This year, Pride Weekend — celebrated by the LGBT community on the last Sunday in June, as usual — has been extra-festive, owing to New York's passage of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. In Chicago, however, vandals tried to dampen the weekend's celebrations by slashing the tires of 51 floats bound for the city's Pride parade.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that vandals Saturday night broke into the storage facility of Associated Attractions, a company that helps design, create and store floats.

"I firmly believe it was a hate crime," Associated Attractions manager Chuck Huser told the paper. "We've been supplying floats for all the city parades for more than 30 years and this had never happened before — it's a terrible crime against us, and the gay community."