On a cold winter night, a group gathered to enjoy Empirical Brewery’s craft selection, look at chicken fetus and corn cell slides through paper microscopes from Foldscope Instruments and paint designs on petri dishes of agar using bacteria that will, in a few hours from this writing, glow Christmas colors.

At the drink-and-draw organized by ChiTown Bio, you could paint whatever you wanted, but the choices of pre-made designs to trace included snowman, reindeer or diagram of a bacteriophage virus. I chose bright red for both the virus and the initials PD I improvised on the side. My wife chose a palette of red, green and white for her hand-drawn petri dreidel.

I’ll write again about the group when I have a chance to sit down with them and talk about the organization in depth. They have hopes and plans for a public lab — which I’ll get into in the future story — but right now ChiTown Bio is a small group of biologists sharing the joy of E. Coli with anyone interested.

The wife and I chatted with the crowd, as much as we could keep up with the talk of gut biomes, art products that become poison gas when mixed and the fact one of the co-founders once tried to calm an arachnophobic ex by explaining we are at every moment crawling with invisible mites that devour our dead skin, which is what keeps us youthful and pretty.

The ex was not calmed.

A constant source of joy for me is learning how others see the world. Sociologists look at life and see a constant class battle; artists a painting not yet painted. Mathematicians see it as a series of invisible rules to suss out, criminals as a battle to win, writers as a series of stories to tell.

I’ve touched on the theme before, but for a specific example, I once wrote a newspaper feature on an early 20th-century wackadoodle who “applied the lessons of common sense” in proposing the scientific theory that the earth was in fact hollow with a 600-mile-diameter central sun and marshy, unexplored continents full of mastodons and Asians.

Marshall Gardener was a machinist at a corset company by trade, and the holder of several patents for sewing machines. He also held two patents related to his hollow earth theory — #1,096,102 for a “Geographic Apparatus” replica of the planet as he saw it and Des. 63,362 for a small necklace or fob ornament hollow earth.

Even though his world was a hollowed gourd of mastodons and Asians (their eyes were slanted through constant squinting at that central sun — let us not pretend this is a fully charming man), an inventor saw the world as something to patent.

What then of people who see life as life? The ones who see the world as something to look at through microscopes? What of those who look at you, see a teeming heap of gut biome with facefuls of invisible flesh-spiders and find it all beautiful?

There’s a table waiting for them at ChiTown Bio, one full of paper microscopes, craft beer and holiday doodles glowing red and green with life.

Read about the hollow earth guy

Read about a man who finds joy through bookbinding

Followers of the sect known as Christianity celebrate a special day called “Christ-mas” in which trees are slaughtered, cookies are left for fat, flying elvish deer-herders and Irishmen receive massive amounts of birds.

In case you want to purchase a gift for this regional folk festival, here are some ideas that will support a few of the people and organizations I’ve written about in the 150 stories that have appeared on this site so far in 2015.

A Tactile Magic Act

For the past 19 years, 25-year-old Jeanette Andrews has only had one job. Stage magician. And yes, the math checks.

On Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, Andrews debuts her new show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Thresholds” will be an immersive magic experience by a woman who considers slight of hand a fine art. The tricks aren’t just designed to fool the eye, but to fool all five senses.

“Thresholds” is free with museum admission ($12 for adults, $7 for students and seniors), but cheapskates delight: The museum is free to Illinois residents on Tuesdays. If your loved ones ask, I’ll tell them it was really, really expensive.

If you like the illustration that accompanied my profile of Andrews, artist Marine Tempels takes commissions.

Psalm One’s Newest Album

She wasn’t mentioned by name, but rapper and Englewood native Psalm One was one of the readers at the “Welcome to the Neighborhood” reading I organized with Rachel Hyman at the MCA in January.

Psalm One’s newest album “P.O.L.Y.” or “Psalm One Loves You” was released in September of this year and can be purchased on iTunes. Psalm One’s smart, breezy style and lyrics have made her one of the freshest voices in hip-hop, pop and soul, not just out of Chicago, not just recently. Period.

If you want to learn where Psalm One gets it from, pair the album with a copy of the coming-of-age memoirs “Old School Adventures from Englewood–South Side of Chicago” by her mother, journalist Elaine Hegwood Bowen.

A Cambodian Sorcerer Hunt

What do you do when you find out your girlfriend’s dad is a sorcerer? If you’re Uptown-based journalist Ryun Patterson, you use the experience as inspiration for an interactive multimedia exploration of the changing world of traditional Cambodian magic.

“Vanishing Act: A Glimpse into Cambodia’s World of Magic” is available on print and Kindle at Amazon and downloadable for iStuff on iTunes for a holiday special of $9.99, down from $14.99.

