Newly appointed D4 Supervisor Alan Wong launched a competition to find SF’s dumbest law and gave examples like not being allowed to play ball games in the streets.
But why did such a law exist in the first place? Is it dumb? Or just a relic of its time? Let’s do a deep dive on some of the so-called dumb laws and why we owe a little more respect and curiosity to the city caretakers who came before us.
Supervisor Wong is brand-spanking-new to being a legislator. He was appointed to replace the humiliating pet shop pick, Beya Alcaraz, who infamously got her seat by walking up to Mayor Daniel Lurie at a night market and shooting her shot. So there’s a lot of eyes on Supervisor Wong’s next move. Will he treat his position with respect and reverence?
Well, he just launched a tongue-in-cheek contest to find San Francisco’s dumbest law, so there’s a clue for ya.
Some of the examples Supervisor Wong includes seem ridiculous at first glance. Why the hell would the City and County of San Francisco ban ball games in the streets? Talk about the Fun Police! Sheesh.
But if you have ever seen the inside of an old baseball, you might have a better idea of why that law was passed back in 1938. That was the year the National League adopted the “deadened” ball, with four stitches instead of three. It made ballgames closer and challenged players to adapt; before then, the “rabbit” style ball that could go far afield was most popular.
But the other huge societal change around 1938 was the widespread adoption of cars. The streets transformed practically overnight when cheap personal vehicles and maintained roads opened up new possibilities nationwide. And because children were used to playing in the street, it created tragedy after tragedy. The Chronicle archives are dotted with stories like little graves, stories of child after child mowed down in the middle of a ball game or outside play. So at the time, the law made quite a bit of sense.
Another example Wong cites in his Google Form is around roosters and fowls. He claims that, according to his interpretation, the rules around keeping fowls are vague, so someone could have a rooster. In reality, a whole separate law covers that under a noise nuisance, making it much more practical for the city to process a neighbor’s complaint instead of wasting time counting birds. It does not appear that Wong understands the separate ordinance or how the two interplay.
These examples seem comical at first glance, but the more curious you get about them, the more the laws reveal about the age they’re from. And instead of diving into the context or helping citizens decode the laws that most of us don’t have time to read or understand, as is the job of a supervisor, Wong decided to poke fun.
More importantly, the city is failing to reach Vision Zero, a goal of zero traffic-related fatalities. It’s widely known that for several years we weren’t even bothering with traffic enforcement. There’s a lack of serious effort to get city control over AV usage of our tax-maintained public streets. Perhaps what Supervisor Wong should hone in on are things that aren’t on the books yet, ways to adapt to our ever- changing city. If you only focus on penalizing the past, how can you be ready for tomorrow?
In an ironic turn, Supervisor Wong’s first piece of legislation, aimed at repealing the Sunset Dunes conversion of the Great Highway, was dead on arrival. And he blamed his neighboring legislator, Supervisor Shamonn Walton, for not voting for it. Later, it came to light that he hadn’t deigned to walk over and talk to Walton about the legislation…Talk about a dumb law.
It isn’t a bad idea to regularly review and update the municipal code. But you gotta respect it, read it, translate it, and maybe even comprehend it first.
