True Paradise: a Beach Free of Boom Boxes

Now that it is summer and an Angeleno’s thoughts turn naturally to the beach, it is time to address a long-neglected environmental concern: sound pollution on our sandy shores. We face more serious problems, it is true, but this one has the unique virtue of offering a cheap, simple solution. First allow me to explain the problem.

In our family a trip to the beach is an adventure in organization. Will we be able to round up everyone and everything in order to arrive during daylight hours? We try to start early, collecting personnel and provisions (food, shovels and an optimistic selection of reading materials head the list). It is a lengthy process, with each step involving parent-child negotiations of such intensity, complexity and detail that I suspect all parties would feel quite at home at the next round of arms talks in Geneva.

If we’re lucky, we step onto the beach as morning’s cloud cover departs. For a few precious moments it is paradise: warm sun, cool sand, a breeze off the water, sculpted bodies glistening with oil, wet-suited surfers bobbing in the sea like birds hanging out on a telephone line. The air is full of crashing waves, laughing children and relaxed conversation.

Our moment of peace rarely lasts much longer than that. Sometimes it is ended by teen-agers who plunk themselves nearby and proceed to answer the question of what Cro-Magnon man might have listened to if he had had a huge portable radio/cassette player. On other occasions our new towel-mates are sports fans who apparently feel that it would be impolite to listen to the ball game (and ad pitches for weak beer and strong trucks) without broadcasting it to all within a quarter-mile radius.

The point is not who they are or what they play. We don’t care if they’re into Pavarotti or Prince, the Dodgers or Lake Wobegon. We don’t want to hear it. We don’t make the trek to the beach to be caught in a cross-fire of electronic culture. Yet by early afternoon the place is often a Beirut of private broadcasters, and we retreat to the relative quiet of our car.

For this problem I offer a solution: the creation of a radio-free zone. There are no-smoking sections in restaurants, no-drinking sections in ball parks--why not a similar preserve at the beach? Set aside a stretch of sand for those who bring only the sound of their own voices. The zone would be designated by an internationally recognized symbol--the silhouette of a radio inside a red circle transected by a red diagonal. The only electronics allowed would be those attached to headphones.

The radio-free zone would be largely self-enforcing. There would no doubt be the obnoxious resisters, but such folks are with us always--smoking cigarettes in elevators and providing commentary in movies. As always, it will be up to the rest of us to tell them to cut it out.

The zone would significantly improve the quality of life for many of us and would cost almost nothing. This is one solution not requiring new taxes, a new Administration or even a visit to the astrologer. The mystery is why it has never been done.

One reason is that the people most bothered by the noise are also the people least likely to make a scene. We go to the beach for relaxation, not confrontation. We’d like to live with everyone in peace. To accomplish that, however, will require generating a certain amount of ruckus.

Now is the time to be heard. Make noise to the news media, your county supervisor and your city council member if you want to be free of noise at the beach.