Thanks to Dave on 7th for the photo taken outside the coming-soon Upright Citizens Brigade on Avenue A.
Previously.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Note campaign begins against the Hot Chicks Room sign
Thanks to Dave on 7th for the photo taken outside the coming-soon Upright Citizens Brigade on Avenue A.
Previously.
31 comments:
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This is all starting to look like self-promotion, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteAnd if isn't, well .. there's absolutely no one and nothing to root for in this depressing little endless drama: the hyperdefensive UCB, the borderline-farcical petitioners, the dumb sign, or the endless fighting about it. All of it is awful.
Who is this cornball calling it "offensive". It's annoying and out-of-place and collegey and shitty to be sure, but "offensive"? HA. And yes they look even worse by saying they would take it down and taking so long to do so.
ReplyDeletei'm beginning to think the opposition to these curtains is giving the rest of us EV cranks a bad name.
ReplyDeletethere's important cranky work to do (against bars, drunken packs of idiots, etc.) and this is not it.
If you can't get one stupid sexist sign down - put up by people who should know better, how are you going to take on real structural problems, like fascism. (600,000 annual stop and frisks is fascism if not tyranny, pure and simple). But this does reflect the current EV zeitgeist - ALL DUMB ALL THE TIME! If it wasn't so convenient to everything I'd be the fuck out of here, I hate it. Every morning, I walk to work and the sidewalks are smeared with little dog's shit because their owners don't pick up their little dog's shit. Its probably the same 2 or 3 "people" on the block, actually.
ReplyDeleteI have no respect for people who leave notes--especially anonymous notes. If you've got a problem with someone, you go tell them face-to-face.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that bothers me most about this note is the double exclamation mark. One is always more than enough! See?
ReplyDeleteI don't like the sign because I think it's tacky, even if it must be meant as dopey ironic gesture...but this alleged campaign to have it brought down sounds like something out of a 17th-century Puritan village.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Jeremiah. Save 35 Cooper Sq, stop the giant concrete and steel monstrosities, save the small independent businesses who are barely hanging on...but feh, a sign?
ReplyDeleteSomeone should hang a giant sign up around 14th Street that says "Welcome to the new East Village. GET OFF MY LAWN!!!"
ReplyDeleteNew theatre = hated by village
ReplyDeleteunder st. marks = "we must save it!"
Good example, guys
I cant be the only one who finds himself practically incapable of grasping what exactly people are upset about. Can I?
ReplyDelete"Hot Chicks" = sexist and inappropriate? If it were "Hot Guys" nobody would raise an eyebrow. My guess is the people opposed to this are less than hot, probably single, frustrated, female, and over 35. They also clearly have no sense of humor or irony.
ReplyDeleteWell, my dream of us all applauding and patting ucb folks on the back as they put up a new, non-sexist sign with the media writing it up, flashes going off, and providing ucb with wonderful press is dieing a horrible death.
ReplyDeleteDelaying the sign removal is killing any chance at good will and marketing potential, because by the time they finally do something, we'll all be over it. Too late now.
Who are their marketing people? No wonder they're a second rate funnyhouse. Talk about a missed opportunity.
hmmm this sign looks too slick to be a neighborhood complaint
ReplyDeleteI think they are stroking the flames for promotion.
My guess is the people opposed to this are less than hot, probably single, frustrated, female, and over 35. They also clearly have no sense of humor or irony.
ReplyDeleteOh, you mean like Tori Amos fans, "Little Earthquake"? (THAT is irony; "Hot Chicks Room," as we've been told ad infinitum here, is the literal name of a UCB sketch.)
I'm no fan of the sign (although my objection at this point is that a sign for an interior room of the club should be in the INTERIOR, just for logical sense -- you didn't see "Tap Bar" and "Old Office" signs outside the old Knitting Factory), but the pro-sign response is often just hateful. If I were the UCB owner, I'd ask a lot of you to stop defending it.
Brandon, I also have no idea what has all these whiners' panties in a twist.
ReplyDeleteGet the suburbs out of NYC. Stop crying.
I'm gonna second Brandon. I seriously do not get what the fuss is over.
ReplyDeleteAnd regarding the fuss itself. It's impossible at this point to gauge the extent of it. How many people are upset by the sign exactly? I? 5? 1000? If there is a genuine neighborhood-wide opposition, it would seem to me that the appropriate course of action would be to gather signatures and then ask for a sit-down with the owners and/or community board. But expecting removal of said sign because a few people object does does not seem reasonable to me.
