No, You Can’t Call Your Strip Club the NY Pubic Library
My brother recently gave me an early Christmas present by pointing out one of those ridiculous government regulations I so love to mock. In New York, a 2006 law gives the State Education Department veto power over any business using the words school, education, elementary, secondary, kindergarten, prekindergarten, preschool, nursery school, museum, history, historical, historical society, arboretum, library, college, university, conservatory, academy, or institute.
So a little candy shop calling itself The Chocolate Library has run afoul of the law. New Yorkers are reportedly outraged that they were hoodwinked into thinking they could borrow bon bons for two weeks free of charge before having to return them.
50 bonus points toward a free bowler hat for the LoOGer who comes up with the best fictitious business name using one of these verboten terms.
If the goal is tasteless:
A firing range named Kent State University.Report
I love it, but I have to disqualify it on the grounds that Kent State University itself could surely prevent someone from simply co-opting their name. Please do submit another entry, though. Such wicked wit must not be silenced.Report
Sadly, I’m all out of wickedness this morning. This does scuttle my idea for the world’s first off-Broadway consulting detective musical, “Elementary My Dear,” which would have starred a transvestite Holmes and a very confused Watson. New York’s loss.Report
How about the Marshall University Flight School?Report
I was about to express immediate dismay that this may law may affect The Brandy Library, until I saw that issue addressed in the link. *phew*
Anyway, my fictitious (for now) business is “The Wild Cowboy’s Secondary School of Ribs”Report
The Cato Institute might have problems if it relocated to New York. But they’d be problems of the very sort we specialize in.
Also, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Finishing School for Boys, Girls, and Everyone In Between. Because someone had to go there, and it might as well be me.Report
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968)
I’m thinking this album might well become unavailable in NYC.Report
Not that it’s particularly easy to find anywhere (though well worth the effort.)
American tourists flock to see the village green.
They snap their photographs and say “Goldarn it, isn’t it a pretty scene?”
Report
One might call a brothel “Congress”.
But surely that is outside of the scope of the rules.Report
The Burlesque Conservatory
Which was actually the name of a planned club I was loosely involved with once upon a time so even though it never came to fruition it might fail the “fictitious” test.Report
Epic blog name.Report
I hereby declare NoPublic the winner. Fortunately his business venture was a failure, so that he could be a winner here.
Jason’s suggestion might have been a winner, but as a principal Gentleman he is ineligible for our (wholly fictitious) prizes.Report
Going with the way too obvious – (and it can double for a late 70’s Chelsea bar or a times square porn shop!) – by I’m going to go with The School of Hard Cocks.Report
Damn, not only beaten to the punch, but yours is better too.Report
Funny that the Cannabis College located in Old Amsterdam would be outlawed in New Amsterdam, even if there weren’t any actual cannabis in it.
I tried, but I can’t think of anything better than RTod’s.Report
Museum of Fuck You, Government.Report
LOL.
I want to go to that place.Report
A martial arts or boxing club called the School of Hard Knocks (do Americans use that expression?).
I also have a real-world example, there’s a bar in Wellington called The Library.Report
Las Vegas has a strip club called The Library. For real.Report
NYC has a bar called Dead Poets Society. It wouldn’t shock me if they went after that for one reason or another.Report
ITT Technical InstituteReport
Disqualified for being a real company whose name is already trademarked and because I don’t get it.Report
The Denver night club The Church gets by on separation of church and state.Report
How about calling a pop/soft rock/jazz band Chicago Transit Authority? (The threat of legal action forced them to shorten it to just Chicago.)Report