An Inflated Issue in Laguna

Anne Weiler is trying to think back.

Come on, Anne, what was the most bizarre city ordinance you personally have been in violation of? Or, excuse me, in alleged violation of?

Anne closes her eyes a touch, bites down on her lip. I’m thinking, I’m thinking .

“You mean besides now?” she says.

Besides now.

“Well, there was the parade with the large food characters,” she says. “It was in this small town in Ohio--Springdale--and we were opening this big mall . . . . We were going to have a parade with people in food costumes--hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream cones, carrots, bananas, grapes, of course, because they’re easy to make--and they were going to march around the mall.

And?

“And the city told us we couldn’t do it--even though they allow parades in town--because it was unsanitary . Even though I explained, over and over, that there was no real food involved. I remember these conversations I had with this woman: ‘There is no real food !’

So what was the problem?

“I really don’t know. They wouldn’t give in. It was in the paper and everything. Then I thought that it might be great publicity to have the cops at one end, stopping these major food things. Except then, the day before the parade, they finally gave in.”

But that was in Springdale, where parades apparently do go on. This is Laguna Beach, where principles are not so easily dallied with.

OK, OK, I know what you in-the-know types are thinking. You’re thinking, “What about Nick and Denise Karagoziah?”

For those of you not so up to the minute, the Karagoziahs are the couple who just reached a landmark agreement with Laguna’s Design Review Board whereby they’ll be able to paint their house cottage white, which is not quite as snappy as its current red, white and blue, but nonetheless does offer a bit more zing than the board-approved sandstone.

(A quandary that those of you who have agonized over the colors of major appliances can surely relate to.)

But, hey, not even the Karagoziahs had BALLOONS.

Yes. Anne Weiler has a thing about balloons.

She fills them with helium and gives them to children who come into her store, Kids Kloset/Kids Klub, and she displays a few just outside the store’s front door, on a small brick patio that adjoins the sidewalk along South Coast Highway.

“Balloons are happy,” Anne says.

They are also, of course, unauthorized in Laguna Beach. As Anne, had she not moved out here recently from Cincinnati, could have surely guessed .

“My husband’s a Californian, so I knew everything was going to be strange,” Anne says.

Not good enough.

The Senior Code Enforcement Technician thereby informed Anne in a letter dated Dec. 3, 1990, that the unauthorized balloons--which at the time, were attached to a rather attention-grabbing highchair--would have to go immediately.

The Senior Code Enforcement Technician typed the word immediately in boldface.

Anne, perhaps because they have a rather different way of doing things in Cincinnati, ignored the letter.

She then, furthermore , got rid of the highchair and replaced it with her daughter’s double-sided chalkboard, as this would allow her the flexibility of displaying balloons while, at the same time, announcing such upcoming store events as the arrival of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. For example.

Naturally, this prompted a personal visit from The Senior Code Enforcement Technician, in the company of the official who oversees business licenses.

“They were forceful looking,” Anne says. “That would be the right term.”

After a second letter and official warning notice, sent once by certified mail and again by regular means, Anne again talked to The Senior Code Enforcement Technician, who told her she could pay a sizable fee if she wanted her office to determine whether her case merited a further hearing by the Design Review Board.

Anne demurred, and checked around.

Other Laguna merchants have had their own run-ins over their stubborn insistence that the way to attract customers is to make them aware that you exist. Fines had been paid, attorneys hired. To Anne, it all seemed so unpleasant. And not cheap.

Anne figured she’d just put the balloons and chalkboard out on the weekends, when The Senior Code Enforcement Technician is not in town.

“I thought, somehow, that this thing would just blow over,” she says.

Need I say, it has not.

The latest letter, fifth in a series, dated March 15, states, “There is no authorization for that type of sign in the Laguna Beach Municipal Code requirements, even on the weekends.”

The Senior Code Enforcement Technician boldfaced even on the weekends .

And when I checked with the tech herself, she told me she drives by personally to check on the unauthorized balloons and chalkboard, even on the weekends .

She said she intends to make good on her threat to turn the matter over to the city attorney. She’s done it before, of course. The city has always won.

The maximum fine for violation of M.C. 25.54.006 Prohibited Signs: $1,000 and/or six months in jail.

Says one reformed balloon scofflaw, who asked that I not identify him for business reasons, “The city’s got the lid down to this point and they’re afraid that once someone starts putting up balloons we’ll all start putting up balloons, and then Laguna will start looking like Costa Mesa or something.”

Or, who knows, maybe even Cincinnati.