Lifeguards in action on the Ocean Grove beach. 2014/ © Paul Goldfinger photo Click to make bigger.   Re-post. 2016.

By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger

A mailing was sent out today for those who want to obtain their beach “tags” now.  If you order by mail, there will be a $7.00 mailing fee. The cost for 2016 will be the same as 2015. You have to sign and return the enclosed card which promises that you will “follow all of the beach rules and regulations.”

Is this unique, or do other towns require that you sign a pledge to follow the rules?  Do you think these rules are stated clearly?   I wonder how many of you have actually read the rules.   If you haven’t, here are a few that are of particular interest.

1. You may not swim at the North End beach because it is reserved as the “primary surfing beach.”
2. You must “obey lifeguards.”  So if you are a sweet young thing in a bikini, you may not want to agree to this rule.
3. Use of electronic devices such as radios are only permitted if you wear a headset.
4. Children under age 12 must be accompanied by an adult.  Will you parents with precocious, brilliant kids restrain them from going to the beach alone?
5. No disrobing or changing clothes on the beach.  Heck, that is a popular spectator sport.
6. No burying persons below grade or in standing position.  Does this mean that both the buryer and the buryee cannot be standing?  Do the same rules apply if you are burying a dead person?
7. Sports fishing is allowed in “locations not being used for bathing or surfing.”  This could use some clarification.
8. No flying kites over beach or boardwalk.  Is that 24/7 or only while the lifeguards are there?
9. Only service dogs are allowed on the beach or boardwalk.  Do they mean year-round?
10.  No bikes, skateboards or skates except between 3 am to 10 am  (Neptune ordinance)   Why is Neptune Township writing this rule?   (Thanks I.M. Radar.)  The CMA is empowered to make rules for the beach and boardwalk.  The CMA has jurisdiction over those areas.
11.  No smoking on the beach.  CMA allows smoking in their parks, but they probably made this specific area smoke-free because people pay to get on; they don’t pay to visit the parks, including Auditorium Square Park which, strangely, allows smoking despite the big wooden structure next door.
12. Ball playing, Frisbees,  sports activities permitted “as conditions allow.”

Well,  you get the idea.  There are 45 such rules and regulations;  you have to decide which ones you want to obey fully, which ones you will gracefully ignore, and which ones you will obey selectively.

Oh, and who gets to enforce all these rules, especially if they are 24/7?  And how does the CMA insure equal justice under the law?

JOHNNY DEPP and HELENA BONHAM CARTER  “By the Sea” from Sweeney Todd-the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics 1979)

“By the sea, Mr. Todd, that’s the life I covet
By the sea, Mr. Todd, ooh, I know you’d love it
You and me, Mr. T, we could be alone
In a house what we’d almost own

“Down by the sea, anything you say
Wouldn’t that be smashing?

“With the sea at our gate, we’ll have kippered herring
What have swum to us straight from the Straits of Bering
Every night in the kip, when we’re through our kippers
I’ll be there slipping off your slippers”

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