New York City officials were a bit embarassed to find out that ads for a clothing line that have been appearing on New York buses since September promise reading can be rewarded in unexpected ways.

The ads show a suggestively posed and scantily clad woman kneeling among a pile of books with the snappy slogan, “Read Books, Get Brain.”

Officials were apparently unaware that “get brain” is slang for oral sex.

After being tipped to the phrases double meaning, Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly ran a little test of his own:

I went downstairs to the mailroom and showed some of the young guys a copy of the ad. I was watching their faces and they all start smirking.

Apparently it’s on all the music, in music that’s how they refer to it. I didn’t know anything about it and I’m sure the people that approved the ad didn’t.

To me and I believe to everyone else, while it was done by a clothing line, it would give the impression that it was also promoting reading and literacy.

The ads, from Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre, also run on buses and bus shelters in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco and Philadelphia. But the ads are no longer running in New York — they were stripped off buses on Friday. 😆