Pitchfork began yesterday with it's Don't Look Back, where bands pick one of their albums and play them the whole way through.  The bands participating in the series this year were Mission of Burma (performing Vs.), Sebadoh (performing Bubble and Scrape) and Public Enemy (performing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back).

Ina Pinkney almost didn’t have a restaurant when she opened in 1991. With the U.S. in the midst of a recession, launching Ina’s from the bottom was difficult.

She faced more trouble after Sept. 11, when she said business was nearly non-existent, no bodies in her booths.

But twice the eatery overcame trying economic times and it continues to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner in the West Loop at 1235 W. Randolph St. Despite those triumphs, Pinkney said, the fix she finds herself in now makes her particularly skittish.

CHICAGO—As the 25th annual Chicago Blues Festival rolls around next week, it is time for a pulse check on the shuffling, rickety old body of the Chicago blues scene.

Hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans and visitors will flood Grant Park, at Columbus and Jackson, June 5-8, to hear the likes of B.B. King, Johnny Winter, Koko Taylor and other acts – big and small, local and visiting. Last year’s drew a record attendance of 800,000 over four days, according to Barry Dolins, festival coordinator. Around 35 percent were from the Chicago area; the rest were out-of-towners.

With contract negotiations between the governor’s office and Illinois’ largest public-service union now at stalemate, workers and organizers took to the streets statewide Thursday, picketing at 40 locations.

The union contract is set to expire June 30, frustrating state employees looking for a better deal.

Ground was broken Tuesday on a West Loop site for what will be Chicago's first green residential building.

“This project will not only stand in the history of Chicago, but I believe in this country and in the world,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said.

Not only is the planned 50-story apartment Chicago’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design registered building, but it marks the first time a new apartment tower has been built in the Loop during the past 15 years.