Calvin Klein has turned down the heat a tad in SoHo – replacing a giant orgy-themed ad with a dripping-wet model in a string bikini.
Even though the replacement still shows plenty of skin, New Yorkers were more comfortable with it.

“I think it’s a good thing,” said Rae Vermeulen, 36, who lives a few blocks from the billboard at E. Houston and Lafayette Sts.

“The old one bothered people. It was a little too explicit with the threesome,” she said. “You didn’t even notice the jeans as much as what was going on with the people.”

The original showed a very young topless woman atop a shirtless male while kissing another man. Below them, a guy with his shirt and jeans unbuttoned appeared to be passed out.

As the Daily News reported last week, passersby thought the content crossed the line for public display. The new lady in red seemed to pass muster, though.

“This is a lot better than the full blatant threesome they had before,” said public relations specialist Rebecca Edmondson, 29, who passes the billboard daily.

“I do like the bathing suit on her. It’s cute!”

Adolfa Arena, 48, a dog walker in the area, said the ad was effective without being provocative.

“I think this one is brilliant,” he said. “It’s the beginning of summer, so it works out perfectly.”

Told of the complaints last week, Calvin Klein officials had defended the ad, saying the intent was to create “a very sexy” campaign.

The firm had no immediate comment Tuesday on why it yanked the ad – but gas station manager Shohel Mohammed, 29, who works across the street, was glad to see it go.

“Customers used to come in all the time and say that it’s too much,” he said. “I’m glad they decided to change it.”

But I did see something recently that made me go “huh?”. This year marks the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock. A national retailer’s flyer this week features Woodstock apparel including a line marketed to kids. There’s a girl around 10 years old in a t-shirt with a big Woodstock logo on it. Woodstock for kids? Yes, there was peace, love and understanding preached at Woodstock and there was great music; but there was also sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Could those of you alive way back when ever have imagined a little girl wearing a Woodstock t-shirt? Will she watch the movie with her parents and see what it was all about? (Sorry, I can’t imagine watching Woodstock with my Mom & Dad.) And has Woodstock become so mainstream that it’s now suitable for kids? What would Jimi and Janis say?

While I’m not a parent, this is no worse than most of the other stuff out there. Quite honestly though – this ad worked – it got you talking about it.

Since the mid 1980′s, due to VCRs, DVDs and the Internet, there has been a proliferation of sexual content into the mainstream of the society’s conscience. Stars of adult entertainment today are treated with the same celebrity status of traditional Hollywood stars. Sexual content is prevalent in the story lines of many network prime time (8 PM – 10 PM) TV shows. Advertisements for Viagra and Cilas have replaced those of automobiles on sporting events (I have often wondered how a father explains those commercials to his young son when watching a baseball game).

Bottom line: Sex has and will always sell, especially in a society that relies primarily on visual content as its main source of news and information.

With that said, I agree with the sentiment that by giving this billboard any controversial attention at all, the advertisers win. They’ve already turned a 5-story billboard into a national campaign just by manipulating the media. It’s a good one-time strategy; it probably won’t continue to work for them for another decade or so, though.

Parents, if your kids see this, talk to them about what they’re really seeing. Get their perspective, and explain to them the fact that Calvin Klein has been manipulating teens for decades and that they’re just a bunch of marketing executives trying to stay relevant and cool so they can sell more jeans and underwear. By showing your kids how they’re being manipulated by their hormones, you’re more likely to take away the power of the ad in their minds than if you react with shock and outrage. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about teens, it’s that they HATE realizing they’ve got adults shaping their opinions. They want to believe they’re making their own choices.

This is why I am grateful I am childless and single. Maybe I should take more heed to the subliminal headings. I appreciate all the comments I have thus far Merrill, but I prefer to go old school and borrow from the classic tune by Cheap Trick 1979, ‘The Dream Police are coming to arrest me!’ That’s what this pic does for me.

Take very good care my friends!

Over the years, these explicit ads have neither appealed to me nor bothered me. I noticed the billboard ads using lingerie models in the late 70′s in metro stations in Madrid, but even at an age when I could have used my age as an excuse for drooling, it just didn’t mean anything. These weren’t real people somehow. Not bothered.