THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511180537
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
An Oceanfront civic league is leading another crusade against ``dirty'' T-shirts that are displayed prominently in some storefront windows along the resort strip.
A letter circulated by the Resort Beach Civic League last week to resort merchants asked that they voluntarily place T-shirts or other garments with sexually explicit messages or art out of public view.
The campaign was announced Thursday at the Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association meeting, by innkeeper Barbara Yates, a member of the civic league.
``We're not saying don't sell them, just place them out of public view'' she said.
Yates and civic league president Mary Ann Nixon undertook the campaign last summer after guests of Yates' bed and breakfast establishment, Angie's Guest Cottage, complained about offensive T-shirts displayed in a few Oceanfront store windows.
``They had their kids with them and they could see these T-shirts as they were walking down the street,'' Yates said.
Yates told innkeepers of the campaign, and said the civic league, with the aid of the City Attorney's office, is ``making progress'' on the issue.
Most resort shopkeepers have agreed to tuck their risque or raunchy T-shirts away from the view of passing juveniles, Yates told hotel and motel association members, but ``a few out-of-town merchants refuse to cooperate.''
The civic league move is the second or third in the last eight years by Oceanfront merchants and civic leaders to curb the display and sale of T-shirts that bear sexually explicit wording or pictures.
And it is proceeding along delicate lines to avoid clashing with the First Amendment right of free speech, Yates concedes.
In 1992, the Resort Retail Merchants Association, under the leadership of then president William M. Lawton, launched a crusade to ban smut from Oceanfront stores.
Then as now, the campaign leaders sought to maintain the ``good, clean, family fun'' image that the city is trying to project in tourist markets to the north and west.
The retail merchants group distributed letters to resort store operators, asking them to follow a ``general code of business conduct'' by voluntarily complying with a taboo against offensive merchandise.
The writing campaign appeared to work for a while.
But each passing year brought new changes to the resort retail scene. Some stores changed hands or new operators signed leases for vacated retail space and began to display goods that did not meet taste standards set by Oceanfront business organizations.
As raunchy merchandise reappears in resort storefronts each year, they trigger a new round of outcries from offended tourists and established Oceanfront businesses. by CNB