Two rules of commerce they probably don’t teach at Wharton: life-size photographs of Giselle Bundchen, wearing lingerie, in your shop window are good for business (that’s with or without angel wings), but protesters chaining themselves to your front door are not.

A pair of men in their 20’s did precisely that in front of the Victoria’s Secret store on Broadway and 85th Street yesterday about 10 a.m., just a few minutes after it opened for business, blocking would-be customers from entering to browse for intimates and semi-intimates.

This created a minor commotion on the Upper West Side block for half an hour or so, until the police arrived to extricate the two men from their post, arrest them and charge them with disorderly conduct and “obstructing governmental administration.”

“They said Victoria’s Secret sends out one million catalogs a day, and they’re using nonrecycled paper, and it’s depleting our forests,” said one observer, 24-year-old Laura Bazelow, who had ventured outside from her job at the adjacent Origins bath shop to watch the goings-on. Of the protesters, she said: “They looked like rock stars — very Lower East Side, very punk rock. You know: ripped jeans, vintagey clothes, piercings.”

She added: “I shop there. I probably bought something there like a week ago. But now I’m kind of rethinking it. I mean, if we’re losing all our trees, you know?”

According to onlookers, the police, who numbered about 10 and drove up in squad cars and an Emergency Services Unit truck, had difficulty taking the demonstration seriously. Some smiled at one another as they prepared to saw through the men’s bicycle chains. And the men, at the sight of power tools, chuckled in resignation and allowed the officers to remove them.

The protesters were joined on the sidewalk by a co-ed group of about 10 others who held banners and chanted. And despite the specificity of their lyrics, printed on fliers of recycled paper —“We need trees, we need trees. More than sexy panties;” and “Victoria’s Secret, yes you could. Stop using old-growth wood!” — the group’s message was lost on some.

“They said, ‘Don’t wear underwear,’ ” said a man named Kata who works as the manager of Broadway Farm, a gourmet grocer across 85th Street from the store, but declined to share his surname.

He offered what could well be any New Yorker’s Monday-morning mantra: “I don’t know. I don’t care. I am busy here.”

Julius Dixon, one of his employees, chimed in.

“They were speaking out against the thong line,” said Mr. Dixon, who wore a butcher’s apron and dreadlocks tucked into a baseball cap. All three women working the cash registers erupted in laughter.

Inside Victoria’s Secret about an hour after the crowd had dispersed, the mood was secretive. A sales clerk said she hadn’t seen anything. A doorman said, “I can’t answer any questions; she could fire me,” apparently referring to the store manager.

Approached, the woman whom other shop workers indicated was the manager turned on her heel in a graceful catwalk move, the distant-looking smile on her face never fading. She handed over a Victoria’s Secret card on which somebody had penned the words “media relations,” and a 1-800 number. A message was left at the number.

Across Broadway at GameStop, a chain store that sells computer games, Victor Chan, an assistant manager, said he had heard about the scene from a U.P.S. deliveryman, but hadn’t noticed it himself.

“I’m the only person here, and there are other things on my mind,” he said. “This morning I had to go to the vet and put my dog to sleep. She was a miniature pinscher. She got diabetes last year. Her name was Mimi. I’ve thought about getting another dog, but it’s a lot of work to raise a puppy, so not right now.”