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Chicago’s United Center

Come to Chicago’s United Center to see Justin Timberlake in concert October 5, and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

Justin Timberlake broke into show biz by appearing on “The New Mickey Mouse Club.” He then joined NSYNC, which became one of the best-selling boy bands in pop music history. From his style and accent, you’d never guess that Justin Timberlake is from Tennessee.

Justin Timberlake won two Grammy Awards for songs off his very first album: “Cry Me a River,” and “Rock Your Body.” Meantime, he began accepting movie roles in “The Social Network,” “Bad Teacher,” “Friends with Benefits,” and “In Time.” He then resumed his music career with his third album, “The 20/20 Experience,” the best-selling album of 2013. His new studio album, “Man of the Woods,” quickly became a number one hit.

To date, Justin Timberlake has won ten Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Brit Awards, and nine Billboard Music Awards. His Justin Timberlake Foundation funds music in schools. He also partially funds Wildlife Warriors, the love project started by the late Steve Irwin.

The United Center, “the house that Jordan built,” is located at 1901 West Madison Avenue in Chicago. For tickets to see Justin Timberlake, go online to http://justin-timberlake.ticketsunitedcenter.com/ and follow the prompts.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just minutes away from the Justin Timberlake Concert at Chicago’s United Center, offers free shuttle service to and from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Run to Chicago—uh, come to Chicago for the Chicago Marathon beginning and ending in Grant Park October 5 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

The Chicago Marathon is one of the most iconic races in the world. Running the Bank of America Chicago Marathon is the pinnacle of achievement for elite athletes and everyday runners alike. On race day, runners from all 50 states and more than 100 countries will set out to accomplish a personal dream by reaching the finish line in Grant Park.

Features of race weekend: Bank of America Chicago Marathon App, Powered by TCS/. Run in the Advocate Health Care International Chicago 5K. Age groups and awards. Nike+ Run Club Pacers. Runner Reunite. Bio-freeze 27th Mile Post-Race Party. Lost and found. The Plaza at Millennium Park Pasta dinner. Show up at McCormick Place on the Friday of race weekend to pick up your registration packet and stroll through the Abbott Health and Fitness Expo.

Wherever you arrive from, we invite you to join us on Saturday, October 6 for the 2018 International Chicago 5K. The race is the perfect way for marathoners, fans of the sport and friends and family to experience this international city and take part in the Bank of America Chicago Marathon weekend. Don’t miss your chance to run through the streets of downtown Chicago and celebrate running in a world class city! To learn more about the Advocate Health Care International Chicago 5K visit chicago5K.com.

The Chicago Marathon begins and ends in Grant Park. To register and for the full list of amenities and events, go online to https://www.chicagomarathon.com/participant-information/registration/ and follow the prompts.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just minutes away from the Chicago Marathon in Grant Park, offers free shuttle service to and from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Bring the music lovers in your family to the 40^th annual Chicago Jazz Festival August 24-September 2 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

The Chicago Jazz Festival is one of the premiere music events in the entire world! The festival, presented in several venues in and around Grant Park, brings together living jazz greats and pays homage to the legends that have passed! Known for its artistic creativity, the Chicago Jazz Festival is a favorite Labor Day Weekend tradition. It promotes awareness and appreciation for all forms of jazz through free, quality live musical performance. Since 1979, the festival’s mission is to showcase Chicago’s vast jazz talent alongside national and international artists to encourage and educate a jazz audience of all ages.

Here are highlights of this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival:

Headliners: Orbert Davis’ Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, Kurt Elling, Diane Reeves, and Ramsey Lewis. Plus: Geof Bradfield Nonet, Nicole Mitchell and Mandorla Awakening, Junius Paul Quartet, Quin Kirchner Quartet, Chris Speed Trio, Sabertooth Organ Quartet, Louis Hayes Quintet, Kenny Barren Quintet, Darcy James Williams Secret Society, Arturo O’Farrell Sextet, Macio Parker, and man, many more!

The Chicago Jazz Festival was born when composer/bandleader Duke Ellington died in the summer of 1974. Just a few weeks later, several dozen Chicago musicians held a festival to honor him, at the old bandshell at the south end of Grant Park. Ten thousand music lovers came, marking the first of what would become annual memorial concerts that drew crowds of up to 30,000.

Millennium Park is located at 201 East Randolph Street between the Loop and Lake Michigan. The Chicago Jazz Festival will be presented rain or shine. For times, days and the full schedule of events, go online to https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/ en/depts/dca/supp_info/chicago_jazz_festival.html/ and follow the prompts.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just a stone’s throw from the Chicago Jazz Festival, provides free shuttle service to and from O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Come to the Oak Park Micro Brew Review August 18 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

Produced by Seven Generations Ahead (SGA), the Oak Park Micro Brew Review showcases the best craft beers that Illinois brewers have to offer, select beers from Midwest and national craft breweries, live music and small plates incorporating local food from Oak Park area restaurants. This is one of the Midwest’s top craft beer festivals of the summer! All proceeds support SGA’s work to promote healthy and sustainable communities. There will be food and drinks and live music!

