Bad billboards. Bad, bad billboards.

A New Zealand steak house is in a pickle over a cucumber, and wiener-wear unwraps woes in Dorchester.

(Oof. And that, dear friends, is why I don't write for a newspaper.)

"A billboard advertisement picturing two tomatoes at the base of a cucumber next to the words "thank God for serious steak", has been ruled too offensive.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) agreed with a complaint that the billboard picture, on Christchurch's Durham St, had an "obvious sexual link".

The complainant, H Hellewell, said she appreciated clean and humorous billboard advertising, but the billboard promoting the MU Steak House and Bar was "completely inappropriate and offensive".

"I know a lot of my friends and family find this ad distasteful and wonder how many letters of complaint we should send to aid its rapid removal," she said in a letter to the ASA.

The agency that created the ad, Urlwin, McDonald and Clients Ltd, said in response it was disappointed the complainant failed to see the point of it.

It was not intended to shock or offend, but to relate to the steak house's target meat eaters in a "humorous and effective" way."

The billboard was part of a $100,000 safe-sex campaign that the Boston Public Health Commission launched during gay pride week this June. The initiative included advertisements in public stations and on buses.

The poster outside of St. Kevin's was put up this early this summer while children were still in school. Students from Grades 5 to 8 are able to see the advertisement from the classroom window each day. "Students can look right out at it while they are sitting at their desks," said Mahoney.