We seem to be having a spate of beach municipalities being really concerned about bare feet on boardwalks and piers.
I’m not even sure where it’s coming from.
We’ve known for quite a while that the Jersey shore was nuts in this direction. In Boardwalk Talk I noted that Ocean City had required shoes on their boardwalk for a long time. Cape May has also banned bare feet after 7:00pm for quite a while. I guess they’re not considered classy enough.
Then more recently, Wildwood, NJ went to ban saggy pants. Oh, and while they were at it, they decided to ban bare feet on their boardwalk. For safety. Here’s what that ordinance says:
4-2.6 Footwear on Boardwalk.
It shall be unlawful to walk or stand on the boardwalk and approaches thereto without wearing shoes, sandals or other protective footwear adequate to prevent injury from splinters.
Now it’s moved to Florida.
Florida!
Fellow barefoot Alan Adler was recently there, and he provided us with this photo of the Deerfield Beach pier.
Deerfield Beach Pier Sign
As you can see, it cites Ordinance 50-113. Here’s what that says, in part:
Sec. 50-113. – Fishing pier regulations.
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to do any acts set out in this section upon the city fishing pier.
(1) Sit on pier rails.
(2) Walk or run upon the pier without shoes.
(3) Fish in a careless manner so as to cause injury to any other person upon the pier or upon the beach, including but not limited to, double trolley fishing, fishing with more than four poles, three for fishing and one for bait. Trolley fishing is a type of fishing that takes a very heavy weight tied to a heavy line. The weight is cast as far out as possible to use as an anchor point. Then smaller baited fishing lines are clipped onto the main fishing line and slipped down the fishing line to the desired fishing spot. When a fish hits, the secondary line, it is hauled up to the main line to extract the fish, re-baited and re-deployed. Individuals caught double trolley fishing will be prohibited from using the pier for fishing for a period of six months.
* * *
I guess you can still skip. Maybe.
This ordinance was just passed in May of 2012. They just snuck it by us when we weren’t looking, and there’s not a darn thing we can do about it. Looking at their meeting minutes, there wasn’t even any discussion about it. It just passed right through the City Council. And as far as I can tell from the picture, the pier boards look perfectly safe for bare feet.
Alan also went to Cocoa Beach, where he saw this sign.
Cocoa Beach Pier Sign
As far as I can tell there is no ordinance authorizing this sign, so I have doubts about its enforceability. On the other hand, they do have a very broad ordinance authorizing their rangers and police to make what they call “reasonable commands” which include a command “[t]o refrain from engaging in any activity or to act in any way which is likely to cause endangerment to himself or others.”
But again, nothing authorizes that sign.
There is also this sign, right on the pier at Cocoa Beach.
On the Cocoa Beach Pier
[Again, picture provided by Alan Adler.]
Again, those boards look perfectly safe for bare feet.
But look at that picture more closely.
Notice a second sign partly obscured by the pole? Here it is:
Watch Your Step
Unbelievable.
They tell us that “Shoes are required” because the pier might be uneven. They are supposedly concerned about our safety. But when it comes to an obviously unsafe shoe, all they say is to “Watch your step.” No rule. No outright ban. No power of the state making a command. Just a suggestion to watch your step.
It’s like the idea of always wearing shoes is so ingrained they don’t even realize the utter contradiction between the two signs.
And that’s what we have to deal with.
And that’s why new signs keep going up.
Ahcuah 
“Walking surfaces may be UNEVEN”
OH NO! I can’t imagine anything more horrifying that that.
What a wonderful world is this with warning signs “Walking surfaces may be uneven”. The logical next step after cups telling me “Content may be hot”. What if someone bumps his head on the sign that didn’t warn of its sharp edges?
Only in America …
This is ridiculous.
I’d say walking on the pier is actually safer than the beach itself, where sharp objects might be hiding in the sand (rare, but it happens). Why not posting a sign saying “Enter at your own risk”?
As a child I got a splinter in my foot once on a wooden beach pier. The splinter was prompty removed at the first aid post nearby. No big deal. I still remember it because it was such an exception.
To me beaches are part of nature.
(Some may argue there is almost no nature left because almost every part of our globe has been influenced in some way or other by man – but then I prefer to regard people as part of nature, not as standing outside of nature.)
Nature means “enter at your own risk”.
I love entering nature at my own risk, it is welcoming me as I am, not judging me for superficial things – and if I run a risk it is entirely my own business, with no one else to blame.
Of course you can still put up rules. “Don’t leave your rubbish behind” is a rule that makes a lot of sense because it helps preserve the beauty of the place. Whenever I go into nature, I do my best to cause as little disturbance as I can and leave nothing behind but my footprints on the soft ground.
So tired of laws to “protect me from myself.”
This stuff makes me sick. What is worse is that this lack of thought and debate will be taken as a ‘reasonable’ excuse for yet more discrimination. Tear the signs down!
None of the footwear they label ‘protective’ even qualifies as such under law. Zero thought.
The wildwood NJ one is quite ironic for me. Sometime during the late 1970s or early 1980s I was there on that miles long boardwalk and made an interesting observation. There were 2 fast food restaurants side by side, a Roy Rogers and a McDonalds, right on the boardwalk among all the other shops and pinball arcades. I went in one to get a sandwich, barefoot, as many around me were, and sat down on a bench to eat it. As I looked around, I noticed something really stood out. The glass on the doors was clear of all signs – nothing. And many people were eating barefoot and shirtless inside, were waiting in line, going in and out barefoot. Dozens in 15 minutes. Yet the same exact restaurants inland had standardized signs saying “No Bare Feet by order of Board of Health”. That was the moment that made me really stop believing that there really were such regulations. If there really were regulations, they would not make an exception there. It would apply everywhere. Of course, it was not until the age of the internet that I had the real proof with those SBL health Department letters. I walked up and down that boardwalk barefoot hundreds of times, went to arcades and other businesses, for years. And how ironic that the town just passed an ordinance. But today, I’m sure that everyone voluntarily puts on flip flops when they get to the boardwalk, so they probably rarely even need to do anything.