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In the years leading up to the Civil War, several homes and farms in Illinois functioned as stopovers on the Underground Railroad, the network of hiding places for runaway slaves on their way to freedom in the north. One of these was the Graue Mill on Salt Creek in what is now Oak Brook. The mill, which was often very busy, was next to a stagecoach shop. Customers would park their horses and visit while the escaped slaves hidden in the mill’s basement tried to remain quiet....

Lead Stories In January Tesco’s owner considered allowing its Hastings store to run a nude-shopping night after the normal closing hour but decided not to because of the potential misuse of fresh fruits and vegetables. In May the chain told farmers to grow smaller melons after focus groups reported that large ones made small-busted female customers feel inferior. Also in May employees tested pies ballistically after receiving a surge of requests for recommendations on which kinds were best for throwing (answer: egg custard)....

By Ben Joravsky “This is pretty powerful, not at all what you would expect to see,” says Steve Balkin, a Roosevelt University economics professor and key advocate in the recent unsuccessful effort to preserve the Maxwell Street open-air market from development by the encroaching University of Illinois at Chicago. “It’s a fair portrayal of the history of the west side.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Using a grant from the Joyce Foundation, Tracye Matthews, Susan Samek, Russell Lewis, Laura Kamedulski, and other CHS historians held several meetings during the last few years with west-side residents....

By Ben Joravsky The roots of his teaching style are planted in the late 50s, when he was a restless white teenager from the northwest side who listened to black AM radio stations and manufactured a phony ID that got him into south- and west-side jazz and blues clubs. At Taft High, he joined a band (“D.D.T. and the Dynamiters–the lead singer was Daniel Dawson Trinski”), played rock ‘n’ roll, and hung out with other doo-wop devotees–like Jim Jacobs, who went on to write Grease....

Apparently Woody Allen can no longer even conceive of making a movie that isn’t derived from Bergman or Fellini; this one echoes the latter’s La strada in everything from Samantha Morton’s pantomime performance as a smiling mute to the melancholic ending. (To a smaller degree Allen also imitates his own Zelig imitating Warren Beatty’s Reds, by enlisting various jazz experts, himself included, to comment on his fictional hero.) But this absorbing picture is still about as good as Allen gets, a persuasive, nuanced, and relatively graceful portrait of an egotistical yet talented jazz guitarist of the swing era, astutely played by Sean Penn, with some pretty good solos dubbed by Howard Alden and lots of unobtrusive period flavor....

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES, TinFish Productions. The worst failure of this purposeless new work by Chicago playwright Jeffrey D. Klein (who also, regrettably, directs) is that it’s about everything but its supposed subject. Yes, there are a few undramatic allusions to Socrates’ trial. Incongruously portrayed as a biker chick by Dana Hardy, Socrates spouts snippets from Plato’s dialogues. But the trial itself and Socrates’ state-ordered suicide–the seeming heart of the story–are never seen....

Stooges A seven-CD box set chronicling the making of a 36-minute album–was this really necessary? Back in 1970, with Elektra footing the bill for the casual slaughter of oxide particles and brain cells alike, it’s not shocking that they recorded everything and taped over nothing, but it’s still freak weather that every scrap from those sessions survived, not to mention that someone actually put this out. You know before you put your money down that 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions isn’t going to be a study in delicate studio science, like the four-CD Pet Sounds set from 1997....

Throat-Singin’ the Blues Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In 1994, after graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in studio art, Belic arranged a trip to Russia with hopes of extending his travels to Tuva. Before he left, he mustered the nerve to call Ralph Leighton. Leighton, who had played bongos with Feynman and helped him write his autobiographical best-sellers Surely You’re Joking, Mr....

By Cheryl Ross The phone rang again and a police officer broke into Claire’s thoughts. He apologized for the fact that the media had called first. She assured him that the reporter had been nice. Then he told her Gus and Julia had drowned. Her father, Steve Chulay, tried to organize unions wherever he worked, and his employers were not forgiving. He came home a couple of times during the Depression with his toolbox in hand–the sign he’d been fired....

Burke’s Buddy System And which African-American aldermen are on the hot seat? “Madeline Haithcock in the 2nd–she voted with Burke 71 percent of the time. Her opponent, Geraldine Laury, has the story, and she’s using it,” says Crown. “Arenda Troutman in the 20th voted with him 79 percent of the time. Walter Burnett [27th] voted with Burke over 90 percent of the time and his opponent Rickey Hendon’s going nuts with the story....

