#LoveLocal: Time Out Chicago celebrates local shops, food and culture

March has arrived, spring is just a few weeks off and you shouldn't have any trouble finding things to do in Chicago. This week, you can take in the exhibits at the newly-reopened Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Science and Industry, including a show devoted to Marvel heroes. If you feel like seeing a show, support some of Chicago's best and theaters during Chicago Theatre Week, which offers a variety of streaming programming. It's also the final week for ice skating at Maggie Daley Park, so make a reservation if you want to slide across a Chicago ice skating rink one more time this season. Read up on some of the best things to do in Chicago this week. RECOMMENDED: The best things to do in Chicago right now

Last month we learned that Chicago Restaurant Week would be moving to March and expanding its scope to offer takeout and delivery in addition to indoor and outdoor dining reservations. Today, organizers revealed the complete lineup of participants, with more than 265 restaurants in 34 Chicago neighborhoods (plus a few suburban spots) taking part in the 17-day celebration of local cuisine. Beginning today, you can browse the menus and make reservations via the Chicago Restaurant Week website. Notable participants in this year's event include the new Avec River North, West Loop Japanese concept Gaijin, Lincoln Park Middle Eastern restaurant Galit, Hai Sou Vietnamese Kitchen in Pilsen and Chef Erick Williams' beloved Virtue in Hyde Park. You can even get a meal on a boat—the Odyssey Chicago River is offering a prix fixe aboard the glass-enclosed vessel. This year's Chicago Restaurant Week runs from March 19 through April 4, with lunch and brunch prix fixe menus being offered for $25, while dinners will fetch $39 or $55. Even with the return of limited indoor dining, it continues to be an especially tough time for many restaurants, which lends an added importance to this annual event. There's no better time to support some of your favorite spots or try something new if you're able, whether you're willing to dine in-person or prefer to order takeout.  Most popular on Time Out - Take a look inside Chicago’s ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ exhibition- The best things to do in Chicago this wee

As COVID case numbers in Chicago continue to drop and restrictions are rolled back, some of our favorite pre-pandemic pastimes are returning accompanied by new safety guidelines. Movie theaters received the go-ahead to begin reopen at reduced percent capacity back in January (alongside indoor dining and museums), though most local cinemas haven't immediately resumed screenings.  Last week, the Music Box Theatre announced that it will officially reopen on Friday, February 26, showing the French-language Ivory Coast prison drama Night of the Kings in its main auditorium and Jewish horror film The Vigil in its smaller screening room. In accordance to Chicago's reopening guidelines, capacity in the Music Box's 750-seat main auditorium will be limited to 50 people, while only 15 people will be seated in its second theater. Much like when the theater briefly reopened last summer, all tickets will be sold in advance via the Music Box's website and masks will be required at all times, except when eating or drinking. The Music Box joins a variety of other local movie theaters than have reopened over the past few weeks, including the Davis Theater, the Landmark Century Centre, the ShowPlace ICON Theatres at Roosevelt Collection and most AMC theaters. Some smaller cinemas—such as the Logan Theatre, the Gene Siskel Film Center and the The New 400 Theater—have not yet announced reopening plans. If you still don't feel comfortable seeing a movie in-person, the Music Box is still offering a

Last fall, the Chicago Bulls unveiled a mural dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement prominently displayed on the side of the Advocate Center, the team's practice facility on Madison Street. Depicting a group of young Black people (one in a ’96 Bulls NBA Championship shirt) holding a sign and raising their fists, the stylized painting was just one of many public works that New Orleans-based artist Langston Allston completed during a long stint in Chicago last summer, putting his wide-eyed figures on everything from boarded-up windows to the side of the old Polish Triangle newsstand. Allston has always felt a connection to Chicago, growing up a few hours south in Champaign—a city where there wasn't much of a graffiti scene to guide him when he was first getting started. “I just started painting and people saw it, liked it and didn’t think of it as vandalism,” Langston says, explaining how he got gigs painting the sides of garages and alleys as a young artist. During the few years he spent enrolled in the painting program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Allston would frequently travel to Chicago to visit friends and family, soaking in the more vibrant landscape of graffiti and other public art that the city hosts. After a few years of college, Allston decided to drop out ("I did not really enjoy going to actual school," he says) and travel the country for a few years as he continued to hone his craft and create art. His formative experiences in Chicago

