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Photo by David Reber's Hammer Photography via Flickr
Photo by David Reber's Hammer Photography via Flickr As cities age, so do their laws. Sometimes they get outdated and sometimes hardly enforced. Such is the case with this old 1920s or 30s Los Angeles law:
No person shall play ball or any game of sport with a ball or football or throw, cast, shoot or discharge any stone, pellet, bullet, arrow or any other missile, in, over, across, along or upon any street or sidewalk or in any public park, except on those portions of said park set apart for such purposes.
There are some broad strokes of cranky enforcement that can be done with that one, but luckily, you rarely hear of the side street basketball game between the neighborhood kids earning a citation.
From Santa Monica, here's another one: a 1954 law bans "personal introductory service, marriage bureau, lonely hearts club, or other business of a like nature" from operating within the city limits, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. Now the city council is poised to unban such services because "it's a common and reputable way to meet others for social interaction" and "benefit the city's economy."
While the Daily Press doesn't mention it, it's presumed this is about eHarmony. The matchmaking service announced this summer that their corporate headquarters will be moving from Pasadena to Santa Monica, which means more highly paid tech employees spending their lunch and happy hour money over there.
One thing they won't be able to spend it on is an escort booked via a Santa Monica-based company. That ban will stay on the books.
Fentanyl and other drugs fuel record deaths among people experiencing homelessness in L.A. County. From 2019 to 2021, deaths jumped 70% to more than 2,200 in a single year.
