4
POPSDo the Beaches Belong to the Rich or Everyone?
I've been on both sides of this--at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the Big Island ($500/night even back then!) in Hawaii--where there is a similar law of public access. As a security guard, I would ignore calls of "suspects" on the beach unless they were causing a ruckus...like the time I got a late night call about noise and discovered a drunken off-duty Secret Service agent doing a noisy "horizontal bop" with their groupie call girl after midnight--a BIG hilarious no-no! "Bad, bad Secret Service man, You s'posed ta be resting to guard VP Ford tomorrow!", says I. This was in '74. Anyway, later as a citizen, I would go body surfing there when the waves were good and ignore the security guards (after they fired my whole crew because they found the pakalolo, you know, wacky grass, growing on the golf course). The beaches are for everyone, people, and pick up your crap when you leave, will ya? Including your whiskey bottles, your condom wrappers and your US Treasury ID. (That's a true sto