When snow falls in Chicago (and continues to fall, as it has over the past couple of weeks) and residents have to dig out their cars, a controversial winter tradition comes into play. The unwritten rules of "dibs" are simple: If you take the time to shovel out a parking spot, you're entitled to put some junk in it to prevent others from taking it while you're driving your car to work or the grocery store. And if you decide to move the folding chairs or boxes marking a space that someone else shoveled to park your own car, you have to be prepared to face the consequences. It's not the most neighborly of practices and it's definitely illegal, but you'll see "dibs" on streets throughout Chicago whenever it snows—if just one person on your street starts saving a spot with an old lawn ornament, others are likely to follow suit. Whether you agree with the spot-saving technique or think that it only makes winter parking even more of an ordeal, you have to admit that some folks get pretty creative when it comes to finding items to place in their parking spots. After putting out a call for photos of interesting items being used to call "dibs" earlier this week, we've gathered pictures of the most outlandish things Chicagoans are using to save their parking spots after shoveling out their cars. View this post on Instagram A post shared by kimberlyfalvar (@kimberlyfalvar) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brian

Late last year, Lincoln Park Zoo announced that it would be closing temporarily following its annual ZooLights display, with plans to reopen when the weather got a bit warmer in the spring. Today, the beloved local attraction (one of the few remaining admission-free zoos in the nation) announced that guests will be able to visit their favorite animals beginning on March 5. Lincoln Park Zoo will operate with limited capacity and won't reopen its animal buildings when it welcomes back visitors, requiring the use of face covering and encouraging social distancing between parties throughout the park. Guests will need to make a free timed reservation via the Lincoln Park Zoo website—the first round of reservations will be available February 28, and future reservations will be released at 4pm every Thursday and Sunday for the following three to four days. Members of the Lincoln Park Zoo will be able to visit a week before the general public during a pair of members-only days on February 27 and 28. If you can't wait to get back inside the zoo, it's not too late to purchase a membership and help support the attraction. In conjunction with the zoo's reopening, the Auxiliary Board of Lincoln Park Zoo is launching a virtual version of its Beers & Bears event, offering an exclusive beer from DryHop Brewers, access to a streaming Second City comedy show and more goodies that will support the zoo's pandemic relief fund. Anyone who purchases the $120 Beers & Bears Celebration Pack will gain

Two Midwestern restaurants are teaming up on a revolutionary takeout special that honors Black History Month through food and education. The restaurant owners behind the collaboration—Chicago's Erick Williams (Virtue) and Detroit's Patrick Coleman (Beans & Cornbread)—have long admired each other's work. But it wasn't until Williams heard about Coleman's "shoebox meals" that the two connected. The boxes are plastered in words and illustrations that depict Black trailblazers, historical moments and lessons on social justice. Coleman was inspired to create the containers after hearing about his mother and grandmother's experience riding the train during the Jim Crow era. Due to segregation, the women were not allowed to eat in the dining car, so instead, they packed their lunches in shoeboxes. Photograph: Lindsey Becker Williams was so moved by the project that he reached out to Coleman to see if he'd be interested in teaming up for Black History Month. To his surprise, Coleman had been following his journey, too, and was happy to get the shoeboxes in front of Chicagoans. "The story behind these shoeboxes provides people with a meaningful reminder of the resilience and resourcefulness of the Black community," Williams says. "It is fitting that these boxes, which depict powerful people and historical moments in American history, are housing a similarly powerful story that we are telling through food." Both men are serving shoebox meals at their respective restaurants from Febr

