Council to Vote on Booze Ban at Beaches, Parks : Alcohol: The success of drinking restrictions at La Jolla Shores encourages a new attempt to totally eliminate drinking at many recreational areas.

Spurred by the success of a ban on alcohol at La Jolla Shores, City Manager John Lockwood proposed to the City Council on Wednesday a wide-ranging ban on booze at all city beaches and at several coastal and inland parks.

The Public Facilities and Recreation Committee, which in 1989 called for the total ban--a move the council rejected--also offered a booze-limits package Wednesday, but a much less restrictive one than Lockwood suggested.

Lockwood’s proposal would ban alcohol permanently in parts of Mission Beach and Pacific Beach and in all of Mission Bay Park, Sunset Cliffs and Ocean Beach, Mission Trails Regional Park, Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, Tecolote Canyon Natural Park and Marian Bear Memorial Park, which spans San Clemente Canyon.

The Public Facilities and Recreation Committee called for only a one-year trial ban at most of those facilities, and no ban at all for Mission Beach and Pacific Beach.

Saying he would “not care to speculate” on how the council might vote when it considers Lockwood’s proposal at its meeting next week, George Loveland, manager of the city’s Park and Recreation Department, said he feels the council will at least be more sensitive to the growing problem of alcohol abuse at city parks and beaches.

“The problem has gotten worse over a number of years,” he said. “It’s by no means anything sudden. It’s an evolution brought about by the tremendous growth of the city and county. This was the outgrowth of a series of recommendations by the Park and Recreation Department, which felt the problem was becoming uncontrollable.”

Loveland said the “surprisingly strong and positive” effects of the La Jolla Shores ban--which was enacted in September of last year--has made a more lasting ban at all city beaches a more palatable political alternative. When the council considered a total ban a little over a year ago, it rejected it largely on the strength of public opposition.

“But the police, in particular, have noticed a marked decline in alcohol-related problems at La Jolla Shores, and many other people have reported a difference in the behavior of people who come to the beach,” Loveland said.

Loveland said beach-goers who drink appear different in character these days from those who once wanted to enjoy “a beer or two. . . . In my days on the beach, when I was a youth, people who came to the ocean to drink seemed to just want to get away. But now, the rationale seems to be, ‘Let’s go to the beach and get drunk and have a wild time.’

“Although it’s still a minority causing the trouble, it’s having a broad impact on a lot of people.”

He said the ban is being extended to such places as Mission Trails Regional Park, “because it, like many of the areas affected, is a nature preserve. Alcohol is having a negative effect in such places.

“This proposal is negative in the sense that, obviously, there’s less choice for the public. That’s always the case when you enact any law--you have less choice. But we’re hardly setting the trend here. Alcohol is banned at most city beaches in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and in other parts of San Diego County.”

Loveland said a trial ban is working effectively not only at La Jolla Shores but also at North Park Community Park. And largely on the basis of those efforts, he said, a trial ban is about to be invoked at Larsen Field in San Ysidro.