Friday, Jan. 10, 2003 | 10:58 a.m.
In a town noted for its risque entertainment -- and for boasting ads for that entertainment that some consider equally naughty -- picking out a specific billboard that violates community standards might be a tough job.
But Clark County agencies evidently were up to the job.
The county Current Planning Division and Public Response Office tagged a billboard on the airport connector to McCarran International Airport as "obscene."
The advertisement, promoting the Hard Rock Hotel, depicted a topless woman holding a pair of dice strategically concealing her nipples.
The county told the billboard company, Lamar Advertising, to take the ad down.
The ad came down Thursday, but not because of the complaint and the county action, said Chris Prickett, Lamar vice president.
"We did get a notice of violation, but it was coming down anyway," he said.
Lamar would have appealed the decision and could have fought the county's demand in court, Prickett said. But the contract with the Hard Rock was expiring, so there was nothing to fight over, he said.
Yale Rowe, vice president of marketing for the Hard Rock, said his company never felt the billboard was offensive and said it spent a lot of money to produce the ad by hiring famed photographer David La Chapelle.
"The billboards are down for no other reason than the contract expired and we are replacing it," Rowe said. "We were requested by the county to take it down, and we filed extensions as we tried to review the law they were citing it under."
Drivers to and from the airport got a view of the woman's pose for about six months.
But several weeks ago, the county's public response office got a written complaint from a resident. The office took the issue to Chuck Pulsifer, county zoning manager.
Pulsifer compared it to the county's standards for adult-use businesses.
"I found it be obscene" under those standards, Pulsifer said.
The issue then went back to the public response office, and Code Enforcement Officer R. C. Montgomery picked up the case.
The billboard company initially asked for an administrative hearing to contest the issue, but then took the ad down, Montgomery said.
The law that governs "obscene" billboards has been on the county books -- but not the city's -- for a couple of years, but this is the first time a written complaint has generated a county order to take a sign down, Montgomery said.
The can't do anything with billboard messages that some people find offensive, he said. An example would be the message that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently put up at Flamingo Road and Decatur Boulevard, which equates eating meat to sexual dysfunction, but doesn't directly show any private parts.
But if the county gets a complaint, officials investigate it.
"If it does not meet with the code, we take appropriate action," Montgomery said.
The basic criteria for county action is that the billboard should not include body parts that are usually covered, Montgomery said.
"If they're showing skin and inappropriate body parts, or inappropriate phrases, we would have to do something about it," he said. "It's pretty much based on common sense."
But American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada General Counsel Allen Lichtenstein said the law isn't sensible.
The county's zoning code defines nudity as any part of the female breast showing below the nipple, he said, but that should not qualify as obscene.
"The term obscenity has a very specific legal meaning," Lichtenstein said, usually defined as an explicit depiction of sexual activity.
"There is no sexual activity. The nipples are covered."
He said that a jury, not a zoning official, should be the agency that determines what billboards have to come down.
Las Vegas resident Christiana Vining was at the Hard Rock Thursday night and said she didn't think the billboards were out of place here.
"It's Las Vegas," she said. "I think (the obscenity complaint) is ridiculous."
"There's free porn when you walk down the Strip," Vining said, adding that the fliers promoting "escorts" handed out on the Strip are inappropriate for younger teens and kids.
Posters of the photo sell in the Hard Rock gift shop for $5.95 plus tax.
Sun reporters
Judy Odierna and Mary Manning contributed to this report.
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