Summer bachelors and women who'd rather bake in the sun

After the beaches of the Aegean, Erospolis goes back to take an end-of-season look at ?zmir?s summer bachelors and their wives who would rather bake in the sun than bake a börek ?You never know where you would drop your pants,? says the advertisement, along with the picture of a man?s underwear and the address of a website that can be translated as www.myinternalaffairs.com.

A wise ad-man knows that sexual innuendos help sales, particularly if the product is not at all sexy. Don?t we remember the ?energizer bunny? batteries with the slogan ?Going, going, going, going?? Add a bit of politics to the sexual innuendo, and it is even better ? like the underwear advertisement with an unauthorized image of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the slogan ?The country needs new underwear.? 

This particular ?Wherever I drop my pants? advertisement, plastered all over the sidewalks of ?zmir?s posh Alsancak neighborhood, gives the impression of being a direct eyewink at the quarter?s famous ?summer bachelors? ? men who stay in town to work while their wives and children are in their summer house in Çe?me, a holiday resort forty minutes away from the city, throughout the summer. 

?Take a tour in Alsancak in summer and in winter and you will see that the people whom you?d meet are different,? said an ?zmir friend who wanted to help my orientation. True enough, in winter the streets, stores and cafes are filled with ladies who lunch, have a drink, take coffee between their exercise class and shopping or simply meet friends before they pop into the office or the fashionable boutique/pastry shop/designer?s store. Groups of women that look surprisingly alike, with the same shade of honey-blonde ringlets, tights pants, flat shoes and...

Continue reading on: