SIGNS : Standards Issue : For some businesses in Ventura, the hardest part of opening a shop is hanging out the shingle.

The portly, bearded gentleman representing Ventura’s Architectural Review Board had spoken, and Charles Bergere was dumbfounded.

Bergere remembers the meeting thus: It was early 1989, and Bergere was launching a store in mid-town Ventura called The Panda Kids. Inasmuch as pandas are black and white, Bergere’s wife, Ingrid, wanted the establishment’s sign to be black and white.

No, the ARB official pronounced, your sign must be yellow. A specific yellow, in fact: a vomitous hue that prompted Bergere to wonder aloud what other colors the board might deem acceptable.

None, the bearded man said. The sign will be yellow, this yellow, or the city will grant no permit. No permit, no sign.

“There was sort of a threat in his voice,” Bergere recalls.

Today The Panda Kids’ sign is . . . yes, vomit yellow. In Ventura, when it comes to opening up shop--and hanging out a shingle, the hard part is the shingle. To hear the city’s merchants tell it, the laws of physics are less exacting than the city’s laws for signs. The ordinance fills 17 single-spaced typewritten pages, a document more voluminous and considerably more complex than your average prenuptial agreement. Or the Bill of Rights, for that matter.

“It’s beyond comprehension,” says one merchant. That sentiment is not uncommon among Ventura’s business owners, many of whom believe the law to be more restrictive than wet suits at a stretching class.

Store signs, we can all agree, are a wonderful invention. They keep us from walking into a delicatessen in search of motor oil. Some urban planning experts favor signs that resemble a business’s principle product or service. A shoe-shaped sign for shoe repair, for example, or a cone-like sign for an ice cream parlor. This is a fine technique for some, but consider the plight of the proctologist, say, or the mortician.

The intent of Ventura’s ordinance is to prevent the Poinsettia City’s byways from acquiring the tawdry appearance of so many indistinguishable Southern California thoroughfares--Van Nuys Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley springs to mind--on which passersby are bludgeoned by a tangle of signs that merge into a screaming visual overload.

Ventura may have erred in the opposite direction. Last year at a community workshop on downtown revitalization, consultant Michael Bottomly mentioned in passing that the downtown area needs signs that are more visible, more informative, bolder, brighter, more inviting. You can look down Main Street, he said, and have no idea what stores or goods or services are available on the next block.

Bottomly’s observation elicited the most spirited reaction of the evening, a chorus of grumbles and jeers from local merchants who apparently regard Ventura’s signage dictates with the same affection most people have for gum disease.

Not that Ventura’s sign ordinance is unique. “Up and down the state, ours is not one of the tougher ones,” says Sherry Jeffrey of the city’s code enforcement staff.

Such ordinances, say Bottomly, are satisfying to professional planners, “but they are increasingly inaccessible to the people who have to abide by them.” That is, they are the legislative equivalent of VCR owners’ manuals.

No individual provision in Ventura’s sign ordinance is particularly difficult to understand. In the aggregate, however, all those sections and subsections are a bit much for the average small business owner who just wants to make his shop visible.

Section 8149.107 (t): Window signs must not exceed 40% of the window size.

Section 8149.7 (b): Interior signs visible primarily from outside mustn’t exceed 30% of the window size.

Section 8149.2424: Product or service advertising mustn’t exceed 20% of the total sign area.

Section 8149.16 (a): No sign on the front of a building may exceed one square foot for every foot of building frontage up to 30 feet plus one-half square foot for each additional foot of building frontage.

The stipulations go on and on like a Senate confirmation hearing, until the eyes glaze and the mind wanders off to simpler thoughts such as lunch options or the Dodgers’ winning percentage on artificial turf in night games in 1988.

Unfortunately, a great deal of confusion exists. “We can leave a temporary sign up permanently because it’s temporary,” explains one Ventura shop owner, “but we cannot put a permanent sign up temporarily because it’s permanent.”

That’s incorrect, but thanks for playing. According to section 8149 (r) of the sign ordinance, “no individual temporary sign shall be displayed for more than 30 consecutive days.” This rule should be taken seriously. A sandwich shop proprietor said that the moment his 30 days expired, a city code enforcer materialized as if by magic. You can get another 30-day permit, the enforcer advised, but you’ll have to remove the sign from your window and then put it up again.

Debbie Penta, like many of Ventura’s business proprietors, found the ordinance about as penetrable as the Koran. Upon opening the Paradise Cafe in mid-town Ventura last year, she took one look at the regulations and hired a contractor to jump through the city’s hoops.

All was well, but soon thereafter, according to Penta, a city code enforcer popped in and said the Christmas decorations painted on the cafe’s front window weren’t Christmasy enough. Is that supposed to be snow at the base of the palm tree? It could easily be taken for sand, and there’s nothing Christmasy about sand.

The rub here is that holiday decorations painted on store windows don’t require a permit. Other window paintings are considered temporary signs and do require a permit.

Penta insisted that the white stuff was snow.

“There’s no Santa,” the enforcer objected.

“I don’t want a Santa,” Penta insisted. “They’ve got a Santa next door!”

Open Air Bicycles proprietor Jon Avery didn’t see his sign until it had already been installed on a large appendage that rises from his store’s roof like a conning tower. “I was shocked when I saw what was up there,” he recalls.

What was up there was the softest sell on Main Street, the signage equivalent of a stage whisper. Though, according to Avery, the sign is as large as current law allows, the lettering looks absurdly small against its ample background. The lower lines on eye charts pack more of a punch.

In striking contrast, the letters on the sign next door at Heck Music Co. are enormous, an exception to the law because the sign predates the ordinance. If the letters were any larger they would be visible to the naked eye from the space shuttle.

Avery of Open Air is philosophical about the disparity. “Overall I’m not that concerned about it,” he says. “I don’t want the area to look like L.A.”

Moreover, he is pragmatic about the situation, particularly when people call and ask for directions to Open Air. “I tell them to look for Heck’s,” he says.

That’s all well and good, but only a fool would take his bike to a music store for repairs.