Denver Post
Aug. 11, 2004

Shop's alluring name lures controversy

Heeney - What's in a name? With apologies to Shakespeare, would a bait shop by any other name smell so ... uh, sweet?

Those were the questions asked in a dispute between the Colorado Department of Transportation and owners of a bait shop over a request to post signs directing tourists to the settlement's infamously named "Master Bait and Tackle."

Shop owners Bill and Cara York had sought the standard blue signs directing traffic off Colorado 9, but CDOT officials determined that posting the name of the shop "would endanger the health, safety or welfare of the public."

"The issue that leaped to the fore was the tastelessness and potential offensiveness of the business name," said Tom Riley, roadside advertising coordinator for the sign program. "We were willing to give them a sign that said 'Bait and Tackle.' We were willing to give them a sign that said 'Heeney Bait and Tackle' or any other name than the one they chose to get people's attention. That was unacceptable to them."

The Yorks appealed, and late last month won a judgment from an administrative law judge allowing them to get their signs at both junctions of the state highway and the Heeney loop road.

"I just am happy that we get to have a sign," Cara York said Tuesday. "My application is going back out in the mail today."

In a sometimes ribald, often pointed 27-page brief, the Yorks' lawyer, Bill Wieland, wrote: "Master Bait and Tackle sounds like 'masturbate and tackle,' but it is not."

He noted that "master" is a commonly used title in business and in the sportsman world - including a state Division of Wildlife program designating master anglers - and argued that, while the shop name is admittedly a play on words, it is not in itself dirty.

"Clearly the term 'master bait' does not come within any interpretation of 'obscene,"' Wieland wrote. "Beyond that, it is extremely questionable whether the printing of the word 'masturbate' upon a sign could in any manner be interpreted to be obscene."

He pointed out that the word referring to a sexual act is not banned by the Federal Communications Commission, has appeared regularly in mainstream media, and even was mentioned in Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" in the Sunday comics.

In overturning CDOT's decision as arbitrary, Judge Robert W. Thompson found that state officials didn't object to any single word but to the combination, which "sounds like" a clinical term - yet not an obscene one.

"There is no evidence that the signs would detract from the substantial state interest of public pride and spirit," Thompson wrote. "The decision rests on mere presumption."

Cara York said the name attracts customers who are not anglers, and the shop does a steady business in T-shirts and caps, which especially helps during the lean winter months.

Few, she said, ever complain.

"I've answered the phone 'Master Bait and Tackle,' and the person on the other end is laughing so hard that I have to wait five minutes to talk to them," she said. "You do get a few people who are offended, which I think is a personal problem. Life's so short. You've got to have a good time and a sense of humor."