A Hooters billboard, for a West Covina, CA Hooters, placed aside the San Bernadino Freeway in Baldwin Park has caused complaints from employees of Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center which is located beneath the billboard. Oddly, the complaints have nothing to do with images of scantily clad Hooters waitress, of which there are none on the board, but with a tagline that reads, “Only a rooster gets a better piece of chicken.” Apparently, the Medical Center employees and Councilwoman Marlen Garcia, who brought the complaint to a city council meeting and said the board was “indecent or obscene,” think there’s something wrong with the natural act of a rooster co-habitating with a chicken. Either that or this is some sort of clandestine attempt to rid the world of scrambled eggs as a breakfast item.
Most council members and audience members at the city council meeting thought the line was funny and laughed at it. Robert Grossman, attorney for Regional Outdoor Advertising, the company hosting the board, does not believe the board breaks any contract terms and said, “It seems like a tempest in a teapot, actually. There isn’t anything on it that should cause it to come down.” Local Hooters franchise president Fred Glick agreed saying, “They’d probably argue if it just said ‘Hooters’ and nothing else. It’s meant to be a joke. It’s meant to be funny.”
Again, all the complainers are accomplishing here is giving Hooters more publicity and, likely, more business; exactly the thing Hooters wants most.
