Owner of Florida diner Sweeties posts irreverent messages on its marquee – often insulting town mayor and chief of police – to the amusement of motorists and the dismay of woke warriors
- Rick Reed, 63, is part owner of Sweeties diner in Fort Pierce, Florida
- Reed has used the restaurant’s marquee to leave irreverent messages
- Often times the messages are direct jabs at Fort Pierce Police Chief Diane Hobley-Burney or Mayor Linda Hudson
- The signs are seen by thousands of motorists on the way to I-95, which is one of the highest-traffic corners in the city
- Last week’s sign reads: ‘What do you call a lesbian dinosaur? Lickalotofp***’
- The joke is believed to be directed at the police chief and mayor, though Reed denies it
- Reed instead said that associating either the chief or the mayor with lesbian dinosaurs would be ‘an insult to lesbian dinosaurs everywhere’
- ‘The signs are what they are. I’m not sure they offend anyone. For me, it’s all about the First Amendment,’ Reed tells DailyMail.com
A business owner in Fort Pierce, Florida, has been driving officials in the coastal town bonkers with his weekly messages on the marquee of his diner, Sweeties.
Irreverent at times, often rude and always a woke warrior’s worst enemy, the messages routinely take aim at the chief of police and the mayor.
And Sweeties, partly owned by 63-year-old Rick Reed, happens to be at the highest-traffic corner of the city. It’s a forced passage for thousands of motorists to I-95, the area’s transportation lifeline.
Last week’s sign reads: ‘What do you call a lesbian dinosaur? Lickalotofp***’
While borderline homophobic and fat-shaming, the words are believed by some to be directed at Fort Pierce Police Chief Diane Hobley-Burney and Mayor Linda Hudson.
Reed won’t fess up to it, telling DailyMail.com that associating either the chief or the mayor with lesbian dinosaurs would be ‘an insult to lesbian dinosaurs everywhere.’
Many motorists in the blue-collar coastal city who see his signs get to speculate on the identity of the target of his sarcasm, something that creates a buzz about his diner without spending a dime on advertising.
Reed, however, has had unmistakable, crystal clear insults for the chief, a 27-year veteran law enforcer who he has nicknamed Hobley-Bobley, and Mayor Linda Hudson over the years.
Some of his favorite signs aimed at the chief include:
- ‘Now playing at Ft. Pierce Police Department: The Blob, starring Hobley-Bobley’
- ‘All I want for Christmas is a new chief of police’
- ‘Hobley-Bobley sat on our wall and it fell. The end’
- ‘Law enforcement week: All LEO receive 20% off, except Hobley-Bobley’
- ‘Fort Pierce Police theme song: Send in the clowns. BLT or burger fries $5.99’
- ‘No Hobley-Bobley served but we have ox tail, $9.95’
The mayor, too, has been the target of his scorn:
- ‘We support spaying and neutering at city hall’
- ‘Mayor Hudson, since you’re 2 faced, can you make one pretty?’
- ‘City Hall is run like a wh**ehouse’
Occasionally, Reed has gone after both, with one sign reading: ‘Buy a mayor, get a half-baked chief of police.’
And a Halloween-themed sign appeared in late October, reading: ‘If the mayor and police chief lived together, they’d be broom-mates’
Much of the criticism about his signs, Reed says, comes from Fort Pierce City Hall.
In one instance the sign read that city hall was run like a wh**ehouse. That resulted in a call from the city manager asking him, nicely and respectfully, to take it down.
Reed refused.
Another time, he received a visit from the police’s Head of Internal Affairs with the same request about the sign asking for a new chief, and he escorted the cop off the diner’s property.
Over the years, Reed says, he has never taken a sign down, including the one addressed to no one in particular that read ‘Team work: One buttcheek says to the other, together we can stop this sh*t.’
‘Sometimes I just try to have something funny out there for motorists,’ he says. ‘I don’t always mean anything political by it.
‘The signs are what they are. I’m not sure they offend anyone. For me, it’s all about the First Amendment.’
Besides, he says, there’s nothing more American than a citizen holding public officials’ feet to the fire.
‘The signs have become somewhat of an institution in town,’ he says. ‘I have no promotion or advertisement budget, but I do have a lot of people who come in because of the signs. We’ve got good food, so they likely become regular customers.’
City officials, meanwhile, either ignored or failed to respond to DailyMail.com’s requests for comment.
Only Mayor Hudson emailed a short comment, about the Lickalotofp*** sign, one hinting that motorists may have complained.
‘The city of Fort Pierce is a beautiful, diverse community and welcomes the sharing of ideas and thoughts openly,’ the mayor wrote in an email to DailyMail.com. ‘After further review by the city staff and consultation with the city attorney, it was determined that the sign in question does not violate the city of Fort Pierce’s code of ordinances.’
Hudson declined further comment because the city is currently in litigation with Reed, who filed a $2.5 million lawsuit in July 2020 in federal court.
He claimed city officials, including Hobley-Burney, Hudson and others violated his civil rights by using the police department to harass him with incessant traffic stops.
The complaint says that Reed claims he started being harassed by the chief of police in April 2016, and that she had officers stop him repeatedly and issue traffic violations or warnings.
Over the years, records show he’s been stopped for a broken light near his license plate, speeding and an improper stop.
A former unsuccessful mayoral candidate, Reed opened Sweeties a little more than six years ago as a throwback to the 1950s.
The joint is named after his maternal grandmother, whose nickname was Sweetie.
In the diner’s website, Reed describes his passion as ensuring that ‘our local government employees, police officials and elected officials (are) accountable to the taxpayer.’
But Reed is considered by the city’s political establishment to be a pest who scrutinizes their every move in city hall meetings and through public records.
He’s been forcibly removed from meetings and has been issued a trespassing ticket for refusing to leave city hall.
