NEWPORT BEACH : Cruising Teen-Agers Spark Complaints

Summer may be months away but restless teen-agers in Newport Beach have already started taking advantage of warm winter nights to indulge in one of summer’s great pastimes--Peninsula cruising.

This traffic sport on Balboa Boulevard has drawn complaints from nearby residents who in the midst of winter are not prepared to face the onslaught of young people who typically blare music and exhaust from their cars.

Most people living and working in the area expect the cruisers during the summer months, as do the police who enforce strict anti-cruising laws to halt the activity. But they don’t expect the noise, traffic congestion and litter from the young cruisers so early in the year.

Councilman John W. Hedges says he has received a number of complaints from constituents, callers who often hold the telephone receiver out the window on a weekend night to give him an earful of the noise outside.

“We have some pretty good rules for the summertime, but once in a while we get these hot winter nights” that require regulation, Hedges said.

He is looking into possibly establishing checkpoints such as those set up on summer weekends to deter those who do not live and work in the Peninsula area.

Currently, the city ordinance gives the police authority to set up checkpoints at 15th Street and prevent those without resident or business decals on their cars from entering the Peninsula area where cruisers congregate.

Those checkpoints could be established in non-summer months if the Police Department feels the cruisers are posing too big a traffic problem.

Hedges says most of the complaints have been coming from the 6th Street area.

He said he will continue working with the Police Department to see if a pre-summer plan should be put into effect to better regulate the activity.