{"id":215954,"date":"2026-03-12T04:23:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/215954\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T04:23:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:23:27","slug":"san-francisco-supervisor-wants-to-hear-what-you-think-are-dumb-laws-in-new-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/215954\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco supervisor wants to hear what you think are ‘dumb’ laws in new contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lawmaker in San Francisco is launching what he’s calling a “dumb” laws contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Maybe the dumb law might even get repealed,” said San Francisco Supervisor Alan Wong, District 3, who wants to hear from residents about their experiences with so-called “dumb” laws.<\/p>\n

“I want to work on just things that don’t make sense and are making the lives of every day people harder,” he said.<\/p>\n

His office said the contest is meant to tackle outdated city rules.<\/p>\n

For example, past complications some business owners faced when wanting to place chairs outside their storefronts. The city has worked to streamline some processes, his office said.<\/p>\n

San Francisco has a history with unusual laws. In fact, it was the first city in the U.S. to prohibit “unsightly” people from appearing in public. The so-called “ugly” law was eventually repealed but there are still some very unusual, outdated rules buried in our public codes.<\/p>\n

For example, it’s illegal to carry bread or pastries in an exposed container or basket, under Health Code 407.<\/p>\n

“I think that is a very weird law,” said San Francisco Resident Elaine Hang. “I don’t think there should be a way that someone should carry their bread.”<\/p>\n

“Sounds kind of dumb, a little besides the point,” said Berkeley Resident Gilad Gray.<\/p>\n

“I love it,” San Francisco Resident Jeremy Rosenberg said. “I’m on a low carb diet. No, I’m kidding. Obviously that’s silly.”<\/p>\n

It’s illegal to pick weeds at a park and you can’t take any soil, flower or grass from a park, without permission of the Recreation and Park Department, under Section 3.14.<\/p>\n

If someone sells used underwear to be used as a wiping rag, that’s illegal under Section 694.<\/p>\n

“That’s a weird law but I find it more disgusting than anything, using an underwear,” Hang said.<\/p>\n

MORE: Why can SF still use ‘recyclable’ plastic bags despite California’s new statewide ban?<\/a><\/p>\n

“Does it have to be illegal?,” Gray questioned. “It’s a bad idea, but does it have to be illegal?”<\/p>\n

So will Supervisor Wong work to repeal these odd laws? Possibly, but not so fast.<\/p>\n

“Before we eliminate any proposed dumb laws, we need to make sure removing it is not dumb,” he said.<\/p>\n

Everyone is welcome to share their experiences with these so-called dumb laws with Supervisor Wong’s office.<\/p>\n

The winner of the contest will be featured on their social media pages and he said, who knows, that law could be repealed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lawmaker in San Francisco is launching what he’s calling a “dumb” laws contest. “Maybe the dumb law…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[45661,98933,98932,101,103,102,33459,104,106,105,98934],"class_list":["post-215954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-alan-wong","tag-berkeley-resident-gilad-gray","tag-dumb-laws","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-supervisor","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-unusual-laws"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}