Thousands Demonstrate Against Sales of Furs : Retailing: Southland shops are among the targets of animal rights groups marching in 91 cities around the country.

Carrying coats streaked with red paint and coffins filled with fur, several thousand animal rights activists marched in 91 cities throughout the country in the fourth annual “Fur-Free Friday” to protest the killing of animals for apparel.

About 2,500 demonstrators were led down New York’s posh Fifth Avenue by game-show host Bob Barker, chanting “Fur is Murder” and “Don’t Buy Fur.” A smaller march targeted Beverly Hills furriers, and South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa was the site of another peaceful demonstration.

Barker, who resigned as host of the Miss USA pageant because winners were given furs as a part of their award, criticized the nation’s fur farms as “animal concentration camps.”

Bob Buckler, executive director of the Fur Farm Animal Welfare Coalition, called the charge a “spurious allegation” and said “animals raised on American fur farms receive the highest standards of care of any farm animals in the world.”

About 75 demonstrators from five local animal rights groups picketed South Coast Plaza on Friday morning, christening the first official shopping day of the Christmas season.

“It’s the biggest mall in the area and the biggest shopping day of the year,” said Ava Park, founder of Orange County People for Animals. “We want people to realize fur is an inappropriate gift to buy for someone you love. We support fake fur . . . real fur is beautiful and it belongs on animals.”

Miami saw the day’s only anti-fur violence. Employees of Grove Cleaners & Furriers in the fashionable neighborhood of Coconut Grove arrived at work Friday morning to find red and blue paint covering the store’s front windows and graffiti marking a nearby van.

An angry Alfonso Zequeira, the store’s owner, lashed out at the vandalism: “I don’t think that’s right. They have a right to express themselves, but I don’t think they should vandalize the store.”

A spokeswoman for the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida denied responsibility for the damage and blamed it on the furriers themselves.

In Beverly Hills, about 150 demonstrators marched down trendy Wilshire Boulevard, Canon and Rodeo drives protesting more than 30 furriers, including Nieman Marcus, I. Magnin and Bijan.

Marchers carried tape recorders broadcasting the cries of wounded animals and wore bloody fur coats tangled in leg-hold traps, “the most common traps used to kill animals,” said Dana Stuchell, national director of the animal rights group Trans-Species Unlimited and coordinator of Fur-Free Friday.

Sgt. Richard Westfall, watch commander of the Beverly Hills Police Department, said officers monitored the march, which was peaceful and orderly and didn’t even snarl traffic.

About 50 people dressed in black marched in San Francisco’s Union Square, in the heart of the downtown shopping district. “Fur is torture, don’t buy fur,” they chanted, picking their way through crowds of shoppers and gingerly trying to keep from stepping on panhandlers sprawling on the sidewalks.

And in Harrisburg, Pa., where about 75 people marched, protesters filled a black coffin with about $10,000 worth of mink, fox and rabbit furs. The furs were splashed with red paint to signify blood, and a nearby sign said, “Fur is murder.”

Times staff writer Mary Ann Galante in Orange County and Times wire services contributed to this report.