NEW YORK (AP) -- Beer ads featuring animals having sex were ordered removed from Harlem stores by the brewer after community leaders complained that such crude humor would never be attempted on, say, Park Avenue.
``They have no regard for the values and sensitivity for our community,'' City Councilman Bill Perkins said Friday. ``I called the advertising people and they said, `It's a satire. It's a joke.'''
He added: ``It's not funny.''
The poster for Steel Reserve High Gravity Lager, a malt liquor, was hung in store windows and pasted on buildings in Harlem. It features rhinos and giant turtles mating. The caption: ``Research Says Sex Sells Beer.''
Community leaders called for a boycott of the beer even though more than 30 stores in Harlem had removed the advertisement by Friday afternoon.
The Steel Brewing Co. of San Francisco said that it told its New York distributors to remove the posters but that the campaign would continue elsewhere. The ads also appear in New Jersey, Maryland and the Midwest and West.
In a statement, the beer company said that it did not mean to offend and that the ads ``are posted everywhere the beer is sold.''
But community leaders said the ads were targeted at blacks. They said the company apparently believed blacks would find the posters funny.
``You don't see this in store windows on Park Avenue or in the community of Scarsdale,'' said the Rev. Calvin Butts. ``You see them in poor neighborhoods.''
Butts called on people to tear down or paint over any posters or billboards that feature the ad.
``We will run the risk of civil disobedience,'' he said. ``At a time when you have AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, you don't want sex or the abuse of drugs -- like alcohol -- advertised in a community.''
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