Sex Humor: To Be Fair, I Feel the Same Way About Walgreens and CVS

To Be Fair, I Feel the Same Way About Walgreens and CVS

No matter how chill you may be, odds are there are some businesses, structures and buildings in your hometown that you could do without. Maybe they’re ugly, maybe they draw the wrong kind of crowd, or maybe they have the word “TRUMP” written on them in big, garish gold letters.

For some folks, the complaint is the nature of the business itself. Right now, down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a bunch of local residents are up in arms over an adult shop in the neighborhood, which they say is too sleazy, too garish, too…. well, too “porny,” for lack of a better word.

While Calico’s sympathies are generally with adult businesses and not those who complain about them and want them to be shut down, to an extent she can relate with the folks who don’t want this adult shop in their neighborhood. It’s not that she can relate to their objections over the shop’s alleged sleaziness, it’s just that her neighborhood is filling up with commercial eyesores, too.

What manner of stores are turning Calico into a NIMBY? Do we really need a Walgreens AND a CVS on every corner? Realistically, how many people buy new mattresses every month? Are they seriously putting another Starbucks in the neighborhood, because the mile in between the two existing locations is too much to bear? Read all about it in Calico’s latest post, “To Be Fair, I Feel the Same Way About Walgreens and CVS”  

– Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com, for all the porn you can’t get at Walgreens!

Read on…

Over the course of my life, my hometown and area surrounding it has more than tripled in population. 

In the process, I’ve watched as open desert areas have been razed, bulldozed and developed. I’ve also watched as charming historical buildings and their lovely southwestern/Spanish colonial architecture have been supplanted by tacky strip malls, just as our local mom-and-pop shops have been replaced by big box stores and massive national chains.

While I try not to begrudge any company for its success and expansion, I could also live without seeing a big chain drugstore on every corner (Walgreens has approximately 9,021 U.S. locations!), often with one of those seemingly omnipresent Mattress Firm shops located across the street.

You Know What This Town Needs? Another Big, Beige Rectangle Filled with Cheap Crap

It might not be so bad if these businesses had storefronts that weren’t so godawful to look at – but the fact is they are godawful to look at. And sure, some of the reason we’re stuck with all these hideous buildings is wrapped up in government regulations that arguably leave the businesses involved with little choice – but that only spreads my resentment beyond architects and designers and into the halls of our legislatures, who have given us many other reasons to resent them recently, it’s fair to say.

The reason I’m up on my hand sanitizer box about this (the store being fresh out of soap boxes at the moment) right now is that I’m trying to find common mental ground with “NIMBYs” who do things like complain about brick-and-mortar adult businesses being located anywhere other than adjacent to toxic waste dumps on the outskirts of town.

“New sex shop at the beach makes neighbors cringe… and there’s nothing the city can do,” reads the headline of a recent South Florida Sun Sentinel article about the Ocean View Boutique, an adult shop in Fort Lauderdale.

“Vice Mayor Steve Glassman, who represents that section of the beach, has heard it all,” the article reports. “The lingerie on the garter-belted mannequins in the window is too sleazy. The store’s night lighting is too harsh, too garish. A store that sells such scandalous merchandise simply does not belong on a landmark corner at a world-famous beach.”

WWTLD?

Replace sleazy lingerie on mannequins with brightly colored signs advertising laxatives and cheap booze and these complaints about the Ocean View Boutique start to sound a lot like my complaints about the CVS down the hill from here – and the Walgreens located catty-corner from it.

If I were Vice Mayor Steve Glassman, I might be tempted to tell my constituents to look on the bright side: At least the Ocean View Boutique doesn’t have 9,021 ugly-ass locations around the U.S. and a competitor with just as many hideous looking stores and that frequently sets up its locations directly across the street from Ocean View.

“I think they need to class it up a little bit, if that’s even possible,” Glassman said. “So it’s not offensive. Tone it down and class it up. Perhaps it needs to be a little more tasteful.”

That sounds to me like a catchy new slogan just waiting to happen: “Tone down, class up, turn on,” perhaps?

Could You Please Keep It Down? You’re Drowning Out Our Hawaiian Shirts

John Burns, the head of a condo association in the area, wrote a letter to the city in protest of the Ocean View, complaining that he and his residents “continue to believe that this store does not represent the luxury or family-oriented vision of Fort Lauderdale beach.” 

“The inside of the store may be ‘lingerie,’ but the outside screams ‘adult XXX’ and we do not think it belongs across the street from a premier park or on a world-class beach,” Burns added.

I hear you, brother John – or I would be able to hear you, if the signage on the Walgreens down the hill wasn’t screaming “BUD LIGHT 12-PACK $8.99!”

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