Time Out Chicago

• Restaurants & Bars

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  • Three-way

  • New ways chefs use foam

  • Despite its reputation, foam endures—sometimes in slightly new ways.

• • Custom House Tavern

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  • Our first meal at the new incarnation of Custom House involved a lot of ’70s music, much of it disco.

  • Beyond the pale (ale)

  • Look around and you’ll see that ambitious beer lists are popping up around Chicago faster than you can drain a pint.

  • Swipe this, not that

  • Credit cards cost restaurants big money. Here’s how to use them more conscientiously.

  • Longman & Eagle

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  • Just look at all these hipsters. Now forget what you think they mean.

  • Southern decadence

  • The South rises again, in Chicago restaurants.

• Music & Clubs

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  • Fashion closet

  • The easy way out East

  • For Pretty Good Dance Moves, making it is a cinch, as long as you avoid Chicago and guitars.

• • Rambling man

  • Before he could walk, RJD2 already marched to his own beat.

  • Vivian Girls + Male Bonding

  • The only thing more tired than hating on the Vivian Girls is reading another piece of press that opens by reflecting on all that hating.

  • Harvey Milk + Coalesce

  • At the onset of the ’90s, everything punk became new again. Nirvana had just driven the final nail in hair metal’s coffin.

  • Imelda May

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  • This year’s Grammy Awards were dominated by hammy theatrics. But the biggest, brassiest splash was made by Ireland’s Imelda May.

  • Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

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  • Even Ted Leo’s fans will concede the guy walks a thin line between conviction and over-earnestness.

• Film

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  • Cheadle and Snipes

  • Brooklyn’s Finest

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  • Constantly on the brink of hysteria, Brooklyn’s Finest is pitched somewhere between a Lumetian cop drama and a thudding, simpleminded civics lesson along the lines of Crash.

• • A Prophet

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  • A loner is caught between the rival powers, Muslim prisoners and Corsican mobsters.

  • The Crazies

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  • George Romero’s original The Crazies was a prime slice of raw mid-’70s exploitation schlock scruffy, violent and politically edgy. Breck Eisner’s remake is slicker, prettier and dumber, but not entirely without merit.

  • Alice in Wonderland

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  • Tim Burton is in dispassionate, for-hire mode, which means more computer-generated eyesores.

  • Johnny Depp talks Alice in Wonderland

  • "Alice in Wonderland is one of the top 25 books of all time. I always loved the book and I always loved the various characters, the psychedelic nature of it and kind-of odd allegorical stories inside stories. I always thought it was beautiful"

  • The Paranoids

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  • Daniel Hendler gives Luciano a hunch-shouldered defensive posture that suggests he expects the world at large to hit him at any given moment.

The Get

• Shopping & Style

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  • Trending salt therapy

  • White stuff making name for itself in wellness world

  • For years, we’ve been told to avoid salt for fear of bloating (egad!) or, worse yet, increased blood pressure.

• • Express lane: birdcages

  • Who says you need a pet to buy a cage? Fill these decorative versions with plants or candles.

  • It’s your lucky day: Finding cultural luck charms

  • Yes, there’s always the four-leaf clover for St. Patrick’s Day, but don’t forget to try out these other cultural lucky charms.

  • Looking for a kilt? Two places you can get 'em

  • Whether you’re representing your Irish pride or paying homage to Alexander McQueen, the kilt is the essential accessory this season.

  • Openings: Studio 18 Spatique

  • When neighbors Anne Marie Garza and Chon Bonilla learned they both wanted to evolve their businesses, they decided to join forces.

  • Paper zines go to bed with the Web

  • Despite their reputed rivalry, the Internet and the zine are actually enjoying a productive working relationship.

• Arts & entertainment

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  • Opera & Classical

  • Damned if he does

  • John Relyea channels grunge gods in his devilish Lyric debut.

• • New activism conference hopes to fire up Midwestern gays

  • What do North and South Side gays and lesbians, nonprofits such as Equality Illinois and the Gay Liberation Network have in common? Not much, some say.

  • Sissy act

  • A new doc captures the high jinks of a radical queer performance collective.

  • “Moholy An Education of the Senses”

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  • When the Nazis drove the faculty and students of the Bauhaus abroad in the 1930s, Germany’s loss was Chicago’s gain.

  • The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves

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  • By Siri Hustvedt. Henry Holt, $23.

  • “The Darker Side of Light”

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  • Smart Museum of Art, through Jun 13.

• Theater

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  • The A-team

  • State spark

  • An ambitious young company goes Greek with a Sophocles mash-up.

• • Beautiful City

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  • Toronto playwright Walker’s confused 1987 fable about the forces that decide the direction of a city isn’t as clever as it wants to be.

  • The DNA Trail

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  • A cornucopia of seven playwrights, each of whom created a one act inspired by the results of a DNA test revealing his or her genetic ancestry.

  • Mimesophobia

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  • DePaul prof Murillo’s ambitious play is engrossing in spite of its own best efforts.

  • Twelve Angry Men

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  • The building blocks of this American classic, originally written for television in 1954, are so simple that each one needs to carry its own weight.

  • August Osage County

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  • Two-and-a-half years, five Tonys and one Pulitzer later, Tracy Letts’s sprawling, well-observed plains drama returns to the city that bore it.

• Yoga

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  • Class action

  • Nude yoga

  • In 2001, celebrity yogi Aaron Star started a stripped-down phenomenon in New York with his Hot Nude Yoga studio in Chelsea. Four years later, the trend reaches Chicago.

• • Fly Yoga

  • I BELIEVE I CAN FLY When Crunch shuttered the last of its Chicago locations last year, it took its innovative and fun classes with it.

  • The Lab

  • A yoga and tango studio opens in the West Loop.

  • CorePower Yoga DVDs

  • OM AT HOME After my love letter to the classes at CorePower Yoga a few months ago, my yoga habit fizzled a bit.

  • Community yoga classes in Chicago

  • "Are there any affordable yoga classes in the city, so I can enjoy the best of both worlds?” —Elizabeth B.

  • AM stretch pose

  • "You don’t even have to get out of bed to do it.”