THURSDAY 1:00 PM Big John Dickerson 4:00 PM J.B. Ritchie Guitarist Special arrived as cofounder of Big Twist & the Mellow Fellows and stuck it out with that popular group until shortly after Twist’s untimely demise in 1990. While most of the other Fellows now do business as the Chicago Rhythm & Blues Kings, who’ve backed several vocalists now, Special sings in front of his own outfit; unfortunately his gravelly voice and derivative guitar style were more tolerable coming from a sideman....

The third–and by far the most ambitious–edition of this annual celebration of the art of improvisational comedy brings together improv artists from around the U.S. and overseas. Festival producers Frances Callier and Jonathan Pitts have ensured that Chicago troupes are well represented: local companies participating include the Second City, ImprovOlympic, ComedySportz, GayCo Productions, Schadenfreude, and many more. Also taking part are former Chicagoans now based in LA and New York, including Dan Castellaneta, Mina Kolb, Avery Schreiber, Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, and the Upright Citizens Brigade....

CHUCK HEDGES SWINGTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For history-minded clarinetists like Chuck Hedges, Benny Goodman’s small groups of the mid-30s are like the Holy Grail. While leading his sleek yacht of a big band, Goodman also cut loose in the swing era equivalent of cigarette boats: a trio, a quartet, and other combos that emphasized improvisation over arrangement. And after Goodman recruited the pioneering young electric guitarist Charlie Christian late in the decade, his sextet mixed the flowing, woody sound of his own clarinet, the hot clang of Lionel Hampton’s vibes, and the ripening glow of the guitar into a brand-new jazz flavor....

“If you want the Catholic faith to tame your kids, don’t let them read stories of the saints,” warns Cathy O’Connell-Cahill in the Chicago-based newsletter “Bringing Religion Home” (November). “They might end up doing outrageous things that will turn your hair white–like my friend whose son, brought upon the best of Catholic tradition, chose to stay in the middle of the Rwandan bloodbath to help refugees.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

HOWARD SANDROFF Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When it comes to the use of electronics and computers in his music, Howard Sandroff often checks out the new tricks of other electronic-music mavens and then picks those that suit his own aesthetic purpose–which is to get a listener emotionally involved in the mechanics of construction, of hearing elemental sounds emerge, coalesce, then evaporate. In extending and manipulating the range of traditional acoustic instruments, Sandroff has stayed close to MIT–a bastion of electronic arts now and 20 years ago, when he studied there–and to Pierre Boulez’s lab in Paris....

Eighteen Springs With Leon Lai, Wu Chien-lien, Anita Mui, Ge You, Annie Wu, and Huang Lei. Many movie executives–producers and distributors–say they’re simply giving the public what it wants, but this is a half lie at best. If a man’s dying of thirst and you offer him a choice of liquid soap or shoe polish, would it be fair to say his choice is what he likes? When I recently went back to my hometown in Alabama, which has nine mall movie screens, I discovered that anyone who wanted to see Sling Blade had to drive an hour and a half–even though one of the actors is apparently from the town and a good many locals had called the distributor and asked for a booking....

This 1965 feature by Swedish director Bo Widerberg (Elvira Madigan) explores the psychodynamics of a renowned filmmaker’s personal relationships. Deep in a creative funk, Keve retreats to his home in a seaside village, accompanied by his circle of bohemian friends, and stumbles into an extramarital affair, only to realize that it doesn’t solve his artistic or emotional crises. This might have become a glib, Felliniesque portrayal of a shallow artist surrounded by a circus of grotesques, but Widerberg’s true reference points are Renoir’s The Rules of the Game and Antonioni’s L’Avventura: the characters are emotional cripples desperately trying to connect in an idyllic setting, the imaginatively choreographed camera probing their fragile psyches....

By Justin Hayford But today he’s worried about being seen with me. Having a scrawny, bookish fellow at his side may detract from his overall “leather image,” he explains, hurting his chances in Sunday’s competition. “They don’t tell us who the judges are,” he apologizes. And though the official competition isn’t for two days, he’s being judged from the moment he sets foot in the hotel. Kevin won his title last October....

REGINA CARTER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Regina Carter offers the perfect blend of beauty and brains–and how often can a guy make that statement without being labeled sexist? I offer the description in specific relation to Carter’s violin work, which glistens with conservatory tone but bristles with sharp, pungent logic. Other jazz fiddlers have plied their improvisations with tough ideas, from Joe Venuti to Billy Bang, but only a handful (notably the Frenchmen, Stephane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty) have managed to marry that intelligence to a sweet, voluptuous tone....

The Last Night of Ballyhoo at the Garage at Steppenwolf Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ballyhoo resonates with all these influences. Like Hellman, Uhry is a southern Jew who draws on his own family history–though nothing in the play suggests the Uhry clan was anything like Hellman’s venal ancestors. The family here more closely recalls the gentile gentry of Gone With the Wind or the impoverished Episcopalians of The Glass Menagerie....