Following on my posting earlier today on “Dubious commercial names” (about Hand Job Nails & Spa on Castro St. in San Fracisco, whose name might be dubious but was transparently intended as a winking double entendre), two Facebook comments with other commercial names that are sexually suggestive:
from Mike McKinley: I have a niece who does “Brazilans.” I told her she should open a salon and call it “The Muff Dive.”
from Christopher Walker: Years ago I clipped a brief item from the newspaper that the Secretary of State in Illinois had refused incorporation papers to a prospective business to be called the Eat It Raw Discotheque
And then back to three earlier postings on this blog with dubious commercial names, ranging from the flagrantly transgressive to the winkingly suggestive to the possibly innocent in intent.
Brazilians. We start with the notion of the Bikini wax (let me just say OUCH OUCH here). From Wikipedia:
Bikini waxing is the epilation of a woman’s pubic hair in and around the pubic region by the use of wax. While the practice is mainly associated with women, men remove pubic hair at times. A bikini line delineates the part of a woman’s pubic area which would normally be covered by the bottom part of a swimsuit. It generally refers to any pubic hair visible beyond the boundaries of a swimsuit.
With certain styles of women’s swimwear, pubic hair may become visible around the crotch area of a swimsuit. Visible pubic hair is widely culturally disapproved and considered embarrassing, and so is at times removed. However, some people also remove pubic hair that is not exposed, for aesthetic, personal hygiene, cultural, fashion or other reasons.
American waxing is the removal of only the pubic hair that is exposed by a swimsuit, depending on the style of the swimsuit.
French waxing leaves a vertical strip in front (sometimes called a landing strip or a Playboy strip), two to three finger-widths long just above the vulva, and 4 cm (1 1⁄2 in) wide.
Brazilian waxing is the removal of all hair in the pelvic area, front and back, while sometimes leaving a thin strip of hair on the mons pubis
So Mike McK. suggests the name The Muff Dive for a salon specializing in Brazilians (that is, Brazilian bikini waxes). On the one hand, there’s the sexual slang muff diving ‘cunnilingus’. On the other hand, there’s the non-sexual slang dive ‘disreputable nightclub or bar’.
Eat It Raw. Maybe it didn’t fly in Illinois, but it soars in Florida:
Here we have the snowclonelet composite raw bar, a place that serves a selection of plates of raw, rather than cooked, food (especially bivalves: oysters, clams, mussels, scallops).
[Digression: snowclonelets of the form X bar are covered in a 10/18/14 posting, which lists a number of subtypes; raw bar fits into type d, characterized by the type of food served (usually not involving the serving of alcohol): sushi bar, tapas bar, snack bar.]
That gives us literal eat it raw (eat food that is raw rather than cooked). But then there’s the sexual slang eat me ‘fellate me, suck my dick’; eat it ‘peform fellatio, suck dick’ — which can be amplified, made even cruder, with raw used as an adverbial. Which is what the Illinois officials rose up against it.
Earlier history on this blog
from 12/6/10, “Possibly unfortunate names”: three possibly unfortunate names: Plumed Serpent for a gay bar; Pink Taco for a restaurant; and Tube Steak for a hot-dog stand
from 12/7/10, “More notable business names”: Fat Cock Coffee in Austin TX … and Pussy Cafe in Chile (… (my informant:) “The Americans called it Café Coño”)
from 9/14/12, “Another notable business name”: Glory Hole Doughnuts in Toronto
March 23, 2016 at 6:08 am |
And still they come. From Arne Adolfsen on Facebook:
For the Phallicity: The wurst files.