Plenty of Chicagoans can relate to Taylor Amilas Bates’s pandemic story: The 26-year-old was furloughed from her full-time job in March, and suddenly, the future she’d envisioned for herself was hanging in the balance. But it wasn’t long before she refocused her energy and took a leap of faith that would send her career in a new direction. Bates turned to floral design, a passion she’d ignited while working at Asrai Garden’s Wicker Park location from 2018 to 2019. It was there that she first learned how to care for flowers and arrange them into breathtaking bouquets. “Once I wasn’t able to do it and wasn’t able to be around it so much, I realized it’s what I need for myself and my mental health,” Bates says. “That’s how I got started.” Over the past 11 months, Bates has built a business from the ground up. Dusk Lily Floral is a small but mighty operation that deals in bold arrangements that are exploding with color and personality. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dusk Lily (@dusklilyfloral) “When I’m creating, I don’t have a method for the chaos,” Bates says. “The crazier the texture and color, the better. I want it to look more like an object than I want it to look like a bouquet.” Bates achieves this by mixing fresh flowers with unexpected elements, like feathers and fans. When she’s stocking up on stems at the flower market, she reaches for both tropical and traditional blooms—think lush orchids, glossy anthurium, voluptuous roses and fluffy am

The Lunar New Year arrives on Friday, February 12, which means that the holiday overlaps with Valentine's Day weekend this year, leaving restaurants to choose between cooking a romantic meal or a festive Chinese-themed dinner. While most local restaurants have opted for Valentine's Day meals, some are serving Peking duck, oxtail dumplings and beef noodles to mark the arrival of the Year of the Ox. We've rounded up some of the best Lunar New Year takeout specials—and if you need even more options, the best restaurants in Chinatown and Chicago's best Chinese restaurants offer a variety of delicious options.  Duck Duck Goat Enjoy the dish that puts the "duck" in Duck Duck Goat when you order this Peking duck dinner, which includes chef Stephanie Izard's take on the famous Beijing dish as well as Mandarin pancakes, hoisin sauce, sweet and sour sauce, salt, raw sugar and pickled veggies to garnish the bird. If you're feeling especially hungry, you can add hot and sour soup, crab rangoon, char siu ribs and many other dishes to your order. Pre-order via Tock for pickup.  Bumbu Roux Who said that the Lunar New Year has to be celebrated exclusively with Chinese food? Creole-meets-Indonesian concept Bumbu Roux is serving a 12-dish Rijsttafel Dinner in honor of the new year and Valentine's Day, including kerupuk (fried prawn chips), rendang (curried beef) and opor ayam kuning (braised chicken in coconut milk). You can order for groups of two, four or six people via Tock. Mott St It's th

If the towering stacks of White Claw at your local liquor store haven't tipped you off, hard seltzer is having a moment, accounting for more than $4 billion in sales over the past year in the United States. Chicagoland brewers have taken note, with Solemn Oath producing its widely distributed City Water line and Lo Rez Brewing experimenting with berry-flavored seltzers. Back in December, Hopewell Brewing Co. joined their ranks, launching a pair of hard seltzers under a new brand called Wayup.  "In the Before Times, every Friday a lot of us would show up to work with a can or bottle of something that we liked and maybe wasn't beer, but a seltzer or a canned cocktail," says Hopewell co-founder Samantha Lee. "We were always tasting these things and talking about them and thinking about how we would make it." The Wayup seltzers grew out of these tasting sessions, as the team at Hopewell slowly began developing their take on a bubbly, fruit-flavored and gluten-free beverage. When the pandemic hit and breweries like Hopewell suddenly had far fewer kegs to fill (due to bars being closed), there was suddenly time to dig into more experimental projects. "A lot of breweries like us have extra capacity to try things out," Lee says. "I think that's why you're seeing more folks experimenting right now, just because we can." Hopewell didn't have to purchase any new equipment to begin producing hard seltzer—it just uses a slightly different process to produce the neutral alcohol that forms