What’s Law Got to Do With It? : Residents, Officials Wonder How Some Silly Rules Got on the Books--and Why They Stayed

Planning to bare your bellybutton this summer along The Esplanade in Redondo Beach? Better think twice. On the books, anyway, exposed navels are against the law.

Ever inspired to break into a dance while crossing Main Street in El Segundo? You might want to suppress the urge. A local ordinance forbids dancing in the streets.

And did your 6-year-old daughter covet one of those pink-tinted chicks sold by pet shops last Easter? Well, you probably won’t find any for sale in Torrance. That’s because the city banned the sale of artificially colored fowl and rabbits in 1952.

America prides itself on being a society built on laws. But today, as our country celebrates the 217th anniversary of its independence, it is worth noting how quickly some of those laws can become outdated, rendering them unnecessary or downright strange.

Such measures, experts say, are often created in the heat of a controversy, when hot-button issues cry out for attention.

“They seem to come through in waves,” said Donna Christensen, a spokeswoman for Book Publishing Co. in Seattle, which helps local cities update their municipal codes. “You see a lot of hot issues coming through and suddenly everyone is adopting them--pit bulls, boomboxes, pot-bellied pigs . . . We do tend to get a little legislative-happy.”

A look at the South Bay reveals some prime examples.

In Inglewood, for instance, there is still a law on the books that bans barbershops from staying open on Sundays. That ordinance, said Assistant City Atty. Jack Ballas, dates back to the 1950s, when Sunday blue laws were still in fashion. Blue laws, so named because they were printed on blue paper every week, prohibited everything from dancing to playing sports on Sundays.

“Almost every city in the country had blue laws that banned anyone from doing business on Sunday because it was believed to be a holy day and therefore no one was able to transact money,” Ballas said. “We went through our code years ago and eliminated a lot of archaic laws. But it sounds like we may have missed one.”

Inglewood isn’t the only South Bay city that has tried to legislate morality.

Say you and your loved one are in Manhattan Beach having a romantic dinner, a little wine and are watching the sun set over the ocean. If the two of you aren’t married, you’d better follow with a cold shower. Alone.

That’s because, officially, sex between people who are not married to each other is illegal in Manhattan Beach. In fact, even renting a room to an unmarried couple with amorous intentions is prohibited.

Manhattan Beach’s laws against “resorting,” which were approved by the City Council in 1953, could be the South Bay’s most violated ordinances still on the books.

“I’ve been here 19 years and I’ve never heard of anybody complaining about that,” said Manhattan Beach Sgt. Vince Leone. “Resorting? I’ve never heard of that. Consorting, maybe. But I can tell you that we don’t go house-to-house to see if anybody is breaking the law.”

Lawndale also has a rarely enforced law that makes it illegal to register at a hotel, inn or rooming house under a false name.

“The intent of that is kind of obvious,” said Bart Swanson, the city’s public safety director. “It’s kind of a moral issue so you don’t get Mr. and Mrs. Smiths registering at hotels.”

South Bay cities also seem particularly concerned about public nuisances, although some ordinances designed to protect residents from annoyance are quirky at best.

In Torrance, for instance, it is illegal to throw mud or sand on the beach. Nor is it legal to ride a bike without a bell or device “capable of giving a signal audible for a distance of at least 100 feet.”

Torrance City Atty. John Fellows said he isn’t sure how long the bicycle bell law has been on the books, but figures the city was probably pressured into passing it by the bicycle-bell industry “trying to create a demand for the product.”

Fellows said his favorite anti-nuisance law is one that prohibits bringing or riding any cattle, horses, donkeys, goats, sheep, swine, dogs, cats or other animals onto the beach or into the ocean.

“So I guess in Torrance, not only can you not lead a horse to water, but you also can’t make him drink,” Fellows said.

Another commonly targeted nuisance that city officials have tried to put a damper on is noise. Lawndale prohibits anyone from making “any unnecessary noises or sounds which are physically annoying to persons of ordinary sensitiveness.”

El Segundo, meanwhile, frowns on anyone playing or beating any “drum, gong, triangle or tambourine” on city streets unless the city manager has authorized it.

“We are really down on tambourine players,” said El Segundo City Clerk Cindy Mortesen. “Needless to say, the Salvation Army is never here. God forbid you put on a Santa suit and ring a bell.”

That may not be surprising in a city that prohibits drawing hopscotch boxes on the sidewalk without a permit.

Another family of offbeat South Bay laws govern behavior in public parks.

Consider tackle football. In Lawndale, the sport is banned in parks. The city, which drew ridicule several years ago for landscaping its major thoroughfare with Astroturf, also makes it illegal to pick flowers.

Swanson said he recalls enforcing that law only one time, and that was in late 1989.

“It was one of these transient types, half-smashed, just ripping things up,” Swanson said. “It was right out here in front of City Hall.”

Hawthorne, meanwhile, has a law against climbing trees. Martin Trouillon, a Hawthorne resident who sells antique auto parts, called that law “kind of stupid.”

“Only little kids climb trees,” he said. “You don’t normally see any grown-ups in trees. The only reason I could think of for a law like that is if someone was up in the tree throwing things at people below.”

Manhattan Beach golfers who want a little putting practice at their local park better leave their clubs at home. That city prohibits putting in any city park.

And beachgoers in Manhattan Beach or Redondo Beach better not play at the water’s edge with a football, volleyball or Frisbee. It’s illegal.

“You see people goof around at the beach quite a bit, playing catch with a football or tossing a Frisbee,” said former Councilman and Mayor Bob Holmes.

But, he added, “I haven’t seen anyone hauled off with any handcuffs for that lately.”

In Torrance, bullfighting is illegal.

It is also a no-no in Gardena, although City Atty. Michael Karger said he will be asking the City Council on July 13 to repeal that ordinance in an effort to update the municipal code.

“There’s already a state law against bullfighting, so we don’t need a local ordinance,” Karger said. “The law probably came from when California was formed. It is unusual, but I can’t tell you why it remained on the books.”

The city, however, has no plans to repeal a law that prohibits pig owners from feeding garbage to their swine.

“I don’t know what you’re supposed to feed ‘em,” said Tom Parks, executive vice president of the Gardena Chamber of Commerce. “I suppose it came up for some reason. I just don’t know what.”

There are others that are just as unexplainable.

Like the one in El Segundo that bans dancing in the street. And the one in Hermosa Beach that outlaws pinball games and forbids anyone from leaning a bicycle against a parking meter.

“Our code is built around the complainer,” said Hermosa Beach Councilman Robert Benz, who is trying to get a measure on the Hermosa ballot that would force city leaders to provide more justification for the laws they pass. “We have so many laws on the books that people don’t even know about and, basically, they’re just totally unnecessary.”

But in his zeal to prevent lawmakers from creating unnecessary laws, Benz may be poised to create a questionable measure of his own, said Hermosa Mayor Albert Wiemans.

Benz’s proposal will “put us into a straitjacket,” Wiemans said. “You won’t be able to (legislate) anything.”

“I may agree with the fellow’s sentiment,” Wiemans added, “(but) I believe the cure is going to be worse than the disease.”

Staff writers Carol Chastang and Anthony Millican contributed to this story.