New York- The coffee may be hot and steamy - but it's nothing compared with the cup.
A Manhattan strip club has turned the humble cardboard cup into a billboard for its topless show girls, giving java drinkers another kind of morning eyeopener.
Cups advertising Larry Flynt's Hustler Club are being sold out of more than 30 midtown and Wall Street coffee carts, but turning off some customers and vendors.
"I hate these cups," said Oleg Morosov after his order from a Lexington Ave. vendor arrived in a Hustler Club cup. "I think I'm starting to develop a reputation at work because of these cups."
For its promotion, Hustler picked locations where the cups could help lure a well-heeled crowd to the far West Side club.
"We target an upscale men's clientele," said Steven Karel, the club's director of marketing. "Our target market is the businessmen, the bankers."
But plenty of coffee drinkers - especially women - prefer their joe poured into blue cups with the classic Greek diner motif.
"I don't think I'd take it into work," said hotel worker Lily Fong, 42.
Vendor Asad Aref scrapped the cups, featuring a blond beauty and the slogan "New York's Erotic/Exotic Adult Cabaret," after customers protested. "The club is against my beliefs, let's put it that way," said Aref, whose cart is at Third Ave. and 56th St.