In addition, the event is the largest zero-waste craft beer fest in the Midwest.  What is zero-waste?  It means NOTHING from the event is sent to the landfill.  So, in addition to having a great time and enjoying great beer, by attending the Oak Park Micro Brew Review, you are also doing something great for the environment.
See you there!

The Oak Park Brew Micro Brew Review is located at 100 North Marion Street in downtown Oak Park. For tickets, go online to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/11th-annual-oak-park-micro-brew-review-tickets-42466191522 and follow the prompts. Patrons must wear wrist bands to enter the event. Beers will be handed out by downtown Oak Park restaurants. Kids and dogs are welcome, but they can’t drink beer.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just a stone’s throw from the Oak Park Micro Brew Review, provides free shuttle service to and from O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Bring the family to Brookfield Zoo’s ZooRunRun September 9 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

What is the ZooRunRun? It’s a 5K run/walk that is exotic – the onlookers are literally animals – and the sights and sounds you hear emanate from one of the world’s most famous zoos! The proceeds from the race go to the Conservation Fund, the work of which is about saving endangered species around the world.

The race courses are entirely within the world renowned Brookfield Zoo! Each year more species lose their race for survival and disappear from the wild. But it is a race we can win, and YOU CAN HELP! The Chicago Zoological Society Animal Care and Conservation Fund is dedicated to making a difference for these species across the globe and with each race entry, we will raise both awareness and funds for this great cause.

The ZooRunRun course takes you through a canopy of old oaks, on past lemurs and ravens and Nigerian dwarf goats, then through a swamp where the white pelicans will leer at you, on toward the Great Living Coast, be eaten – I mean observed – by eagles and condors, then you’ll thunder through the bison herd in the Great Bear Wilderness, get jeered by giraffes and zebras and camels, encounter pygmy hippos and black rhinos, and end just past the lions and tigers and snow leopards!

And, of course, after the race is over, you and the family can stroll the over two hundred acres of zoo exhibits, have a picnic, or just chill by your favorite animals.

The Brookfield Zoo is located at 8400 West 34^th Street in Brookfield. For tickets and more information, call (708) 688-8000, or go online to https://runsignup.com/Race/IL/Brookfield/ BrookfieldZooRunRun and follow the prompts. The Brookfield Zoo offers free admission for active, reserved and retired military personnel.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just a stone’s throw from the Brookfield Zoo’s ZooRunRun, provides free shuttle service to and from O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Come to Fitzgerald’s Night Club to see the fabulous The Waco Brothers in concert August 25 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

The Waco Brothers race towards the crossroads of punk and country, heedless of speed limits and stop signs. The collision is spectacular, loud, energizing and sometimes messy. Subtlety is for the weak, so they’ve chosen the path of optimum mayhem and tomfoolery. In their rollicking career, they have been called everything from the flagship act of the alternative country “movement” to pure butchery. Both are likely to be correct, even within one evening.

The Waco Brothers line-up, in case you haven’t been paying attention: Jon Langford (Mekons, Pine Valley Cosmonauts), Steve Goulding (Mekons, Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Graham Parker & the Rumor, Alan Doughty (Jesus Jones, Dollar Store), Deano (Dollar Store, Wreck), and Tracy Dear (World’s Greatest Living Englishman). On drums the past few years has been Joe Camarillo (Hushdrops).

With an improbable longevity, an impeccable rock and roll resume, and a go-for-broke live personae that can distract from the sharpness of their subject matters, it can be easy to take The Waco Brothers for granted. Like a strange, colorful and possibly poisonous toad that lies dormant in the mud of an Amazonian rain forest, only to emerge when it seems like it’s necessary, the Waco Brothers are needed more than ever.

Fitzgerald’s Night Club is located at 6615 West Roosevelt Road in Berwyn. For tickets, go online to https://www.ticketweb.com/venue/fitzgerald-s-berwyn-il/32814?pl= and follow the prompts.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just a stone’s throw from The Waco Brothers at Fitzgerald’s Night Club, provides free shuttle service to and from O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Bring the family to the Oak Park Festival Theatre to see “The African Company Presents: ‘Richard III’” July 28-September 1 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

“The African Company Presents: ‘Richard III’” is a must-see production, loosely based on the true story of the African Grove Theatre, founded by a black man in New York City in 1821. Slaves and free black citizens flocked to see the works of William Shakespeare.

After moving and changing its name, the African Company found itself renting a theatre next to the Park Theatre run by famed actor Junius Brutus Booth. The African Company and the Park Theatre produced Shakespeare’s “Richard III” on the same night!

