Alternating Alcohol Days
Are you for or against the beach booze ban? Well, some of us are kinda for it and kinda against it. Actually, I really wish it were legal to drink alcohol on all beaches in California. Then, we wouldn’t have everyone in the world coming to Pacific Beach, Mission Beach and Ocean Beach to drink! Well, good luck getting those other beaches to change back.
For some people, an all out alcohol ban on the beaches has been difficult to swallow. So, we have gone through a series of “compromises” in an attempt to minimize the alcohol-related problems.
To clear the beach of drunks late at night and prevent them from living on the beach, we have limited the hours of drinking. I guess that’s been okay, but sometimes it seems silly when you see an officer writing a ticket for drinking a beer on a hot summer day at 11:45 a.m. when we’re sweating bullets, or at 8:15 p.m. when we’re sipping shiraz at sunset.
During the same political era, the city imposed the alcohol ban on the boardwalk. Well, that sure did clear up a lot of drunken encounters. But, I have to admit that I used to enjoy telling my friends from Orange County how we can ride a bike down the boardwalk with a beer in hand.
Since then, the proposed compromises have been total failures. What were the politicians thinking when they drafted a ballot measure to ban alcohol on Mission Beach and parts of PB, but not in north PB or on the bay?
Nobody wanted to further shrink the drinking zone, thereby packing the drinkers tighter together, in the more laid-back areas of PB. The next great idea was the keg ban. Well, at least the can collectors made more money. The trash collectors suffered though.
Some of you are saying these compromises all represent successive losses of freedom for the alcohol-drinking public. Well, wake up to the sobering reality of our crowded community.
If you want to live in the middle of the barren desert, you can have all the freedom you want. Yes, it’s sad, but if we keep putting more and more people into our non-expanding beach area, we can’t let everyone do whatever they want and expect everyone to get along without incident.
Now, here is my wild idea for the next compromise: We can alternate days of drinking on the beach, with days of no alcohol on the beach based upon the calendar day of the month. Naturally, the “odd days” will be drinking days. We might even expand the hours a bit. Then, on “even days” the teetotalers and other like-minded individuals can go to the beach without the worry of alcohol related disturbances. With this plan the Fourth of July will always be “dry” on the beach, thereby saving San Diego taxpayers a keg-full of money.
Alcohol on the beach has been a hot political topic for a long time. Good politics is all about compromise. Let’s bring the community together and toast to a compromise, ‘Alternating Alcohol Days’ on the beach! What do ya think?
Chris Olson, Pacific Beach

Middle-ground proposals merit attention by task force
Thank you for your front page coverage of the Beach Alcohol Task Force meeting on March 26 (“Alcohol task force gets to the point,” March 29).
You reported that one of the public speakers, Ocean Beach resident Craig Klein, proposed stabling “family recreational overlay zones,” where beach drinking would be prohibited. Drinking would still be allowed elsewhere on the beach.
Mr. Klein states that “this issue is a balancing of rights. We do have zones, we have surfing zones, we have swim-only zones and then we have other zones that are flexible. I don’t see why the same approach cannot be used on the sand with respect to the alcohol issue.”
Another public speaker, a father trying to raise his children in North Mission Beach, similarly recommended dividing beaches into alcohol and no alcohol zones. He was fed up with the intrusion of beach drunks into his neighborhood, suggesting that beach alcohol zones be situated alongside business districts instead.
These middle-ground proposals merit consideration by the Beach Alcohol Task Force. Task-force members should ask the lifeguards and police officers who work at the beach everyday what they think about drinking and no drinking zones. Would conditions be improved or not?
Buz Rahe, Mission Beach