The promise, and the crossed fingers. “The right of displaced [CHA resident] families to return to the mixed-income developments [that will replace most public housing] is guaranteed in a contract signed Oct. 17 by the CHA and the Central Advisory Council, a group of elected tenant leaders,” writes Brian Rogal in the Chicago Reporter (November/December). “The Relocation Rights Contract, hammered out after often-contentious negotiations, covers the approximately 15,500 families living in public housing as of Oct....

By Puja Lalmalani If Vrinda’s lucky, the trip from Munster, Indiana, to Rajagopalan’s home in Oak Brook takes only an hour and 45 minutes. But if Vrinda hits heavy traffic, the trek (which she’s made at least once weekly over the years) can take up to a half hour longer. Priya, 18, is the middle daughter and the first to present her arangatrem. She started learning when she was 4 and her older sister, Kavitha, was 6....

Each decade since the 30s has produced a handful of versatile pianists who can convey the music of a broad array of soloists and composers–e.g., Hank Jones in the 40s, Tommy Flanagan in the 50s, Mulgrew Miller in the 80s. Since such versatility can obscure one’s distinctive musical persona, such players often remain under the radar of the casual listener, but in some ways they’re the glue that holds together the music of their time....

LARRY GARNER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Although grounded in the guitar-oriented, rock-influenced blues considered “mainstream” by modern white audiences, Larry Garner’s sound includes enough soulful seasonings–fatback percussion, churchy organ, and his own grainy, gospel-tinged vocals–to be attractive to soul-blues aficionados as well. His lyrics are among the most trenchant in contemporary blues, even if he sometimes seems to step back from their implications: The breezy funk-blues arrangement of “Where Blues Turn Black,” from last year’s Once Upon the Blues (Ruf), all but drains the blood from lines like “They’ll lay your wounds wide open / And salt them with lies, guilt, and shame....

The opener to the Mantasticks’ latest revue sets the bar high, as its six members let it all (well, most of it) hang out in a charmingly disheveled parody of Cirque du Soleil complete with nude bodysuits. But their aim isn’t as true in the rest of the show–audience members scrambled out of the theater on beer runs as the ensemble repeatedly flubbed lines and took on the softest of targets....

Lead Stories Last month in Kobe, Japan, an unidentified young man leaped from between the cars of an express train traveling at 60 miles per hour, landed on a station platform, and walked away, apparently unhurt….And in March two teenage boys were hospitalized with gunshot wounds in Michigan City, Indiana, after they and other boys encircled an older man on the street and began firing at him. The man was not hit....

On her last album, The Blackened Air, New York’s Nina Nastasia grappled with the emotional ambiguities of adulthood in melodically concise, Appalachian-inflected songs. Her lyrics embrace the present in the face of an evaporating future; on the new Run to Ruin (Touch and Go) she denies herself even that solace. The album is bookended by songs that explore the way failed communication wastes relationships. The narrator of “We Never Talked” rues the squandered opportunities that have left her and her lover stranded in no-man’s-land: “All the love I have left you won’t know / All the fear I have left you won’t know....

Chicago may have the most active noncommercial theater scene in the country, but it exists in a state of perpetual impermanence. Just try to get your hands on the scripts for any of the Curious Theatre Branch plays that have thrilled you over the last 15 years, or the Theater Oobleck show that knocked you out last month. Every four to six weeks, as off-Loop companies tear apart their sets and prepare to build new ones, another dozen or so original plays vanish into desk drawers and storage boxes across the city....

In the Little Village home of Maria and Jose Alejandre, no one cares about the traditional Thanksgiving Day feast. “We don’t like turkey,” says Hector, 28, one of the Alejandres’ ten children. “It’s too dry.” Instead, Maria’s homemade chicken with mole sauce–full of cocoa, spices, nuts, seeds, and dried jalapenos–simmers in an enormous pot while tamales steam in their husks. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Former carpenter Jose Alejandre originally left Puerto Vallarta in the mid-1970s, leaving his family behind to find a better-paying job to support them....

Choreographer Sarah Haas curated this hour-long evening, which includes her own work and that of Cutman Dance Crash and Sabrina Cavins. Only Haas’s pieces were available for preview, but they alone justify a recommendation. Her Breathing Still, inspired by the Chinese meditative art Falun Dafa (better known as Falun Gong) and done to music that pays homage to Bach, features five dancers whose graceful motions–a combination of balletic movement and yogalike poses–are consistently hobbled or impeded....

