Kingston mayor says KSAMC never approved contentious Rude Boy billboard now pulled from roadside

Kingston Mayor Andrew Swaybe says the Kingston and St. Andrew Municipal Corporation never sanctioned the roadside promotion for Rude Boy Original that ignited a sharp online backlash. Observers had condemned the creative as crude, saying it placed a bottle between what looked like the thighs of a woman in fishnet stockings. The panel has since come down.

Swaybe told reporters the structure went up inside a mapped sterile strip where outdoor ads are barred, and it lacked the corporation’s formal go-ahead. He said that about seven days before a scheduled sit-down with outdoor-advertising interests, KSAMC had already written to operators ordering displays out of sterile corridors, naming that site among them.

After the stakeholder meeting, he said, the corporation removed the unlawful board. Officials later learned a fresh face had gone up in its place—the version that later dominated public conversation. When that replacement was flagged to the corporation on Thursday, 7 May, a twenty-four-hour removal notice went out; the advertisers met the deadline, he said.

Swaybe stressed that while KSAMC does not vet the artwork or messaging clients pick for campaigns, it still answers to a wider ethical bar. Corporate permits, he explained, hinge on engineering and planning points—dimensions, siting, framing, coordinates, and health-and-safety conformity—rather than the promotional copy itself. Negotiations over what appears on the vinyl stay between agencies and their customers, he added.

“We have a moral standard to uphold,” he said, repeating an earlier pledge that the municipality would hold the line even where content choices sit outside its direct licensing remit.