San Clemente Cuts Barbers Deeply

The barbershop pole -- a piece of Main Street Americana with its spiraling red, white and blue stripes -- has fallen victim to a sign ordinance in San Clemente that prohibits moving, revolving or flashing signs.

The owners of three barbershops in the city have been told to turn off their poles or face a $100 fine. Jim Smith, a city code enforcement officer, said he sent letters to the shops after he received complaints about the barber poles.

“I’m not paying it,” said Johnny Bravo, owner of the San Clemente Barbershop. “To actually try to implement this, I think, is a detriment to the city.”

The other two shop owners, however, have turned their poles off, he said.

Jerry Rodriguez, 68, who owns a barbershop on Mariposa, said he switched off his pole the same day the warning arrived. He didn’t want to, but a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks, he said.

“I think it’s absurd, stupid, unfair,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a tradition. Everybody knows that when the barber pole is on, it means you’re open.”

The ordinance, a revised version of one passed in 1986, helped rid the city of a hodge-podge of signs that were an eyesore and hurt the city’s image, Councilman G. Wayne Eggleston said.

“A few years ago this city looked slummy, with signs and banners and all sorts of things,” Eggleston said. “The city has done its very best to make itself more presentable to the public.”

Eggleston said the moving, flashing and blinking signs were a traffic hazard because they distracted motorists.

“We’ve got a war going on,” Bravo said, “and we have red, white and blue flags assembled on street lights that the city put in and they’re waving in the wind. I don’t buy it. I don’t understand why they don’t have anything better to do.”

Bravo said he’d fight the fine in court, if necessary.

It wouldn’t be the first time the city’s sign ordinance has been challenged. Last December, the city took a surf shop owner to court over a lighted, 10-foot cross he had atop his place of business.

Richard Landingham put the cross up, with two American flags, shortly after Sept. 11. A judge ultimately ruled that Landingham could keep his display.

Eggleston said city officials realize the law may appear harsh but are mindful that if they start making exceptions, it could water down the ordinance. “Where do you stop?” he said.

Several residents have called City Hall to complain about the barber pole clampdown. “We understand the nostalgic attachment to a moving barber pole,” said Jim Holloway, the city’s community development director. “But ... we can’t say you can’t have any moving signs except barber poles.”

But Councilwoman Susan Ritschel said the council should do just that. “This is something we ought to exempt,” she said. “The rotating barbershop sign is an American tradition, and I certainly don’t want to see it banned from San Clemente.” She said she will bring the matter up at the next council meeting.

Mayor Stephanie Dorey agrees the city should consider exempting barbershop poles.

And San Clemente can turn to no less an authority than the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, which recently accepted two barber poles from the William Marvy Co., which manufactures them in St. Paul, Minn.

“Barbershop poles evoke many memories of the American Main Street,” said David Shayt, curator in the museum’s Division of Cultural History.