The Beach Booze Ban

Perspective

Summer 2008 was just another day at the beach. Was The Ban responsible?

I RIDE MY BICYCLE. I talk on my handheld cell phone as I pedal, too. You can still do that in this country——last time I checked. Can’t do it driving a car anymore. Our government watches out for us. That’s why alcohol at the beach is no mas. “The Ban” kicked in this summer as a trial to curb rowdiness at city beaches, and it’s now on the November ballot as Proposition D.

For years, the beach vibe had been getting hard, and more and more bad things were happening. Pacific Beach had earned a national reputation with young people as the party place, because it seemed to offer almost no restrictions. The cops and lifeguards are in charge of keeping order, but it had become a huge task. On Labor Day 2007, something served as a tipping point, and a beach riot erupted. The riot was the last straw, the impetus——or lever——for The Ban.

I ride my bike along the boardwalk between PB and South Mission Beach. I ride and catch snippets of conversations——real-life sound bites——and I see things you just don’t find happening in other places. Like “Slow-Motion Man,” an aging Roller-blader, who rules the boardwalk with his laid-back ballet on wheels. I grew up a beach kid, and I’ve never outgrown it. At 23, I moved to PB from a resort town in Michigan. I’ve lived here for more than 20 years, and I still enjoy the easy feeling of the beach lifestyle.

At 11 a.m. this past Fourth of July, I began my bike ride on Sail Bay near the Catamaran Hotel, where a pair of promo girls for the latest energy drink were pushing a cart and handing out free samples. Last year, you scarcely could have squeezed a SWAT vehicle through the crowd. This year? Easy. I took a free energy drink and saw a couple of teenagers who’d grabbed two apiece. This place could use a jolt, I thought.

Celebrating liberty in America has traditionally constituted a party. This year’s Independence Day produced a fair number of beach partiers. But most were families——mellow families——and groups of teens who might be described as wholesome. The beach vibe was so mellow, three energy drinks apiece couldn’t have produced enough angst to propel a riot.

Like many modern cities, San Diego became more urbanized in recent years. Urban things got to be cool. At the same time, a growing obsession with violence and Ultimate Fighting was evolving. Bell-bottoms and goatees never threatened to destroy our beach lifestyle. But the sometimes-aggressive urban trend has washed ashore along with the spring breakers and rowdies. That tide has risen over time and created a new, harsher beach vibe.

This past summer, the beach was positively mellow, and the ban on one civil liberty aimed at preserving some others is likely to get the blame or credit. There are reasonable folks who don’t approve of The Ban, believing it’s an overreaction, a government response that’s out of line. But something had to be done.

Maybe an outright ban isn’t necessary; maybe just weekends or summers would do the trick. Maybe there’s a compromise, a combination of alternate solutions that would be just as effective. That may well be a question for another time. But it’s not what we’re being asked to do on November 4. It’s either yes or no to booze at the beach.

Time marches on. Things change. And so far, PB remains an experience unique in the world. But in recent years, we’d begun wrecking our own precious resource. And letting others wreck it. I’m definitely in favor of banning that.

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