NOT POLITICAL. Relating to the NJ beaches being “closed”. How do you close a beach? Or is it simply that to be caught on a closed one is a misdemeanor? You could get arrested? I just don’t see how you could actually keep people off a beach. There aren’t gates. LOL.
Well…yes. You could get fined. In addition, there are no lifeguards. And access to any parking facilities would,be blocked.
Here on the west coach, we have occasionally experienced a “closed” beach due to sewage or oil spills. I think that once I remember them putting up that orange plastic temporary fencing around an area, but it would not have been difficult to get around it. I am not sure how they would effectively close a beach, or what the penalty would be if you got caught trespassing? In case of a sewage spill your punishment might very well be a very upset stomach!
There are gates at a lot of Maine beaches, when you enter from a road, because you have to pay an entrance fee. If you went through the gate when the park is closed, you would be trespassing. Then there are signs at each end of the beach, also - again, you would be trespassing if you ignored the signs.
When they close beaches, as happened in NJ, the beach has limited access ie you usually park in a lot that in turn controls access to the beach (it depends on the beach, of course, it would be a bit different where there is town parking where you can walk to the beach). For example, when Long Beach Island was closed in NJ, that is a state park and there is basically very few ways to get into it, and it involves driving, so it is pretty easy to block access. The other thing they do is have someone patrolling the beach and telling anyone who could sneak in to vacate it, or they would be trespassing and could arrest them/give them a ticket.
When beaches are closed because of the water quality, they usually IME let you go on the beach, just won’t let people go in the water.
Some beaches have gates or other barriers at their entrance points.
Beaches here are sometimes closed because of bacteria or rip currents.
It’s access to the beach that is closed. Parking lots, bridges to the sand/water, camp grounds.
I’m pretty sure by federal law you can always walk the high water line, so if you are willing to walk several miles, you can use that beach (no life guards, no services). You can walk the high water line in front of the Kennedy complex, but it’s a long way around the point from where you can park to get access to the shoreline. There is always a big fight about access to beaches in Malibu as there are public paths from the road down to the shore, and the homeowners don’t like that so they block them off and pretend they are private. They aren’t and you have the right to access them an plunk your blanket right in front of rich people’s homes as long as you can find access, and find somewhere to park to use that access.
In NJ it was the state parks that were closed - the parking lots, the paths, the camp grounds. Many of the beach access bridges and paths along the Jersey shore are city/county owned and those were still open.
Parts of Malibu (the ones with $10 plus homes…owned by very rich people) deny access by closing pedestrian with metal gates. Lawsuits aplenty.
Beaches are “closed” all the time for various reasons–red tide, dangerous rip tides, lack of lifeguards, storm fronts. Basically you shouldn’t go in or near the water. Signs are posted (usually with the reason).
They won’t arrest you for being on the beach but ignoring the conditions is hazardous to your health.
@bevhills I remember reading a hilarious article about a similar situation where homeowners were trying to keep people off “their” beach and used private security to chase people off. The beach in the article was legally public, and and someone who had a friend on the CA coastal commission (or whichever group it is that determines these things) invited them to test it out together.
So they went to the beach and sure enough security came to chase them away. The coastal commissioner pulled out maps and other legal proof and insisted that the beach was public, whereupon cops were called. The cops, despite the commissioner’s arguments, kicked them off the beach.
@anomander:
The same thing happens on the NJ shore, people in the shore towns did everything in their power to keep what are basically town public beaches “private”, and the courts ended up ruling that since the town, not the homeowners, owned the beach, they had to let people from the general public use the beach, town resident or not. They were allowed to charge to use the beach and could charge outsiders considerably more than town residents, but the same kind of games used to go on, private security, the local cops (often in plainclothes and basically operating as a goon squad) chasing people off and so forth.
What made it even more maddening is many of these towns got funding through the Green Acres program to use in preserving the beach, and also relied on the Army Corps of Engineers to replenish the beach after storms and so forth, but while using public funds tried to maintain it as a private beach for homeowners along the beach only,that took nerve.
In Hawaii, they get it right. Every beach is a public beach.
My BIL has a house in Ocean Grove NJ, right by the Asbury Park line. Two very different towns, as Ocean Grove began as a religious community and Asbury Park is where the music club is that gave Bruce Springsteen his start. The boardwalk runs from one to the other and up and down the coast.
The rules for OG are that if you get to the beach before 9 AM (I think) you can stay all day for free, otherwise you need to show a pass or pay for admission (and they hire dozens of people to sit around all day at these access points to police this).
We were visiting and SIL’s H and their son were out jogging in the morning and tried to jog on the beach. Sorry, it’s closed on Sunday until noon. Completely closed, not just un-free! This was in early June so he asked them, “oh, is that because it’s Ramadan”? And the person didn’t know what Ramadan was…
@greenwitch:
Yeah, ocean grove used to be a trip (it is a great beach, though). The rules have been toned down a bit, in large part because Ocean Grove is now an incorporated part of another town and the religious laws, like not driving on Sunday there, no longer would be legal (plus the boardwalk, though owned by the Methodists still, gets green acre funds, so public law supercedes religious law). But yep, they last I checked still had the Sunday opens at noon rule:)
I was also scared there once because the life guard was putting out the red flag. To me, that means dangerous conditions have closed the water, but I spoke to her and she said it just meant that people should swim between the red flags and not on the jetty side of them. They are very controlling! You see this big stretch of water between the jetties and 50 people crammed into a small slice in the middle. It was still fun though.
. That doesn’t really capture AP as it is now. It’s music, really great restaurants, excellent beaches, and quirky stuff to do: theater, Pinball Museum, etc. The latest iteration of Asbury Park is really pretty great. A lot of people I know are moving there, buying second homes there, or bringing their families to hang out for the day.
I agree. It’s just very different and much more lively than OG.
National parks and forests have been closed at times, during budget-driven shutdowns.