Students fight for JoeCollege owner

The latest on embattled Lawrence T-shirt vendor Larry Sinks…

Some University of Kansas students in journalism professor Diane O’Byrne’s class held a benefit concert recently to raise money to call attention to Sinks’ First Amendment rights in his legal struggle with KU over whether slogans like “Muck Fizzou” and “Our Coach Can Eat Your Coach” infringe on the school’s trademarks.

Barstow grad Hollie Farrahi led the fundraising charge for Sinks’ store, Joe College.Com.

“Hollie informed me they want to bring attention to what has happened here and try to bring about the freedom of speech where you can print whatever you want on a T-shirt as long as you’re not using their actual marks,” Sinks told the Lawrence Journal World. “She told me there was a group of students on campus that really believe what I’m doing is OK. The students are behind me.”

The flip side of that argument…

Associate KU Athletic Director Jim Marchiony’s contention that KU’s four-year, seven-figure legal hammering of Sinks and Joe College was somehow meant to protect the interests of both the university and its students.

“Every unlicensed product that is purchased means that a licensed product is not purchased, and that takes scholarship money away from KU students,” Marchiony told the Journal World.

Hold it right there…

That’s a large leap to suggest somehow that KU fans wanting to make irreverent statements dissing the University of Missouri or Kansas State would blow their bucks on run-of-the-mill Jayhawk garb given no alternative option.

Meanwhile back at the O.K. Corral, Sinks is appealing a nearly $700,000 judgment against him by KU. He’s also trying to settle with KU and get on with his life.

“One of my offers to them was to close the store to settle this thing and make it go away,” Sinks told the Journal World. “They haven’t answered those offers. Their offer was, ‘We want to know every dime that you have.’”

As for Farrahi, KU’s athletic department rewarded her efforts on Sinks’ behalf by sending her what she described as a “very rude” and “condescending” e-mail expressing its unhappiness with the Joe College benefit.  

 Hearne on the street…

Out of there alert: Westport’s fabled Corner Restaurant is no more. That after more than 30 years of catering to the morning-after crowd and the local greasy spoon crowd.

Former Corner manager Lori Sydney described the Corner crowd to me several years back.

“Everybody comes down here still,” Sydney told me. “Everybody from Jim Glover to, shall we say, the leftover bar crowd to Johnson County housewives. Lots of Art Institute people.”

The Corner was the Capital of Quirky.

“We like to play a lot of games here,” Sydney said. “We have secret names and code words here. My code name is ‘Secret Squirrel.’ And you just met Corncake Dave. His momma didn’t name him that, we did.

“And this guy over here (recently deceased KC Tribune editor Tom Bogdon) is Mr. Milk. I don’t know if he knows that. And Naked Body Larry is artist Larry Kirkwood, ’cause he does nude body castings.

“Table 9 is ‘The Breakup Table.’ People actually come in and use that table to break up. It’s quite sad. So whenever someone sits at Table 9 we start to worry.”