SZASZCSAVAS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Of the 900 or so people who live in the Transylvanian village for which this working Gypsy wedding band is named, only about 20 percent are of Rom origin–so the group’s exuberant repertoire includes plenty of Hungarian and Romanian numbers in addition to the material closest to the musicians’ hearts. Untrained Westerners probably won’t have much luck differentiating between a csardas and a pontozo, much less a suru verbunk and a szekely verbunk, but it doesn’t take a musicologist to hear that they’re all meant for dancing....

Ronald Harwood’s seriocomic portrait of an aging Shakespearean star during World War II is a loving but unsentimental elegy for a long-gone way of life and style of theater. It’s also catnip for actors, and director Amy Morton’s cast makes the most of it. John Mahoney stars as Sir, a grand old ham forcing himself through one more turn as King Lear. Tracy Letts is Sir’s dresser, Norman–valet, coach, sparring partner, and nanny rolled into one....

Vegans are purists when it comes to their vegetables. Vegetable pots are for cooking vegetables, and–this being an imperfect world–meat pots are used when other people are cooking meat, and never the twain shall meet. So when the Lakeview restaurant Amitabul changed its name to Far Eastern Barbecue in June and added meat to the menu, its vegan fans wondered what was going on. Had chef Dave Choi–who owned the restaurant with his brother, his sister, and her husband–traded in his vegetarian roots?...

For the third consecutive year Second City is hosting a holiday marathon to raise money for gifts for needy families whose Christmas wish lists, addressed to the north pole, have been obtained from the post office. A core group of current and former Second City folks–among them T.J. Jagodowski, Andy Cobb, main-stage director Mick Napier, Dan Bakkedahl, Pete Grosz, Sue Salvi, and MADtv’s Keegan Michael-Key–has committed to staying onstage for 24 hours, performing improv games, monologues, long-form scenes, and anything else they can think of to stay awake....

Your restaurant recommendations are usually good, but last issue misled us. We followed your rave review to Indie Cafe [“Almost as Good as Arun’s at a Tenth of the Price,” November 26] and found the situation disturbing instead of delightful as anticipated. The place was full at 6 PM on a Sunday evening. There were only two waitresses–but they were much more than waitresses. They were a combination of hostesses, busgirls, telephone order takers, cashiers, and waitresses....

More than a few people were surprised when Joe Davis opened a contemporary art gallery in Highwood last April. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Highland Park’s tiny neighbor to the north–covering about one square mile–had a reputation as a rough-and-tumble bar town. For much of the 20th century as many as 30 saloons did business within a couple of blocks (a fact that locals claim once earned Highwood a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records)....

Who Needs Matt and Ben? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Filmmaker and Project Greenlight documentary star Pete Jones is back, thanks to Judy Baar Topinka and the family and friends who’ve bankrolled his latest effort, which will premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival October 10. After winning the first Project Greenlight script competition in 2001, Jones got to make his entry, Stolen Summer, into a movie that ultimately bombed while his directorial missteps were showcased for a national television audience....

Three months ago I decided to change my last name. I didn’t want a surname that had been passed down from man to man–I wanted one that gave full props to matriarchy. There aren’t enough things that do. “Were you born here?” she snapped. I leaned into the periphery of her vision. “Excuse me,” I said. “How do I go about ‘calling Indiana’?” I could see that I was interrupting important official business: her screen was open to Hotmail....

Dear sir: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Seneca’s unfriendly portrayal of the Greeks is premised on the ignoble purposes and conduct of the victors, whose introduction to the audience comes with a description of an argument among them as to how to divide the spoils. The cause of the war was almost personal–the abduction of Helen by Paris–and the victors have purposely reduced the vanquished Troy to a heap of dust....

Friday 9/12 – Thursday 9/18 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 13 SATURDAY Executive director Bruce Robbins compares the 1975 founding of Lincoln Park’s Lillstreet Art Center to the old Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movies. “They’d say, ‘Let’s put on a play.’ Two scenes later they’re having a full production,” he says. “We said, ‘Let’s have an arts center,’ and two months later we were an arts center....