star Army Fatigues....

On May 1, 1886, thousands of anarchists, socialists, and rank-and-file workers marched up Michigan Avenue to fight for an eight-hour workday. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As in 1886, the length of the workday is a primary concern. According to Landaverde, day laborers often work 16 hours a day, in substandard conditions, without hope of union representation and without benefits of any kind. He says nonpayment or partial payment of wages is not uncommon and undocumented workers can’t speak out for fear of deportation....

If They Tell You That I Fell Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The narrative frame–a coroner recounting to a nun the notorious past of a dead man–sets the tone for this superb 1984 historical drama by veteran Spanish director Vicente Aranda. An irreverent, romantic, yet deadly serious revision of Barcelona history during and after the civil war, the film spares almost no one: the communist agitators are blindly obedient killers, the Franco fascists are vicious goons, the convents shelter the sexually repressed, and the upper classes are epitomized by a crippled voyeur who pays to watch depraved sex....

By Ted Shen Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Her experience convinced her of the importance of film festivals to the state of the art; this Friday she’s moderating a panel discussion at Columbia College’s Ferguson Theatre on the role of festivals in shaping careers and helping filmmakers assert their national identities, as well as in introducing cultural variety to combat the Hollywoodization of art and entertainment....

MOTHERSON, Bailiwick Repertory, and RELATIVE COMFORT, Bailiwick Repertory. By now many concur that sexual orientation is not a choice. Still, homosexuals acknowledging their nature to family and friends often face fear and confusion. Playwrights Jeffrey Solomon and Gina Schien explore the dynamics of coming out in these Pride 2000 productions. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Bradley, this is your mother calling.” So begins Solomon’s MotherSon, a one-man show retracing through phone conversations the real-life steps of his disclosure and post-outing relationship with his vibrant, lovingly domineering mother....

By Ben Joravsky The book is dedicated to the memory of Levin’s old boss, David Roth–an appropriate gesture, for his spirit breathes on almost every page. Roth was one of those remarkably diplomatic types who can find a good word to say about almost anybody, and as a result he had an amazing ability to get people from different backgrounds and conflicting ideologies to sit and search for reconciliation. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

RACHELLE FERRELL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The first time I heard vocalist Rachelle Ferrell–in 1991, as a much heralded newcomer in a Montreux Jazz Festival showcase–she scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t just her ridiculous range, said to span six and a half octaves, or even the superpiccolo high notes, which immediately earned her the Minnie Riperton Most Likely to Upset Neighborhood Canines Award....

SAM MANGWANA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The music of Sam Mangwana, one of the most popular African singers in the world for the last two decades, is one of the nicer by-products of colonialism. Born in 1945 in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to Angolan parents who regularly took him to concerts by touring artists from Cuba, France, Spain, and Italy as well as from around the continent, Mangwana had set his heart on a career in music by the age of 17....

This 1995 feature, the first film directed by Canadian theatrical auteur Robert Lepage, works on so many levels that watching its elaborate, erudite storytelling unfold is exhilarating in itself. After years of absence, Pierre (Lothaire Bluteau) returns to his native Quebec City for his father’s funeral; the occasion brings back memories of his family’s past and prompts him and his adopted brother, Marc (Patrick Goyette), to search for the identity of Marc’s father....

For years Le Bouchon had the best roast chicken in town, not to mention the most convivial atmosphere, especially if you like the sardine effect imposed by huge popularity and only 44 seats. So when the owners decided to go upscale and –more significantly–up-capacity, I was ready to wriggle into La Sardine. The new place, right across the street from Oprah’s studios, tries to keep up the buzzing bistro ambiance, though it does a better job looking the part than tasting it....

wilber.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Anyone who actually listened to The Wild Room (which I did) and who listens to This American Life (which I do) knows that there is a world of difference between the two shows. The Wild Room was nice, it was fresh, it was casual, it was often very funny, it was sometimes boring. Gary did his political diatribes, and Ira did his personal stories....

Captured at www.infidels.org/news/atheism/society.html Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Staying in the closet is an emotionally draining experience. Most of us feel bad about deliberately lying, and really bad about deliberately lying to our close friends, family, and loved ones. But staying in the closet requires precisely that. This generates loads of guilt, and carrying around that kind of guilt is pretty unhealthy from an emotional point of view....

Friday 7/4 – Thursday 7/10 While we’re on the subject of hot air, long-winded, prolific bill-writing alderman Burton Natarus is the designated orator at this year’s Star-Spangled Independence Day at the Chicago Historical Society. The old-fashioned celebration kicks off with a performance by the Chicago Pops Concert Band and includes a children’s costume parade, appearances by an actor dressed as Jean Baptiste-Point Du Sable, and a musket-shooting demonstration. It begins at 10:15 on the grounds behind the Chicago Historical Society at North and Clark....

LAMB Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On their second album, Fear of Fours (Mercury), Louise Rhodes and Andrew Barlow have fleshed out the skeleton of complex breakbeats and smoky vocals they made so much from on their 1997 debut. Rhodes, whose execution, sense of dynamics, and restraint are all improved from the debut, plays up the Billie Holiday in her enunciation, and a full string section on several cuts–along with upright bass and trumpet–reinforces her new torchy thrust....

By Ben Joravsky Twenty years ago it would have been unthinkable for Schulter or any other regular Democrat to challenge Kelly for control of the 47th, a northwest-side ward that includes most of Ravenswood and North Center. Back then, Kelly was among the most powerful politicians in the Cook County Democratic organization. Mayor Richard J. Daley had handpicked him to run the Park District and also asked him to take over the 47th....

In December 1993 Elaine Gonzales, Brian Gibson, and another server at Tucci Milan waited on a large private party. At the end of the evening, Gonzales overheard a woman complimenting the wait staff. The woman said she was leaving a big tip–$900–about 26 percent of the bill. Gibson and Gonzales say the restaurant’s floor manager took responsibility for doling out the money to servers, food runners, bus people, and bartenders–an unusual move because servers usually handle that task....