Cabdrivers’ Freedom of Fashion Still Unrestricted : Clothes: Unlike Los Angeles’ taxi drivers, nobody tells Ventura County’s cabbies how to dress.

Ship his fingerprints to Sacramento. Inspect his driver’s license. Scrutinize his meters if you must. But don’t tell Ken Cornelius he can’t wear Bermuda shorts and Birkenstock sandals as he pilots one of two taxicabs in Ojai.

“That’s blasphemy,” Cornelius said Tuesday. “Don’t go calling the Ojai City Council and giving them ideas.”

In Los Angeles, the City Council is enforcing a strict dress code for cabdrivers.

Among the provisions: no shorts, no sweat suits, no untucked shirts, no bare feet or open-toed footwear, no leisure suits and no skirts shorter than knee-length for women drivers. The potential fine for drivers who violate the code is $500.

In Ventura County, meanwhile, about three dozen cabbies continue to prowl the highways and byways in essentially unrestricted fashion.

“There’s no dress code for cabdrivers,” said Ventura police Service Officer Rick French. “But they aren’t allowed to use each other’s jokes. We have an ordinance for that.” He was kidding.

A spot check of city codes in Ventura, Oxnard and Ojai disclosed no dress code provisions for taxi drivers.

And a spot check of county cabbies disclosed Cornelius’ toes, peeking out from the worn leather of his size 11 Birkenstock sandals, and the untucked shirt of Joey Avila, last seen in a Gold Coast cab at the Oxnard Airport.

“If you’ve got your shirt tucked in, and you get out of your cab more than three times, it’s not going to be tucked in,” Avila said. “You’ve got to be comfortable.”

Avila, a driver for two years, wore, with his untucked white shirt, sneakers and a pair of slightly rumpled blue slacks.

“I got up this morning real quick,” he said, “so my old lady didn’t have time to iron.”

All this does not mean that the clothing of a Ventura County cabbie is entirely ungoverned.

“We ask them to come up in clean, neat clothes, to look professional if they can,” said Marty Datwyler, who runs the nine-car Yellow Cab of Ventura with her husband, John.

She said she had never fired a driver for his dressing habits. But about a year ago, she said, a driver came to work in Bermuda shorts and sandals.

“It looked like he was going to the beach. So we asked him to go home and change . . . I think we’ve got things in hand,” she said.

“I require dark pants and white shirts,” said Red Hardin, operator of the 15-vehicle Yellow Cab of Oxnard. “If they complain, I just don’t put them on the road. Very seldom does anyone say anything.”

And Joey Avila said that Gold Coast Cab requires white shirts and slacks, and that ties are not an uncommon sight on weekends, when well-heeled visitors arrive in need of transport to pricey hotels.

Which leaves just one question: Is Ventura County even remotely close to imposing any fashion rules on its taxi drivers?

“I’d probably insist on the public voting on it,” Cornelius said. “I like being comfortable.”