It's rare enough, presumably, that Hugh Hefner doesn't get his way; and his friend, Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, has made sure it stays that way - Burke's City Council committee approved a measure to name a street corner on the city's Magnificent Mile after the founding father of the Playboy dynasty.
The usually reticent Hefner was appearing at a book store signing session with a pair of curvy, blond twins he is said to be dating, when Burke found him to tell him the news, after Burke all but jammed the measure down the Finance Committee's throat April 11. Just a day earlier, another committee, headed by Alderman Carrie Austin, turned the idea down, with Austin complaining about Hefner making his fortune "on the backs of women."
Hefner pumped his fist when he got the news and said a new millennium means "it's time for the guys and girls to get back together."
There was still opposition to the Hefner honor, with one alderman threatening to spread the word about any "yes" votes to those alderman's constituents. That prompted Burke, according to the Chicago Tribune, to give the location of his own South Side church.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley - with whose legendary father Hefner had had his controversies in the 1950s and 1960s - supported the Playboy founder. He told a press conference on the city's West Side it isn't enough for one or two political leaders' dislike to equal excluding someone.
Hefner, of course, quit a job with Esquire over a rejected small pay raise to start Playboy on his kitchen table with only $600 in 1953. The corner being renamed for him is not far from the house in which he created the magazine.
"People project a lot of prejudices and fantasies onto my life and onto Playboy," he told the Tribune. "When the subject is sex in America, we are fascinated with it. And we feel very guilty about it and have a lot of mixed and confused feelings on those subjects. I think that's part of what I've tried to play some small part in changing."
Hefner's daughter, Christie, who now runs the Playboy operations, told the Burke committee her father had become synonymous with Chicago, contributing to various causes and pushing for equality.
At a small ceremony on the corner now named for Hefner, supporters and critics alike waited and commented. Some protested the city honoring a "pornographer," while others pointed to Hefner's publishing success and the free choice of looking away if you didn't like Playboy.
When Hefner and his twin girlfriends came to the ceremony, the Tribune reported, he took it in stride, as usual. He said the flap reminded him of the earlier days "when I used to be involved in a conflict and a social war," he told the paper. "I think that anybody who calls Playboy 'pornography' is living in another century."
