An Upper West Side tiki bar is really lei-ing it on thick to get neighborhood approval for its hula girl sign.

A depiction of a bare-breasted hula dancer on a sign outside the Tiki Chick bar on Amsterdam Avenue made some residents hot under the collar after it was installed earlier this year.

One neighbor at a community board meeting ranted that it was “culturally insensitive,” according to the West Side Rag blog. Another said the bar, which has yet to open, was not “family-focused.”

Pickle Hospitality, which operates the gin mill as well as the popular Jacob’s Pickles and Maison Pickle restaurants nearby, said plenty of people liked the hula girl, but it took down the sign anyway to appease the protesters.

“We had a lot of women in the neighborhood that we know, regular clientele that come to the restaurants, who are upset the original sign went down,” Arsham Kamali a Pickle Hospitality executive, said.

A month ago they said Aloha to a replacement sign — an image still featuring a hula dancer, but this time with a strategically placed lei.

But the new hula girl has been welcomed by critics like a bowl of poi left in the sun too long, and sparked a new round of debate.

“Nothing is resolved. She is still obviously unclothed under the flowers, and her implied dancing would easily shift the flowers out of place and expose toplessness,” fumed a blog reader named UWSMom. “We will not be dining there as long as the sign is up.”

A bemused reader replied: “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. I pity your sheltered children.”

“How about a barechested Tiki dude for equality’s sake?” another reader quipped.

City Council member Helen Rosenthal, who represents the Upper West Side, also joined the anti-sign luau.

“The owner of this business has complied with applicable government regulations, and it’s important to note that freedom of expression is protected in our country,” she said. “But we’re saddened that he’s chosen to represent a human being in such a retrograde way.”