Marylee Shrider: Tilted Kilt servers shouldn't tour outside of pub
| Friday, Sep 26 2008 05:38 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 02:08 PM
I wasn’t going to talk about the Tilted Kilt.
I was going to ignore it and dismiss concerns over the pub’s scantily clad servers with an if-you-don’t-like-it-don’t-go-there shrug. Until the Tilted Kilt decided to take its show on the road.
Seems the pub’s servers — nubile young women clad in teeny tiny kilts and matching peek-a-boo bras — have been showing up in the oddest places. Like places other than the Tilted Kilt.
Owner Jeremy Helper said late Friday these visits were little more than an opening-month mistake, but still, children were subjected to the bosom blitzkrieg.
One young mother, 27-year-old Tami Prestridge, told me she was walking through the parking lot of The Promenade shopping center on Rosedale Highway when an official Tilted Kilt Hummer loaded with boisterous Tilted Kilt servers passed through. Naturally, this created quite a stir, with the girls spilling out the car’s windows, the sunroof and their bras.
Another mom, Kathy Dunham, reported she was shopping at Save Mart with her 10-year-old son when “an entourage” of several Tilted Kilt girls burst in, made a loud, look-at-me pass through the grocery store, then reboarded the Hummer for another parking lot tour.
Recently, some of the Tilted servers — management calls them “cast members” — showed up on local talk radio’s Ralph Bailey Show, where the girls characterized the pub as a family restaurant and invited listeners to “bring the kids.”
Really, they did.
Sure you can bring the kids, they said. Why not?
Well, let’s see. Maybe because it’s as much bar as it is restaurant and the servers wear as little as the health department allows.
Maybe because mom, dad and the kiddies might have to wade through dense clots of the pub’s predominantly male clientele to find a seat.
Or maybe it’s because Tilted Kilt’s official menus are peppered with clever names like Kamana-Wana-Lei-U pizza and delightful limericks kids can memorize and share with their friends at school. But only when the teacher’s not around.
Mostly, it’s because Bakersfield Police officers have been called to the pub at least 10 times in the 48 days since it opened to handle fights and “other peace disturbances,” including the recent stabbing of a security guard, Sgt. Greg Terry said.
Goodness. Who could ever have imagined such a thing?
Anybody who knows anything about beer, boys and boobs, that’s who.
Dave Washburn, a former high school counselor and director of Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Bakersfield, said such sexually charged marketing contradicts what he and other parents are trying to teach their children: modesty, self-respect and integrity.
“I’m sure they are all nice girls who work there, but I know from these outfits what they are meant to attract,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we’re already starting to see the end result of that marketing — right next to a neighborhood of families.”
How that ultimately plays out is between the pub’s owners and their neighbors.
The Tilted Kilt has every right to be there, but must it really take to the streets?
Apparently not, said owner Helper, who acknowledges that the promotion in the parking lots was an error in judgment on the part of a former manager, “and I apologize if we’ve offended anyone. We don’t want to be in anybody’s face.” Great.
But that’s the risk you take when you use beautiful bodies to attract business and advertising something that’s not for sale. It’s about making a parent’s job tougher than it has to be. C’mon Tilted Kilt, leave the Hummer, or at least the hotties, at home. For good.
These are Marylee Shrider’s opinions, not necessarily The Californian's. Call her at 395-7474 or write mshrider@bakersfield.com.
