Parking Enforcement Unfairly Targeting Sunset Beach, Surfers Say

Surfers at favorite Pacific Palisades beach spot want City of Los Angeles to amend overnight parking restrictions by one hour to be consistent with other surf spots along the PCH.      

 Surfers who frequent Sunset Beach Surf Point in Pacific Palisades say they have never received a parking ticket when taking advantage of the early morning wave-catching window of 5 to 6 a.m. until this July, and they are petitioning the city for changes to the parking regulations.

Now the first swells of dawn arrive with the "antics of parking enforcement," one surfer says, who claims an enforcement officer boasted that citing local surfers at Sunset Beach is "like shooting fish in a barrel."

The three parking signs along Pacific Coast Highway between Gladstones and Bel Air Bay Club state that overnight parking is prohibited between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The online petition to Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation looks to change the signs to be consistent to the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. signage seen at Topanga Beach Surf Point and other spots along the PCH. It currently has 168 supporting signatures.

On July 9, neither having never gotten ticketed before nor hearing of anyone else being ticketed, surfer Richard Yaker said he arrived at Sunset Surf Cove at 5:20 a.m. to get parking and waves before the wind picked up or it got crowded.

Yaker said he had awoken before dawn on many other mornings in the five years he's been surfing and drove to PCH and Sunset and parked just south of the Gladstones parking lot, and had never received a ticket.

"I was in the water already and had been for about a half hour when a friend paddled over to tell me that the police were ticketing and that I had probably got a ticket," Yaker said. "He was also told by one parking enforcement official "you surfers are like shooting fish in a barrel."

When Yaker got back to land a few minutes before 6 a.m., there was a $73 ticket on his car.

"I didn't park overnight. I didn't litter. I got in the water early to catch a surf before work," he said.

Petitioner Brownyn Major said he and his friends have received tickets in July, and claim its an easy revenue grab for the city to discourage overnight parking.

"We are not the problem," Major said.