It’s full of photographs, interviews, videos, interactive maps and pages and pages of nuanced writing detailing how the Southeast Asian nation’s traditional folk healing and fortune-telling is disappearing in some ways, going digital in others. I got it for my dad for his birthday, so I can vouch.

Oh, and Patterson married the sorcerer’s daughter.

Kink Lectures

Formed when museums wouldn’t take a dying man’s gay erotic paintings and interested collectors only wanted to hide them away, the Leather Archives & Museum in Rogers Park has become a home to all things kink and fetish.

There’s a prurient interest to a museum filled with butt plugs, whips, masks and sexy books, but the museum is an intentionally open and free space dedicated to preserving art, craft and writing that celebrates a part of life some see as shameful, dirty, to be tossed away or hidden. Whether it’s your sexuality or not, it’s someone’s.

Although tickets or a membership to the museum could be a fun thing for Santa to leave under the tree, depending on your tree and your Santa, there are also a few upcoming events of note, including lectures on kink and fetish culture and, in February, the museum’s first overnight lock-in.

Superhero Circus

More of a pre-Christmas extravaganza, but this Friday take your loved ones to Acrobatica Infiniti’s last planned show at the Uptown Underground.

Acrobatica Infiniti is a nerd circus, a celebration of all things geek and acrobatic. People tumble as superfolk, juggle as Jedi or cavort as cartoons.

My profile of the group became part of a series of circus performer profiles, with looks at Captain Hammer and his groupie, Mister Terrific and the circus’ resident Catwoman/Dark Phoenix/Breakdancing Yoshi.

And in case you liked that illustration of Dark Phoenix in action, artist Emily Torem takes commissions too.

A Night at the Turtle Races

Bowmanville bar Big Joe’s 2 & 6 has turtle racing. Take your friends.

A Really Good Photographer

OK, I don’t know what you would hire a photographer for. That’s your lookout. But AJ Kane, who did the photography for the interactive exploration of a hidden tunnel running through the downtown, is for hire.

He’s a good guy. Check out his stuff.

Little Stubby

Not to be confused with WWI hero bull terrier mutt Sergeant Stubby, Little Stubby is the nogoodnik kid brother of corrupt Chicago cop Johnny Kelly, who was competing for a tap-dancing stripper’s affections with a guy who pretends to be a robot in a nightclub’s storefront window in the 1953 insane nonsense film “City That Never Sleeps.”

You can rent that insane nonsense (seriously, the City of Chicago itself takes human form to narrate in the voice of Francis the Talking Mule) at Odd Obsession, a Bucktown video store and mecca for all things obscure and cinematic. See about a gift certificate, buy some merch or just drop by the store to check out the exhibit of Ghanaian movie posters.

Dropping my bouncy, light and frankly hilarious tone (that “regional folk festival” line was frickin’ gold), I want to support people who bring me the strange and unique ways people across the planet have expressed themselves.

Hip-hop, magic, journalism, acrobatics, movies, kink, even turtle racing — all these people and groups are the real deal. This “Christ-mas,” go beyond shopping locally. Shop exceptionally. Support the unique and beautiful.

The worst that could happen is you’ll experience something you’ll never see again.

Share your local shopping ideas

Listen to a CTA street band’s holiday song

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Someone handed him a ping-pong ball. He read off it.

“Number 5! Jolanda!” the man shouted into the mic. “And we all know what Jolanda is!”

“The slowest! Fucking! Turtle! In the world!” the crowd screamed back as one.

Turtle races. Races of turtles.

Every Friday night, Big Joe’s 2 & 6 in the Bowmanville section of Lincoln Square, a classically divey joint with pitchers, shots and sports on the TVs, goes turtle for the night.

They push the pool table over by the dartboards, slap the plywood racetrack on top of it and, amid sports-themed neon, ads for beer and turtleana, ready themselves for the races.

Each drink purchased on a Friday brings you tickets. If one of your ticket numbers is called, you go up and pull a ping-pong ball from a bucket. Each ping-pong ball has a number on it and each number matches the number taped to the back of a turtle.

That turtle is then your turtle for the race. If your turtle wins, you get a T-shirt. If your turtle is dead last, you get a drink.

There are six turtles, although on our night Lucky Dan was scratched before post time, leaving only Chucks, Doozy, Lola, the massive Jolanda (TSFTITW) and Swisher. Six races. Five turtles. Only 30 shots at winning that turtle night T-shirt.

“I want that T-shirt more than I want anything,” I said with increasing ferocity throughout the night.

My friend Andy nodded.

