Custom wheel building for your first fixie? New spokes and rims for track bikes? If you’re a lay cyclist like me, bike lingo can seem a tad intimidating. But at two-wheelin’ Village fixture Bikurious, genial owners Marissa Plamondon-Lu and Mackenzie Ogilvie will gladly explain how to pimp your hot ride from scratch.

What a small team of producers operating out of WBEZ Chicago sought to achieve 15 years ago was to capitalize on radio’s biggest asset over other mediums: its intimacy. By having ordinary folk share their personal stories and then weaving together the narratives as one would a mini-movie – with characters, plot lines and dramatic arcs – they recognized radio’s potential to deliver powerful stories.

Late check-out, access to the downstairs kitchen and free entry to Casa’s shows make it a no-brainer for many a travelling musician.

Stereo, the aural playground for refined dance floor denizens, has weathered (see: extinguished) quite a few storms over the past 11 years, but as the saying goes: it don’t need no water, let the (mother) haters burn.

“The one day you feel a bit loopy just so happens to be the day you tape Quebec’s most televised event,” Di Salvio says with a healthy serving of self-mockery.

His new short is quite the head trip, with morphing faces, eyes that turn extraterrestrial red, and Chloë Sevigny, of course.

Family gatherings. Now there’s a topic you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone unable to expand on.