No way, no okay, no bras over bay

Call it a tempest in a D cup.

Promoters at radio station STAR-FM 95.7 thought they could get people's attention by using bras to raise money to fight breast cancer.

The plan: Ask listeners to donate money and bras. String them together across the Friendship Trail Bridge. Give it a catchy title: "Bras Across the Bay."

But the plan deflated Tuesday when Pinellas County commissioners refused to, well, support the idea.

"Do you have to do this with bras?" asked Commission Chairman Barbara Sheen Todd.

"I just find that distasteful," Commissioner Karen Seel said. "I'm sorry."

Todd and Seel, who both have relatives who have had the disease, stressed that they want to help fight breast cancer. But they said using bras was insensitive to breast cancer survivors.

On a 3-3 vote, commissioners refused to give a permit.

Tammy Beardsley, STAR 95.7 promotion director, said she was disappointed by the decision.

Commissioners suggested the station string pink ribbons across the bay instead, but Beardsley said the station has dropped the whole idea and will focus its efforts instead on the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Race for the Cure, set for this fall.

Beardsley said the station got the bra idea after a producer worked on a bra-themed fundraiser in Washington, D.C., that raised $14,000. Radio DJs floated the idea with listeners and "the response they got was great," Beardsley said. Nobody complained.

Here, the radio station figured, it would take some 4,000 bras to cross the bay at the bridge, the site of the old Gandy Bridge.

The American Cancer Society signed on to accept donations after station officials assured the group they would treat the disease seriously, said Jolene McPherson, the group's state spokeswoman.

"I know it's crazy," she said. "But it's attention-getting."

Liz Warren, parks department director, said she had a different worry when she first heard the plan.

"We had a concern that if the bras dropped into the bay, it would choke wildlife," she said.

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