Fall Out Boy
Blink-182
Violent Femmes
Motorhead
Rancid
Blondie
Sublime With Rome
AFI
Public Enemy
Brand New
Flag
Guided By Voices
Rocket From the Crypt
Bad Religion

… and a few dozen more bands that are playing Riot Fest this year. It’s pretty nuts. And very nostalgic. Check out the whole lineup.

A number of Vu Sua’s dishes are duplicated or echoed from Macku, but even the ones that aren’t inspired by it manage to contribute to an overall sense of discord. A selection of spring rolls—set upright in a pool of goopy, thick, black-bean-and-soy-based sauce—consists of gluey cylinders stuffed with rice noodles, cucumber, carrots, and bean sprouts, coated in panko, and topped with various bites: an endive canoe of spicy diced octopus, or nuggets of lobster and foie gras. These inharmonious architectures crumble at any attempt to eat them. Go figure how these separate elements are supposed to complement each other—on one visit a despondent chunk of lobster leaped from its aerie and bounced from the table to the floor.

Mike Sula didn’t understand the food at chef Macku Chan’s Vu Sua. But he tried.

As we approach the midpoint of Mayor Emanuel’s first term, I think I’ve discovered one of his greatest legacies to Chicago, right up there with dismantling public education and making Mayor Daley’s god-awful parking meter deal even worse.

The mayor is also undermining the Freedom of Information Act, so that it’s next to impossible for ordinary citizens to secure information showing how the government reaches decisions that affect their lives. The mayor and other officials are then free to do pretty much anything they want without fear of scrutiny.

Read more of Ben Joravsky’s story about Mayor Rahm (pictured here with Attorney General Lisa Madigan) and his FOIA flouting ways.

(Photo by Rich Hein/Sun-Times Media)

“The Great Chicago Fire Festival will be truly unique, an event worthy of our world class city,” [Rahm] Emanuel said, in a statement released by the city. Emanuel has let it be known that he intends the riverfront to be his mayoral legacy and wants the festival to showcase the city’s assets. Exactly how that’ll work is unclear, since the current plan for the festival, culminating in “ritual burnings” of neighborhood ills, sounds like a great way to showcase the city’s problems.

Deanna Isaacs finds out what’s in store at the Great Chicago Fire Festival. Besides the ritual burning of effigies.

In parts of the city, it’s far too common for lives to be shaped by the persistent threat of conflicts and the culture of resolving them with firearms. In fact, gun violence has come to seem as much a part of Chicago as the seasons. In the last 20 years, more than 12,000 people have been murdered in the city, more than 9,000 of them with firearms. Tens of thousands of others have survived being shot.

According to the numbers, progress has been made. In the early 90s crime totals in Chicago and other American cities soared, then began to drop. In 1992, Chicago logged 943 murders; 20 years later, the total dropped to 506.

Yet last year the city claimed the tragic title of the most murders in the country, for the third time in 11 years. It was little consolation that the murder rate was actually higher in a number of smaller cities—especially since the death toll in Chicago could have been much worse. On average, 47 people were wounded by shootings each week.

And then another flare-up of violence opened the new year, taking more innocent lives, generating more headlines around the world, and raising more questions about why this keeps happening—and if there’s anything more that can be done to stop it.

Read more of Mick Dumke’s look at Chicago’s gun addiction—and strategies for kicking the habit.