There’s a mountain of evidence from around the world that automated traffic enforcement saves lives. For example, a 2012 study in the Journal of Accident Analysis and Prevention credited the widespread use of speed cameras in France with saving more than 15,000 lives over a seven-year period. They quoted a dozen or so drivers who complained that the tickets they received were unfair because they were issued while parks were closed, children weren’t present in school zones, or warning signs were missing, contrary to state law and city ordinance....

Michael Gebert Either the new menu for Sixteen or a really big game of Risk A few months back I wrote about the spring menu at Sixteen in the Trump Tower—if only there were an easy way to identify which building that is—and one of the things that was most interesting to me was how chef Thomas Lents, pastry chef Aya Fukai, and wine director Dan Pilkey are reacting to the desire for a higher degree of conceptuality and theater in fine dining....

ARTIST: Andy Burkholder SHOW: Wasteland Jazz Unit, Developer, and Andrew Scott Young Ensemble at Hideout on Wed 7/12 MORE INFO: andyburkholder.com

In its 12th year, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival continues to program a diverse lineup of jazz artists. Over the course of the two days, the event will showcase over 30 acts at various venues in Hyde Park while embracing countless styles, traditions, and innovations. Though there are plenty of big names on the bill—including Ravi Coltrane with Brandee Younger, Jason Moran (paying tribute to Willie Pickens and Muhal Richard Abrams), Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and Dee Alexander—the fest puts emphasis on giants in niche scenes....

The Assembled Parties In this Raven Theatre production Cody Estle directs Richard Greenberg’s Tony-nominated dramedy, which follows an Upper West Side family across a 20-year time period. In act one the Bascov clan converge at their 1980 holiday gathering, where the audience is introduced to a family focused on assimilation and upward mobility. Charismatic matriarchs Julie (Loretta Rezos), the Christmas-loving German Jew, and her sister-in-law Faye (JoAnn Montemurro), a Woody Allen stock character full of Yiddish quips and Jewish anxiety, share a familial bond and love for Julie’s son Scotty (Niko Kourtis), on whom they’ve pinned the family’s future....

I refused to watch the inauguration this afternoon,” Ricardo Gamboa said in the monologue of the very first episode of The Hoodoisie back on January 20, 2017. “Not to protest, but fear of lack of self-control. Donald Trump talks so much shit out of his puckered lips that look like a rectum, I was afraid I’d charge the television and try to fuck it.” Gamboa and their team took a break from the show this summer to reassess what topics to focus on in the future and to apply for funding to continue growing their vision....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, April 12, 2017. By 2025, city buildings will be entirely powered by renewable energy City of Chicago buildings will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy by 2025, the city announced in a press release over the weekend. “By committing the energy used to power our public buildings to wind and solar energy, we are sending a clear signal that we remain committed to building a 21st century economy here in Chicago,” the mayor said in the statement....

Last month Louisville singer-songwriter Joan Shelley released her fifth album, the eponymous Joan Shelley, the first she’s made outside of Kentucky. She cut the record in Chicago at the Wilco Loft with Jeff Tweedy as producer, but his presence is barely felt, which says something about her quiet confidence in her delicate and poetic folk rock. It’s the leanest, most restrained record of her career so far—the tracks feel intuitive, following a path that’s both spontaneous and intimate, with melodic shapes reflecting the empathetic rumination of her lyrics....

Fortunately for Writers Theatre, the highly implausible claim on its website that Twelfth Night “has never felt more relevant” isn’t the funniest thing about the production. However, what it lacks in relevance, it makes up for in actual humor, with a blend of broad slapstick and dry wit. Scott Parkinson steals the entire show as the hilariously affected Sir Andrew Aguecheek, often commanding full belly laughs. He flounces and flops around the stage, playing the audience like a fiddle....

COURTESY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STOCK “Spirit of the Wild” Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Six Reader critics fanned out across the Chicago Fringe Festival performance sites in Jefferson Park last weekend to see what we could see. The result is this selective guide to shows that will be continuing on through the fest’s second and final weekend. For times, tickets, and other info, go to chicagofringe.org. —Tony Adler Betwixt Between This show, about a young girl who’s initiated into a magical world, is enhanced by Nathan Fivecoate’s original score and Cindy Henkin’s marionette-like moves....

We’re now five um, three days into January, so all of the backward glancing and assessing of 2013 is supposed to be over with—but I’m perpetually behind in such matters. Next week I’ll finally post my 40 favorite albums, regardless of genre, of 2013. (You can all exhale!) But before I get to that I thought I’d go ahead and list my ten favorite albums of jazz and improvised music led by Chicagoans....

Trumpeter Jaimie Branch was raised in Wilmette and moved to Chicago in summer 2001, just before moving to Boston to attend the New England Conservatory of Music—but she didn’t make her debut on the jazz scene here till she took a semester off after her third year to recover from a gallbladder issue. The 21-year-old spent the last half of 2004 in Chicago, and in short order she established herself as a force to be reckoned with, her knowledge and chops impressing musicians many years her senior....

You can, if you stand at the end of my street and turn your ear to the south and east, catch the roar of the crowd more than a mile away from Wrigley. It’s a gathering force, a collective sound, equal parts ecstasy, anguish, relief, and longing. Team sport, biologist E.O. Wilson says, is tribalism, “the profound identity we can feel with the group as it competes with another group.” Are the Cubs my tribe?...

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times Media Authorities say Jason Austin murdered a cop and a social worker on the west side in 2008, though witness accounts have shifted repeatedly. Terrance Scott said he was ready to talk. He had to—he couldn’t sleep, and the events of the previous few days kept flashing through his mind. The shooter, Scott said, was Jason Austin, the boss of a heroin and cocaine organization at Kedzie and Ohio where Scott worked....

Last April the author Kim Brooks had a book launch party in Andersonville for her novel The Houseguest. There was a reading at Women & Children First and then drinks up the street at the Brixton, where people stayed chatting about books until 1 AM. Brooks and three other local writers, Zoe Zolbrod, Rebecca Makkai, and Aleksandar Hemon, wondered if there was a way to replicate the energy of that night and generate more interest in the city’s literary community....

Creepin’ Comedy troupes have come a long way from shouted one-word audience suggestions to conjure inspiration for improv sets. Nowadays, half the game is coming up with clever jumping-off points based on live interviews or found material to inform truly original, in-the-moment premises. Under the Gun Theater has made that something of a specialty over the years, finding great gags in sources from board games to pop culture franchises to remaindered books....

Virginia trio Pontiak—brothers Jennings, Van, and Lain Carney—have spent years developing and refining a particular strain of groove-based hard rock, their indelible, fuzzed-out guitar riffs cycling hypnotically to summon a levitating power. Yet unlike so many bands purveying a similar stoner-rock sound—viscous, flanged guitar solos uncoiling luxuriantly but rudely over rhythms worthy of gentle headbanging—this trio construct their work around the voice. On their new album Dialectic of Ignorance (Thrill Jockey) the Carneys reveal a heightened ability to sing chantlike melodies with measured, beguiling grace....

At a recent performance at the Laugh Factory, stand-up Carly Ballerini got onstage and yelled out, “Is anybody here gay?” No one in the crowded room responded. But Ballerini persevered, and she put on a set filled with jokes about her bisexuality. Often audiences think she’s straight, she says, so she needs to pronounce her queerness right away. As an alternative, she wanted to create a safe and celebratory space where performers are assumed to be queer....