Nor does expecting the sign to come down because of anonymous comments on a blog or an anonymous note on the door seem reasonable. Actually, that anonymous note on the door struck me less as a reasonable request/demand and more as a creepy attempt to intimidate.
The outrage over this sign is petty and shrill. Its like people just sit and wait to pounce on anything that could be construed as offensive to anyone and then co-opt it as their own crusade against perceived offensiveness. This is NYC. Get over yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe name of the place is inane and it gives me the douche chills. I wouldn't call it offensive, but if I had to be neighbors with it I'd be embarrassed. As a name for a business, it's easily the worst one I've seen ever around here-- it's at least ten times worse than "Superdive". That some people can't seem to understand why this sign is pissing me off is clear proof that people are losing their taste for things. They're about ready to be absorbed into the matrix.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Phil!
ReplyDeleteBack in the day the East Village was overrun with sex shops, peep shows, x-rated video stores, etc.
ReplyDeleteNow, the same people decrying the lack of grit and character in the neighborhood are the ones getting their American Apparel panties in a bunch over the phrase "hot chicks"? How country bumpkin can you get? Where are we? Nebraska?
I'm a proud feminist and have zero problems whatsoever with this sign.
People need to get the fuck over it.
There's a lot of great energy here - I'm glad to see so many people riled up over something they don't like. Could we just redirect that energy to something else, like preserving landmarks like 35 Cooper Square? Imagine what could be accomplished if we aimed this laser beam of vitriol at the LPC!
ReplyDeleteMarty Wombacher said...
ReplyDeleteThe thing that bothers me most about this note is the double exclamation mark. One is always more than enough! See?
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@Marty - I spit my drink out here. This is why I love your blog.
@BoweryBoy - I think a large number of people don't care about the sign, aren't following the sign, and are not basing their feelings toward UCB on how quickly they take the sign down. So at least one EV resident here can say: It's not affecting my goodwill toward them! The only thing I'm over, is you all complaining about a sign.
Thank you Erin Bradley, You seem like my type of Chick. HA, couldnt resist. But I agree, as a feminist guy.
ReplyDeleteAnd so arbitrary that the same people are moaning about the potential loss of THe Horse Trade Theater, and the general loss of grit in the neighborhood.
Some grit and theater groups are more equal than others, apparently.
I am also angered by those exclamation points. Obviously, they should be dotted with little hearts or smiley faces. That sign is lacking in glitter and pizazz. I am writing a one women play about that sign which is about the other sign and at the end of the play, I will march to UCB in my cargo shorts and change the first sign to, "Dizzy Dames Who Don't Know Where They are Heading." May as well make the "sexism" old timey.
ReplyDelete@cheese: Thanks!
ReplyDelete@Eden - do you have a pre-sale site for tix? You'll need velvet ropes for that one.
ReplyDeleteI've lived here a long time, and before that visited regularly since high school when my boyfriend was at Stuyvesant, and my runaway friends lived on Norfolk St, and that was when Carter was president. I have no recollection of the East Village being "overrun" with sex shops and peep shows. It seemed to me to have the normal amount of porn and sex shops. Did I miss something?
ReplyDeletejill - i don't remember sex shops either - just lots of drugs and drug dealers. and even some gangs.
ReplyDeletethere were lots of abandoned buildings and empty lots (pre gardens), methadone programs, a huge, horrible men's shelter, medicaid mills, and lots of small, neighborhood stores trying to make it here like chinese laundries, bodegas, ukrainian and polish restaurants, drug stores, fabric stores, everything stores - too many to list. some here for generations.
the first real restaurant was pier 9 on second avenue, a sit-down mostly fish place where you could bring your own wine.
MOST PEOPLE AREN'T "OFFENDED" BY THE SIGN, THEY JUST THINK IT'S TACKY AND SHITTY AND ANNOYING AND FRATTY! HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT?
ReplyDeleteI HATE THE SIGN, BUT IF A SEX SHOP OPENED ACROSS THE STREET I WOULDN'T CARE.
Annnnnd...they're even more annoying for saying "OK we've thought it through and will switch it out" and then not having done it yet? Plastic signs for plastic people.
Time for a U in EVill
ReplyDeleteand it's "the Hot Chucks Room"
and everyone knows
Chuck
is
hot.