Controversy Over Hooters

Re Santa Monica concerns about Hooters restaurant and “scantily clad waitresses” (Sept. 2): Are the Santa Monica council members saying there aren’t plenty of women walking around their Third Street Promenade these warm days dressed just the same as the pictures show a typical Hooters waitress? Does Mayor Robert Holbrook, who admits never having been in a Hooters, really think more “frustrated fraternity boys and dirty old men” will ogle girls there than they already do at Santa Monica’s beaches? Will any evidence of undesirable patrons and negative impact on neighborhoods at other Hooters locations be presented?

And why is “ogling” girls so bad anyway? Santa Monica’s mind-set on the matter is disturbingly close to that of the city fathers of late 17th century Salem.

MEL WOLF

Burbank

* During Santa Monica City Council’s meeting about the opening of a new Hooters restaurant, Mayor Holbrook asked : “Would you take your wife there? Would you take your date there? Probably not one you’re serious about.” The truth is I have taken a date to Hooters in Newport Beach.

If the mayor would be willing to go behind the Orange Curtain, he would see that plenty of women and even families with children eat lunch and dinner at Hooters. It is just a theme restaurant, not a go-go bar.

JUSTIN PAINTER

Riverside

* What is even more amazing to me than the fact that there is an entity such as the Hooters restaurant chain in existence in 1998 is the fact that there are women willing to work in such an environment.

JEANETTE ZIOLKOWSKI

La Verne