“When the sun rises, these actors put on masks, playing the parts of maids and waiters that society has cast them in. But when the sun goes down, this groups of artists finds their voice along with their feelings as they discover themselves in Shakespeare’s poetry. And they are not alone, their production of RICHARD III performs with such artistry and passion it attracts white and black audiences alike, is critically acclaimed, and has the theatre filled to overflowing six days a week. That is, until a prominent white company rents the theatre next door to open their own production of Richard – and is determined to shut down the African company’s show at any cost. It is a behind the scenes story like no other – funny, uncompromising and uniquely American.” Oak Park Festival Theatre

The Oak Park Festival Theatre is located at 167 Forest Park Avenue in beautiful Austin Gardens. You can picnic and bring your own adult beverages. For tickets to see “The African Company Presents: ‘Richard III’”, go online to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-african-company-presents-richard-iii-tickets-42849023583?ref=ebtn and follow the prompts.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just minutes away from Art dans la Rue, offers free shuttle service to and from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Bring the family for a day of fun at Art dans la Rue in Oak Park August 5 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Inn Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

Art dans la Rue is Eurocentric in a good way. Modeled on similar events in Paris, it will be an awesome day full of dancing, wining and dining, and everything European. Grab a beret and chow down on a delicious crepe! Enjoy everything from free tours at historic Pleasant Home with tea on the porch, to wine tastings and even a poodle parade at Art dans la Rue!

Chow down on French food, dig the music, art, and of course, wine, in downtown Oak Park! Activities will include French lessons, wine tastings, and a poodle parade at this Chicago festival!

Art dans la Rue will be held downtown on Marion Street between Lake Avenue and North Boulevard and at Pleasant Home, 217 Home Avenue in Oak Park. Admission is free.

Pleasant Home is considered one of the earliest and most distinguished examples of Prairie School Architecture in the nation and is operated by the Pleasant Home Foundation as a living museum, which is open to the public and offers a year-round schedule of educational programs, community events and festivals and cultural performances. Pleasant Home was designed in 1897 by noted architect George W. Maher, a contemporary of world-renowned Prairie School architects Joseph Lyman Silsbee, Frank Lloyd Wright and George Grant Elmslie. The design of Pleasant Home broke with the traditional Queen Anne and colonial revival styles of most of the homes in Oak Park.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just minutes away from Art dans la Rue, offers free shuttle service to and from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Bring the family to Lollapalooza 2018 in Chicago’s Grant Park August 2-5 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

Bring the family? Yes! Because Lollapalooza will feature Kidzapalooza, a securely designated area next to the main even! The Kidzapalooza will feature family friendly music and arts and crafts activities! Meanwhile Lollapalooza will be dishing out 170 acts of adult music! Meanwhile 35 chefs will be selling vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options!

Lineup Sampling: Thursday. Arctic Monkeys, Travis Scott, Khalid, Chvrches, Galantis, Terror Jr., Tyler Childers, Fletcher, Larkin Poe, Jungle, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Manchester Orchestra, Catfish and the Bottlemen. Friday. Bruno Mars, The National, Walk the Moon, Goldfish, Post Malone, James Bay, Borns, Dillon Francis, Rusko, Dermont Kennedy. Saturday. Vampire Weekend, Logic, Saint Vincent, LL Cool Jay, Luke Combs, Charlotte Cardin, Femdot, Wallows, Pale Waves, Amy Shark, Ghastly, Vera Blue, Sir Sly, Carly Rae Jepsen. Sunday. Jack White, Morgan Saint, Chris Lake, The Vaccines, the Coronas, Tim Gunter, Van William, Cigarettes after Sex, Res Orange County, Knox Fortune. And on and on it goes!

Do you want to store your things or charge your phone! You can rent 4 day or 1 day lockers! If you can’t make Lolla, watch Lolla on your computer. See details. Register for Lolla and go cashless the whole festival, including food vendors and merchandise!

The Lollapalooza main entrance is at Michigan Avenue and Congress. For tickets and full rosters of musicians, go online to https://www.lollapalooza.com/tickets/ and follow the prompts. Kids 10 and under are admitted free.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just minutes away from Lollapalooza and Kidzapalooza, offers free shuttle service to and from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.

Tennis fiends will want to come to Chicago’s United Center for The Laver Cup September 21-23 and stay at the nearby and affordable Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside!

The Laver Cup, named after famed Tennis legend Rod Laver, offers up a team of European All-Star tennis players against “The World.” The World is everybody but the Euro folks. If you feel your blood running hot right now, this is the event for you.

The Laver Cup will pit six top European players against six of their counterparts from the rest of the World in tennis as you’ve never seen it before. Each team will be comprised of six players, and led by a team captain, who is a legend of the sport. The captain of Europe is Bjorn Borg, and the captain of Team World is John McEnroe.

The event will be played over three days. On Friday and Saturday, there will be a day and night session followed by a final single day session on Sunday. Each day four matches are played – three singles and a doubles. Each player will play at least one singles match during the two days. No player will play singles more than twice during the three days.

Chicago has a long and proud sporting history and is home to the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, White Sox and Cubs but has not hosted a major tennis event in more than 25 years. One of the last matches to be played in the city was a final between John and Patrick McEnroe, the current captain and vice-captain of Team World.

The United Center, “the house that Jordan built” is located at 1901 West Madison Street in Chicago. For tickets to watch the Laver Cup and John McEnroe’s temper tantrums, go online to https://lavercup.com/event-guide and follow the prompts.

Best Western Plus Chicago Hotel at Hillside, just minutes away from The Laver Cup at the United Center, offers free shuttle service to and from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The hotel offers affordable, comfortable rooms, a breakfast bar and restaurant and much more. The hotel is pet friendly and offers AAA rates.