The Return of Safety Girl

continued

Bongz & Thongz took a beating when it opened last summer on Liberty. An inhospitable city, invoking legal limits on sex-toy sales, managed to squelch the "thongz" part of the business, leaving owners Steve Abouna and Kilo Hassan with boxes of them sitting in storage--until Safety Girl showed up.

Safety Girl (Brown) is a name from the 1990s. She too tried selling sex paraphernalia on Liberty, but she's better known for pushing community access TV programming (and, many believed, common decency) to its limits. Co-hosting a half-hour show with dominatrix Butch Curious, she preached safe sex, especially "outercourse," with free-spirited glee for about 100 episodes.

Brown's outsize personality resurfaced a few years ago in the form of Ypsi Girl. Though she lives in Ann Arbor, she felt Ypsi needed help, and she missed being in front of the camera. That was enough to launch a new persona that promotes Ypsi in blog, video, and publicity stunts. Last year, she says, "I was getting all these hits on the Ypsi Girl website, about Bongz & Thongz," from old Safety Girl fans, who suspected the story of sexual censorship would find a sympathetic ear with her.

She was more than sympathetic. She wanted a piece of the action.