caramida: (action hero)
caramida ([personal profile] caramida) wrote2006-05-19 04:15 pm

The beginning of the end for San Francisco? I think not.

ING, the new sponsor for the storied Bay to Breakers race (this coming Sunday, for those of you not paying attention), has forbidden certain traditional B2B activities.

Of course they're a Respectable Financial Services company, so for the sake of propriety, they've forbidden alchohol and nudity. Such things don't play in Peoria. You can't be a respectable financial services company and have drunken nakedness in your race! Still, do you really think anyone is going to listen to their pleas of dismay? No. This is San Fran-freaking-sisco. Every day is Halloween, and we're gonna let it all hang out because that's tradition for the Bay-to-Breakers! And that's one of the reasons you left Peoria anyway, right?

Someone ought to build a float featuring a gigantic orange lion, and ride naked atop the thing swilling a daquari. Someone hot, that is.

</rant>

I don't attend the Bay to Breakers myself, by the way. I'm just a Friday-afternoon sidewalk quarterback, to mangle a metaphor.

That is all.

[identity profile] changinganswers.livejournal.com 2006-05-20 08:33 am (UTC)(link)
I'm amused that they banned nudity from it since ING is a Dutch company headquartered in Amsterdam. They don't seem to have problems with nudity in their hometown, so why here? As for the alcohol ban, that is likely more a city thing than anything. Open container laws and public intoxication, etc.

In general I find it odd that ING is the new sponsor since they sold off most of their S.F. divisions about six years ago to ABN AMRO. ING doesn't have a huge presence in the Bay Area anymore, so why sponsor a race here? Eh, oh well.