Pink Taco’s Asinine Cinco de Mayo Stunt

After imbibing a few too many margaritas on Cinco de Mayo, you might see a pink elephant or two. But if you happened to see a pink donkey as you passed by a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, it was no hallucination.

The marketing geniuses at Pink Taco in Century City apparently thought it was a great idea to chain a donkey — shaved clean and dyed pink — outside its entrance on a very warm spring day.

Animal advocates beg to differ. The “Boycott Pink Taco Century City” group created on Facebook Thursday night had more than 2,000 members a day later. PETA is investigating the case, and celebrities like Pink and Lea Michele have expressed their disgust via Twitter. In a KTLA online poll, as of Friday night, 67 percent of respondents think the display was animal abuse.

Pink Taco has been silent on the matter. It went so far as removing its Twitter and Facebook accounts on Thursday, shortly after Ben Decker sparked the outrage by posting a picture of the donkey on his Twitter account. (The Twitter account @pinktaco_la that debuted on Friday is not affiliated with the restaurant, Pink Taco's special events coordinator, Corey Conrad, told OCWeekly.com.)

A spokesman for Phil’s Animal Rentals, which provided the donkey, insisted to KTLA that the company complied with animal regulations by providing the donkey with food and water, and two handlers were on site. “The paint was a non-toxic, breathable paint, and the donkey was shaved,” the spokesman explained.

OCWeekly.com reported that a police officer issued Pink Taco a cease-and-desist order on Thursday, demanding the restaurant to remove the donkey, but only because it didn’t have a permit to display the animal. Since the donkey had food and water, and the dye was apparenty non-toxic, no animal cruelty charges were filed.

Even if the paint wasn't toxic, it couldn't have been pleasant for the donkey to have been shaved, spray painted, trucked from the rental company — a 90-mile round trip — and then forced to stand on concrete for hours in 85-degree heat.

Pink Taco, which used to have two other locations in Las Vegas and Scottsdale, has stirred controversy in the past because of its misogynistic name. In a hilarious 2006 Daily Show segment, Ed Helms asks owner Harry Morton if opening “a vagina-themed Mexican restaurant” had always been a dream of his. On Gawker.com Friday, Seth Abramovitch aptly noted that Pink Taco is “a restaurant named after female genitalia that serves bad Mexican food to people who would eat bad Mexican food at a restaurant named after female genitalia.”

This wasn't the first time the restaurant used a pink donkey as a lame marketing ploy. A shaved and dyed donkey is led around various Los Angeles locations in the restaurant’s video, “Pinky’s Road to Stardom,” which was posted on YouTube around the time the Century City property opened in 2007.

Conrad told OCWeekly.com that the restaurant will release a formal statement about the incident next week. Sign the petition telling Pink Taco to publicly apologize for the display and to promise to never use “Pinky” again.

Photo credit: @BenDecker