Open Letter to the PB Shore Club

Dear Shore Club,

You’re spamming our community with your posters promoting Shore Club’s 2nd annual Oyster Event being held downtown this year at the Embarcadero.

Not only is this illegal (I believe potentially yielding you a $100 per sign fine regardless of who distributes them) it’s unethical as you promote yourself ad nauseam as a ‘responsible business’ that helps keep PB clean. Does this actually mean that you’re ‘responsible’ when you’re not promoting your businesses? Doesn’t that seem clear that you’re putting your profits first and our community second?

This is an ugly promotional display that does not do Pacific Beach justice as many of us work very hard–much of the time–to keep our community clean. I doubt you had planned to retrieve every one of these posters from around our community–and no doubt other communities you have spammed so, perhaps you’ll consider doing that first thing Sunday morning?

One thought is that you’ll claim a marketing agent you hired was actually responsible and that you had no idea this inexcusable practice was happening. Perfect then, perhaps you’ll ask them to retrieve these expensive posters immediately, from around PB especially, and to stop plastering them around for the next few days?
On your website at www.oysterfestsd.com (not on your poster ironically) you talk about how “almost every product at the festival this year is recycled/recyclable/compostible (sic)” while encouraging others to use the recycling bins at the event. With the above information in mind, then using green statements to portray yourselves as responsible earth-friendly and conscious, I think some would rightly identify this practice as green-washing (boo). If you want to portray yourself as green than you might consider a myriad of other ways to promote your event, that don’t include spamming our communities.

I hope your event goes great but, I can’t support any business that does this practice–ironically including your competitors trying to suck business out of PB and into their neighborhoods. Read: On Broadway downtown who is notoriously obnoxious about littering PB with promotional flyers and posters for at least the past two years.