We chatted, of course. Everyone did. It was a nice, loud sociable night that would stop the moment the turtle emcee announced it was time for the next round. Then the flurry of checking tickets, some tables lined with the little yellow stubs, other hopeful racers clutching their tickets on the hush-hush, as if afraid their shot at immortality and a T-shirt would be swiped away from them if they removed their hand from the bits of paper even for a moment.

I have probably been more excited to hear four numbers called, but I can’t remember when.

“Here!” I yelled, jumping up to make my way through the crowd to the sacred racetrack.

I was the last called for that round, so the only ping-pong ball that was left was for Doozy, a bomb-proof mudder about an eighth hand high and other stuff I’m copying down from a Google search of the phrase “horse terms.”

The racetrack was a large circle, since pointing a turtle in a straight line would be pretty fruitless. There’s a red circle in the middle of the larger circle, the red circle about the size of a glass cake cover.

Exactly the size of a glass cake cover. They used a glass cake cover as a 360-degree starting gate, putting the turtles under it until the dramatic moment.

With an audio of one of those bugle guys they have at horse races, the cake cover is lifted and the turtles are off!

Sometimes.

Sometimes they head straightway for the edge of the larger circle, the finishing line that surrounds them in all directions. Sometimes they just sit, look around a little and do a slow turtle blink.

During my race, Jolanda simply stood motionless as the man who had selected her ping-pong ball yelled in dismay. She finally turned her head and, I know this is ridiculous, but I swear she shot him a look.

Doozy came in the middle of the pack, netting me neither shirt nor cocktail.

The attraction of the night wasn’t the turtles. Turtles are turtles, awesome little pets that, once a week, absently wonder why their natural turtle crawling and blinking is done in a different room with a much larger group of people.

The attraction was the audience, that subtle mystery of crowd psychology that makes us cheer for sports teams, political candidates and turtles we honestly wouldn’t care much about were we alone.

I hooted and screamed for Doozy in the group when, were we alone, I would just feed him (her?) a bit of lettuce and sniff the cage every now and again to see if it needs to be cleaned.

But that night, amid neon, beer ads and a charming form of group hysteria, what would have been my pleasantly boring pet became my champion. And I yelled, screamed, cheered and plan to go back for a shot at a T-shirt I wouldn’t have bought from a dollar bin.

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A roomful of people dressed like Robert Goulet

“Coffee? Down there,” he said, pointing west toward Foster and Western. “Down there you have coffee, hamburger, everything you want.”

He had a perfect coif of white hair to match his toothy smile. He was handsome once, you could tell. He was handsome now. But he wanted me out of Fiesta Time.

Fiesta Time is, well I don’t really know what Fiesta Time is. It’s on Foster a few blocks east of Western and it appears to be a convenience store that also sells or used to sell decorations and party goods for weddings, confirmations, quinceañeras and other milestones of a Hispanic life.

You can also buy hot sauce and Bimbo bread there.

The stretch of Foster was mostly residential, but with this oversized bodega plopped among the homes. A plywood sign marked with the store’s name in a party-store-appropriate font was sitting on the floor behind the storefront window, just leaning there behind the glass, propped up against the back wall of the counter area.

The windows were covered with handmade signs I don’t recall.

One by the door on the west corner of the building said “We Have Lotto Machine.” The door lacked the usual static stickers letting potential customers know credit cards would be accepted. I walked in to explore with a lie about wanting coffee.

Fliers in Spanish about church fundraisers were slapped to various surfaces around the store. The front of the glass counter. A wall. A machine that either gave gumballs or lotto tickets. On the counter in front of the man was a tray of homemade cookies for sale. They were khaki-colored, dusted with powdered sugar.

The man was kind to me, I admit. He let me poke around a bit even after realizing I was just another white man looking at his business and heritage as a kitschy oddity. The snow outside was upgrading from blowing to blasting, so maybe he wanted me out of there so he could go home, so I could stop wasting his time.

Or maybe his English just wasn’t very good.

“On this side, nothing,” he said as I started to walk down the first aisle, the one stacked high with various white and pink party goods.

He said it with a stern voice, but he didn’t stop that kind, toothy smile the entire time.

I poked around the grocery store part a bit, but I’ve seen food before. The back wall was covered with re-bagged bags of candy and nuts. More party goods poking out of boxes separated the grocery area and the wall. A “Dora the Explorer” piñata smiled at me.

I ambled up to the counter, doing that thankful, grateful, nerdy, affable, harmless thing I do so well. I casually asked the man how long the store has been there.

He said “OK” and kept staring at me. I asked again.

He said “OK” again and stared, that handsome, toothy, wise, kind smile on his handsome, toothy, wise, kind face the whole time.

I got the hint. The Dora piñata watched me go.

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Read about a storefront from Little India