We billed it as an act of God as interpreted by a flack: Last week, the Palms billboard on I-15 was missing the critical boobie panels. Lovely models who, only days before, were pictured with their neathage shouting out, were left up there looking embarrassingly modest due to what the Palms spokesman said was, "the wind."
Funny thing, that wind. It managed to work its way into a heated controversy over the sexually suggestive content of billboard ads. Just as grassroots groups around town were complaining to the Gaming Commission and anyone else who would listen (us), about their moral outrage, the spring breeze dismantled the Palms' sexed-up billboard.
Some observers of the missing neathage might have suspected that the Palms changed its ad policy to avoid the problems the Hard Rock is having—hundreds of thousands of bucks in fees. Or that billboard owner Clear Channel, the wholesome corporate moneybag that pulled the plug on Howard Stern, objected. Others might have wondered whether a caped crusader for chastity scaled the billboard pole and, in the name of all that is good and true and right, vandalized the sign.
But, said the flack, it was just the wind.
"It wasn't anything more exciting than that. We're just waiting for the wind to die down to replace them," Palms flack Brian Albertson told the Weekly then.
And so, when the billboard was reborn this week, same girls, bigger shirts—that is, no neathage—we wondered if the wind redesigned the ad.
No, said Albertson. This time, it wasn't an act of God. It was an act of the Palms.
"We did change it ... It's just something we decided to do," he said on Monday.
Er, maybe not. The next day, the Palms decided to pass the buck to whom it belongs: "Turns out, Clear Channel did ask us to do it, so we obliged …" Albertson said, after checking with the hotel's general manager.
Did they request that the hotel change other ads?
"I think it's the only one …"
Hmm. Were we talking about divine acts? Did we mention Clear Channel owns the universe? And is the major media partner in the upcoming Las Vegas Centennial Celebration? Hired by the city for the "development, creation, promotion and production aspects" of the hoopla?
Score one for the anti-boobie crusaders. At least one.