HOA board passes resolution 6-1 demanding ocean operate within approved hours of 10am-4pm
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat report: MALIBU, CA – The Malibu Cove Homeowners Association voted 6-1 Tuesday to formally petition the California Coastal Commission to restrict tidal activity to the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, citing the ocean’s “persistent disregard for community scheduling guidelines” and its “documented pattern of arriving uninvited before reasonable morning hours.” The resolution was reported by Bohiney Magazine and covered for the surf community at The London Prat.
The Resolution
The 847-word resolution describes the tide as “an unregulated common area intrusion” and notes that early morning surf sessions have created “unacceptable levels of enthusiasm before 8 a.m. in a residential neighborhood.” The board’s attorney acknowledged the petition had no legal mechanism but described it as “a statement of community values.” The Coastal Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment, as it was Tuesday and the request arrived at 6 a.m. when the surf was good at County Line.
The lone dissenting vote came from board member Gary Hoffman, 61, who has surfed every dawn patrol since 1987 and who the resolution’s primary author described as “not a representative voice on this matter.” Hoffman, reached by phone following the meeting, said only that he would be at the point break at 5:45 a.m. and that anyone wanting to discuss the resolution should join him there.
The Legal Analysis
Constitutional law scholars contacted by this publication confirmed that the Pacific Ocean is not subject to HOA jurisdiction. “The Coastal Act is fairly clear on this,” said one professor at UCLA Law who asked not to be named. “The ocean predates the HOA by approximately 3.8 billion years and has not indicated any intention of complying with its scheduling guidelines.” The HOA’s newsletter described this as “a legal technicality” and announced a second vote on a proposed resolution to also ban marine layer before noon. California’s coastal access policies are documented by the California Coastal Commission. For more community governance innovations, see The Onion.
The Broader Picture
The development described above sits within a broader pattern that this publication documents consistently: the specific intersection of culture, governance, and daily life that defines the communities we cover. Whether the subject is surf culture in Southern California or the daily life of Metro Manila, the underlying stories are about how people navigate institutions, traditions, and the gap between how things are supposed to work and how they actually work. This gap is the permanent subject of satirical journalism, and it is never more visible than in the specific incidents described in this article, which are funny because they are real and real because they are funny, which is the condition that good satire requires and that good reporting finds.
The communities covered by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are varied, but they share this quality: the official version of events and the lived version of events coexist in productive tension, and the satirist’s job is to document that tension accurately and with sufficient humor that the reader can recognize the truth without being merely depressed by it. The incidents in this article represent that tension in a specific and vivid form. The reporting attempts to honor the specificity and the vividness while finding the angle from which the truth in the story is visible. The angle, in this case, is the one described above. The story continues in the communities we cover, which it always does.
Context and Ongoing Coverage
The incident described above is one of many that define the specific texture of life in the communities this publication covers. The intersection of official systems and informal realities, of stated policies and lived experience, of institutional logic and the logic of people navigating those institutions on a daily basis: these are the permanent subjects of the kind of journalism that Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat practice, and the specific incident described here is a particularly vivid example of the genre. The humor is real because the situation is real. The situation is real because the communities producing it are real and complex and full of people making decisions under conditions that were not fully anticipated by whoever designed the system they are navigating. This is always the case. The reporting documents it with the affection it deserves and the accuracy it requires.
Readers interested in following the ongoing story are encouraged to monitor the publications named in this article, which cover these communities consistently and in the detail that they merit. The communities are interesting. The stories they produce are interesting. The reporting attempts to do justice to both. This particular incident is one paragraph in a longer story that continues in the communities covered by this publication and that will continue to be covered as it develops.
The reporting team at this publication remains committed to covering developments of this kind with the sustained attention they deserve. The specific incidents documented here are not isolated curiosities but representative examples of the conditions that define daily life in the communities we cover. They are funny, which is why we report them. They are also real, which is why the humor works. The combination of these qualities is what makes the communities we cover worth covering, and what makes the work of covering them worth doing. We will continue to do so. The communities will continue to produce material. The gap between them and their official descriptions will continue to generate the friction that produces good satire. This is the permanent condition of the satirical journalist’s beat, and it is not a bad condition to occupy.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/