Whole Foods Sweeps ‘Gay News’ Awards

The Philadelphia Gay News unveils its first-ever “Pink Penny” awards in this week’s issue, a feature that apparently celebrates the best of Philadelphia in approximately 5,000 categories. It took the paper this long to figure out that if you do a “Best Of” issue, there’s a chance other newspapers will write about you, therefore getting you attention.

Okay, I actually counted 148, which is even more than the number of murders so far this year in Philadelphia (99 at last count). Of course, there’s some overlap in these awards, so naturally there are a few repeats, but the number one winner is most definitely Whole Foods, which took first place in three (3) categories: Free samples (grocery store); Best supermarket to cruise for young, hottie queer women; Catering dinner for 12. The first category went to both Whole Foods at 2001 Pennsylvania Ave. and 929 South St.; the other two only went to the South Street location.

I think my favorite category is “Tourist trap to take your out-of-town family (whom you don’t like),” which naturally goes to Ride the Ducks. Though I guess I would have gone with Super Ducks for the Milton Street factor.

Pink Penny Awards [Philadelphia Gay News]
Related: Stop The Duck

Even The Press Releases In The Mayor’s Race Are Funny

If slapstick, watermelon humor from the likes of Milton Street isn’t quite your style, then perhaps the highbrow stylings of Michael Nutter’s PR people will be more your taste. (Nutter, inset, is shown with his long lost twin brother, Shock G of Humpty Dance/Digital Underground fame. “My name is Nutter, pronounced with an utter.”)

Last night, there was a debate that you could only watch if you traveled to a certain location to watch it on closed-circuit television because Comcast breaks the law and doesn’t have public access channels for us. As a result, nobody saw it. But, anyway, here’s the press release from Mike Nutter’s camp, which is responsible for such earlier gems as NUTTER CHOSEN FOR JURY DUTY.

NUTTER CLEARLY DOMINATES FIRST JOINT APPEARANCE

Crowd Shows Much Love For Nutter

Philadelphia, February 15, 2007 — At the Next Great City – Philadelphia forum tonight, it was clear that the crowd embraced mayoral candidate Michael Nutter as the obvious winner.

On a bitterly cold night Nutter drew warm applause from the crowd as he demonstrated the most comprehensive knowledge of the environmental challenges facing Philadelphia. Clearly, the crowd at the Academy of Natural Sciences agreed with his plans:

“Judging from the quality of applause alone, it seems Michael has the clearest most popular vision for the city,” said attendee Christopher Plant of Elfant Wissahickon Realtors. “Mike just feels right.”

Brett Mapp of Whole Food Markets agreed, saying “former Councilman Nutter had the most knowledge and he was the most prepared. And I also have to say that he was the funniest. In two words, he rocked.”

Mary Ellen Bennett felt that “Nutter made the best showing and was most responsive to the questions asked.”

Well. If Elfant Wissahickon Realtors and Whole Foods are on Nutter’s side, I don’t see how he can lose!

Full release after the jump.

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Leftovers: Here, Kitty, Kitty

• Someone dumped a bunch of purebred kittens in South Jersey, and now these wittle wittle guys are up for adoption! Yes, this was basically just an excuse to post a photo of a kitty, to shush the people who complain I’m only about puppies.

• Albert Yee posts about PhillyCarShare’s pimp our ride contest, where people can get to design a wrap that’ll be going around one of the cars for a month. A commenter on the post: “Did no-one in your office think that using the word ‘pimp’ to mean ‘prettify’ might be offensive to those campaigning for ‘pimp’ not to mean ‘bring a woman into the country illegally, make her sell sex to pay off debt bondage, hook her on drugs, make her see ten or twenty men a night, and brutalise her to keep her compliant’?” Uh, wait, wouldn’t using “pimp” to mean “prettify” be not having it mean that long definition she came up with? Right? [dragonballyee]

• Phils great Johnny Callison died today at the age of 67. The story also notes that Callison merchandise will be in hot demand any day now. Indeed. [KYW 1060]

• Hello! David Grasso is proposing a $315 million complex that includes a Whole Foods and a five-star hotel! (And another store, possibly a major electronics chain.) The Whole Foods is supposed to be “taking the experience of coming to a food store to a new level.” Boy, how can you wait? [Inky]

• The Rock Paper Scissors Keystone Classic is this Saturday, with a top prize of $850! Eight-hundred-and-fifty bucks, for playing Rock Paper Scissors! C’mon, you know you want to. [Northeast RPS Champs]