When I talked a year ago to Steve Rodrigues, owner of Val's Liquors on Third Street, he was full of plans. "My goal is to clean up the store and bring in new products and make it more of a neighborhood-friendly store," he said.

This struck me as a noble effort. The neighborhood, which borders downtown's homeless zone, needed help.

Thus my surprise a few weeks ago when I ran into a fuming Terry Mulgannon, a former magazine editor, now an amateur historian.

"I'm no prude," Mulgannon said. "I have no problem with whatever people want to do as long as they're discreet."

What had him riled was the new assortment of X-rated T-shirts at Val's. It's one thing for a shirt to say porn star or make humorous reference to the size of a certain male organ, but quite another to scream the F word, he said.

The shirts that offended Mulgannon were not displayed in the back by the Hustler and Hot Legs magazines. They hung by the front door. They were the first thing a customer saw, he said.

While Val's has a predominantly adult clientele, kids go in all the time for ice cream, chips and other snacks, he said. Why should young ones be greeted by one of the most pungent vulgarities in the English language? Why should anyone? he said.

When he complained, several female clerks admitted they were embarrassed. The owner's wife told him, "We have to pay the mortgage," he said.

After Mulgannon had finished unloading on me, I knew I had to see for myself. At lunch time, I strolled over to Val's and peeked through the window. Sure enough. By the door, next to the wine and tequila gift baskets and the biker tattoo magazines, were the F shirts.

I was taking notes when the clerk stepped outside. Can I help you? she said. I'm looking for the new merchandise that Steve had promised a year ago, I said.

Desiree Buckley toured me through the store, pointing out the new wines, wine openers and yes, those X-rated T-shirts.

"Believe it or not, they love these shirts," Desiree said of her customers. "They think they're hilarious." As for herself, "I don't particularly like them," she said.

Later that afternoon, I called Steve. I summed up Mulgannon's complaint. What's with the shirts? I said.

"It's a liquor store," Steve said. "The true fact is they're selling. I really haven't had any complaints. If somebody doesn't like it, they don't have to read it."

"I think it's a matter of free speech," he said. "People buy what they want to buy."

For the record, "I don't speak that way," he said. "I wouldn't wear one of those shirts."

Running a small liquor store in downtown is not a gold mine, Steve said. When business slumped late last year, he remembered the adult T-shirts he had seen on a trip to New York City. Taking a gamble, he ordered some.

It was a great business move, he said. He's sold more than 100 of them at $20 a pop. "People go, 'Oh, that's hysterical,'" he said. Humorously vulgar shirts are the perfect gift for a guy's 40th birthday, he said.

Didn't I see the humor? he asked. Sort of, I said.

"People need to loosen up," he said. But I shouldn't get the wrong idea, he said. "I don't want to see our whole society fall apart and become the Roman Empire," he said. "I'm just a businessman. I'm trying to make a living. I've found something that is selling."

He challenged me again for my opinion of the shirts.

I'm not trying to come across as Napa's public censor, I said. I'm merely curious how Howard Stern-type shirts by the front door make for a more neighborhood-friendly store.

I conceded that in the right context many were funny. Reading Steve's aggressively profane shirts had reminded me of the best scene in "The Big Lebowski" when The Dude destroys a car with a crowbar in a profanity-drenched rage.

But Steve, do you have to hang them by the front door?

Steve's defensiveness evaporated. "I was expecting this call," he said. "I just didn't know when it would come and what I would say."

Steve confessed that a kid once looked at a shirt, then asked his parent what the F word meant. That's when he put the shirts higher on the wall, with the less offensive ones blocking the more vulgar ones.

As the milder shirts sold, the raunchier ones had come to the front, creating the wall of profanity that I'd witnessed, he said.

If I owned his store, what would I do? Steve asked. I said I didn't know. I'd at least move the shirts back by the Hustlers.

And there we left it. Steve said he would think about it. I should call him back in a week.

The next day he called me. The shirts will remain on display by the front door, he said, but his clerks have been instructed to make sure that all the F words are hidden. "I don't have any cuss words showing," he said.

I went in a week later and all was as Steve had promised. There wasn't an F in sight. The visible messages were no worse than PG-13.

"Guess where I'm pierced?" said one. "It's a sick world and I'm a happy guy," said another.