THE street of one beach town is lined with stores selling clothing featuring risque sayings.
But one city council is telling shop runners to tone it down.
Displayed on mannequins right at the entrance, for everyone to spot, were shorts with phrases like “All you can eat,” “Thick-fil-A,” and “It ain’t gonna spank itself.”
To battle the raunchy garments, the Virginia Beach City Council passed a resolution this week urging sellers to tone it down a notch in the storefronts.
“Enough is enough,” Councilman Worth Remick said.
“This is a calm, gentle, nice way to say this is not good for our brand, for our city.”
If stores follow the advice, however, is another question.
One store said that it had no plans of taking down its best sellers.
“The owners need to make money in a certain period of time, and in the winter nobody’s here,” store manager Adam Desouki told The Virginian-Pilot.
“The new generation, they like this so much.”
The resolution was passed unanimously among the city’s 11 council members.
“It doesn’t present a great image of our city,” Remick said, according to 10WAVY.
“Some of my constituents, as well as colleagues on City Council and members of the community in general, have objected to these vulgar T-shirts being displayed and sold.”
Instead of no longer selling them all together, owners were asked to move the items out of open view.
“We have a First Amendment, we have free enterprise, so we don’t want to go down the legal road at this point,” Remick said.
“We want to see if they will comply with our request to remove the vulgar T-shirts.”
“If they don’t, then I guess we’ll go to the next step, and talk about our amongst ourselves and with the city attorney.”
Another oceanfront owner told the local outlet that he would comply with the new rule.
“I’ll try to do whatever the city would like that would make them happy.”
A shopper told The Virginian-Pilot that the salacious clothing was “awful.”
“This is a family-friendly place, and as a community we need to protect our children,” Angie Whitlock said.
“Maybe move that stuff to the back for the bachelors.”
