It started in that toddlin' town for Hugh Hefner, where he quit a job with Esquire over a small pay raise to start Playboy with $600 of his own money and a kitchen table for laying out the first issue. Almost fifty years later, the man who many say made sex a household word isn't going to have a Chicago street named after him.
A Chicago City Council alderman, Burton Natarus, proposed erecting a Hugh Hefner Way sign, but a committee headed by fellow alderman Carrie Austin imposed, ahem, "erectile dysfunction" on the idea. "I don't care how many great things that he could have possibly done, I still could not vote for the naming of a street for a person who has earned his money on the backs of women,'' Austin said, explaining why she rejected the idea.
The street sign would have gone up at a bustling North Side location not far from the house in which Hefner created Playboy in 1953. But Reuters says the idea may not be a dead end quite yet - Natarus plans to ask another council committee to look at the idea.
MARTINEZ, Calif. - A chiropractor agreed April 10 to pay over $800,000 to settle a lawsuit on behalf of his two underage victims, in a case where he was convicted of child porn and statutory rape last year. David Becker of Orinda reached the settlement right before opening arguments in the lawsuit in Contra Costa County Superior Court. The settlement included Becker's agreement to a finding that the charges in the suit are true, according to the two teen girls' attorney, Larry Cook. The suit accused Becker of paying the girls for sex in 1997; they allegedly attempted suicide because of the actions.
ALBUQUERQUE - Investigators want to get to the bottom of a topless bar here after one customer's credit card was charged close to $27,000 for four visits, according to officials with the state attorney general's office. The customer, Lorraine Armstrong, visited TD's Showclub North four times in a ten-day stretch last July, but he claims he was taken advantage of because he was too drunk to know what he was doing, the officials tell Reuters. Investigators want to know whether TD workers charged him knowingly for services he didn't get. What would an actual bill close to $27,000 bring? According to the Albuquerque Journal, it would get you over 2,600 table dances or over 5,300 drinks. The club's attorney, Mark Geiger, though, claims Armstrong knew what he was doing, all right, even talking to a Diner's Club representative by telephone during one of his sprees. Geiger told Reuters witnesses heard Armstrong say his wife was going to divorce him "and what I'm spending is half her money, anyway" - including rounds of drinks for the whole club and generous tips for various club workers.
--- Compiled by Humphrey Pennyworth
