The Nooner | Chicago news and beyond | July 22, 2011

I wish J-Hud would sing at my birthday party.

Jennifer Hudson performs @ Rivinia Festival in Highland Park, IL 7/16/2011

Photo: Jeff Kroll

The Nooner: Chicago news and beyond, plus what TOC editors are reading online.
In today’s news, we’ve got a ranking of Chicago neighborhoods and a very expensive birthday party.

Chicago’s 10 most walkable neighborhoods
A report released by Walk Score rated the U.S.’s most-walkable cities, with Chicago pulling in fourth after New York, San Francisco and Boston. Not too shabby, as my dad would say. Walk Score, which uses a formula that takes into account the distance a person would have to walk from their hom to places like coffee shops and grocery stores, also ranked neighborhoods. The results are interesting: Printers Row is considered Chicago’s most-walkable ‘hood. Other top placers include Near North and Sheridan Park (yep, that’s a place: It’s west of Uptown and east of Lincoln Square).

Happy birthday, Mr. President
Obama’s having a heck of a 50th birthday party—OK Go, Herbie Hancock and Jennifer Hudson will all be performing at the Aragon Ballroom on August 4. It’s a fundraiser for Obama’s 2012 election campaign, so tickets will cost from $200 (for standing room on the main floor) to $35,800 (this includes seated dinner and concert seats for a couple, plus a briefing at campaign headquarters). Now all the Prez has to do is wrap up this budget thing in the next week so that he will be free to attend his own party.

Deluxe reissue of Nevermind to be released
A deluxe 20th anniversary reissue—and something called a “super deluxe” reissue—of Nirvana’s Nevermind will come out in September. The super-deluxe edition is a five-disc box set, including a DVD containing a Nirvana show recorded on Halloween 1991 at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle; the show was transferred from 16mm film.

Picture a transparent cell phone
More evidence that science is awesome: They’ve developed a transparent battery at Stanford University. The inventors envision a see-through cell phone as a possible application. The video in which transparent-battery-inventing team leaders Yi Cui and Yuan Yang explain the new technology is a coup for Stanford’s PR department—at one point they lay a bunch of the batteries on top of an array of Stanford-logo S’s. Not subtle.

Police superintendent asks Chicago residents to stop making him shoot them
In a press meeting yesterday, Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy asked Chicago residents to pitch in when it comes to not having cops shoot them. The meeting was held in response to a couple of police shootings—most notably, the shooting of a 13-year-old-boy—in recent days. The boy’s family say he was unarmed, while the police say that he had a BB gun, which he refused to drop and then pointed at officers, who, not knowing it wasn’t a real gun, shot him. The boy is in the hospital, but is expected to survive. In the other shooting, 21-year-old Joe Banks Jr. allegedly pointed a handgun at officers. That man’s family claims also claims that he was unarmed. Banks is in fair condition at a local hospital.