The Nooner | Chicago news and beyond | June 27, 2011

The Nooner: Chicago news and beyond, plus what TOC editors are reading now.
In today’s news, they’ve legalized bees in Oak Park—and gay marriage in New York. That’s what I call a good news day.

Gay-parade tires slashed; gays still win the day
So I guess someone punctured the tires on 51 floats destined for this past weekend’s Pride Parade while the floats were in storage. Most of the floats were repaired in time for the parade, though. Plus, I heard a rumor that any time you slash a gay person’s tires, another state legalizes gay marriage. So, hate-crime an inanimate object if you must, fools, it makes it funnier when you lose.

More news after the jump...
Howard Brown Health Center wins GE grant
In more gays-pwn-haters news, the LGBT-friendly Howard Brown Health Center, which was in dire financial straights just this past winter, is being given a cool quarter million by General Electric’s philanthropic branch.

Penguin makes a major oopsie
An emperor penguin, having swum 3,000 kilometers off course to New Zealand, mistook yucky sand for delicious snow, and ate a bellyful of the beach. Presumably, the next thing he did was clap his little wings over his belly and say “I don’t feel so good, guys.” He’s receiving major medical attention at the Welingston Zoo, but you probably also ought to cross your fingers for his quick and complete recovery.

Pump Room...to stay Pump Room
20,000 concerned citizens participated in an online contest to see if the storied Pump Room, currently being renovated, would keep its name or become the Gold Coast Kitchen. Not surprisingly, the name will stay; 85 percent of the voters preferred the old way.

Your Facebook loyalty=cash money
New statistics say that Facebook fanship of a business translates into 20 site visits for that business. That claim may sound vague and/or baseless, but it’s the result of number-crunching web traffic from eight million Brits.

Bees: barely legal
Ah, the honeybee: They pollinate flowers, they make honey and soon they’ll be legal in Oak Park. The suburb is working on a law change to allow residents to keep beehives (maxium, two). The final vote on this will happen within the next month. The best sentence from this news story is “The Oak Park board voted 6-1 to OK bees.” I’m not sure why that’s funny, but it is, right?