Dov Charney may have sold his LA-based American Apparel clothing company for $383 million but he still can't afford tops for his models. We hear Echo Park residents aren't pleased with American Apparel's increasingly explicit kiddie porn billboards on the corner of Sunset and Alvarado. Not a particularly nice intersection to begin with--quite honestly, an intersection of drugs, homelessness, and 24-hour despair--the billboards just add a nice touch of seaminess to the whole area.
Our beef isn't so much with unimaginative child porn pictures, but with the economics of exploitation: Does American Apparel get away with this in more affluent neighborhoods? We'll ask Dov when we see him; we hear he has a lovely hilltop estate in the Silver Lake 'hood.
· American Apparel to be Sold to Investment Firm [NT Times]