Buh Bye BoA Cinema & Wonder Bar

As the new year rolls in, we bid adieu to a couple of long-standing if under-the-radar Chicago entertainment venues.

1. Bye, Bank of America Cinema - For 38 years this oddball movie house - hidden in an obscure northwest side bank building - screened Hollywood classics like Laurel and Hardy along with themed series such as "Mustache Cinema" (where one might watch Mutiny on the Bounty, the only Clark Gable movie where he's sans 'stache).

2. Underground Wonder Bar - Lonie Walker's teeny jazz and blues club has been open every night for 21 years in the Gold Coast and given many newbie musicians the chance to cut their chops. Established musicians, too - Liza Minnelli and Tiny Tim rank among the eclectic crooners who've grabbed the mic.

In both cases, the venues fell victim to new landlords who kicked them out. The cinema is hoping to start up again as a Wednesday night series at the Portage Theater. The Wonder Bar is trying to move to a new site at 736 N Clark St.

Movies + Music = CIMM Fest

There's a new fest in town. The Chicago International Movies and Music Festival, aka CIMM Fest, reels through the Windy City from March 5-9. It presents movies. And music. And movies about music, which is the main gist. The grand finale is the Wilco documentary Ashes of American Flags at the Music Box Theatre.

The rest of the events take place at various Wicker Park venues and at the Chicago Cultural Center. The latter is worth a visit in and of itself.

After the Great Fire ravaged Chicago, Britain's Queen Victoria sent over a box of books to cheer up everybody. Actually, it was a great big box, and the city needed somewhere to put them all. So it built a library. Not just any old library - rather, one modeled after the Doge's Palace in Venice. No one's really sure why. But, hey, more people might read if they could do it surrounded by marble, brass and the world's largest Tiffany stained-glass dome.

Eventually, the library moved to larger digs down the road, and the building morphed into the Cultural Center.