SAN DIEGOSAN DIEGO — The recent backlash against San Diego’s crackdown on beach yoga classes is only the latest in a long series of controversies sparked by the city’s efforts to create and enforce a balanced street vendor law.
The yoga enforcement, which attracted national news coverage this month, follows years of turbulence over the city’s vendor law — from questions about whether it infringes on free speech rights to concerns about weak enforcement.
The law, which took nearly four years to craft and nearly two more years before enforcement could begin, has also been plagued by a long series of legislative missteps.
Mayors Kevin Faulconer and Todd Gloria both spent months trying and failing to come up with a vendor law, failures that allowed unregulated vendors to begin setting up shop in popular locations like Balboa Park, the Gaslamp Quarter and city beaches.
Under a 2018 state law that decriminalized sidewalk vending, cities were allowed to impose limited regulations if they focused only on health and safety — not keeping vendors out.
San Diego was one of the first coastal cities in the state to explore a local law — but it was one of the last to adopt one and enforce one.
Councilmember Jennifer Campbell, who represents some beach communities, finally took over the effort from Gloria in summer 2021 and hammered out an ordinance in spring 2022 that was mostly praised and got approved 8-1 by the City Council.
The law partially bans street vendors in parks, at beaches and in such pedestrian-heavy areas as Little Italy and the Gaslamp Quarter, but vendors are allowed to keep operating on some cross streets and side streets.
ers said it was the right balance between fostering vendors as a class of entrepreneurs and preserving the character of local business districts, parks and beaches.
But Campbell was harshly criticized by leaders of coastal neighborhoods for delaying enforcement there by several months over concerns the law might need a second approval from the state Coastal Commission.
Shortly after Campbell abandoned her concerns about the Coastal Commission, which seemed to pave the way for enforcement along the coast, city officials hit the brakes in spring 2023 over concerns the law might violate the free speech rights of some vendors.
When vendors were being asked to leave parks or sidewalks covered by the new law, some were arguing that the jewelry, T-shirts or other goods they were selling had political or religious components that made them exempt.
It was during a subsequent thorough city analysis of those claims — including efforts to distinguish between commercial activity and protected political activity — that the crackdown began to expand to yoga and other fitness classes.
City officials say they became aware during that analysis that a large number of businesses and organizations were using city parks and beaches for commercial activities, limiting public access and making it harder for lifeguards to keep the beaches safe.
“You saw a massive surge during the pandemic,” said Kohta Zaiser, Gloria’s City Council affairs adviser. “When you shine a closer light on things and realize these are much bigger organizations and companies and groups, where it’s becoming a problem that is actually impeding access, that’s when the city needs to step in.”
The City Council approved amendments to the vendor law in February that seemed to solve the free speech controversy — but those amendments only generated a new controversy over the status of yoga and other organized activities on public property.
The amendments didn’t specifically place any new restrictions on them, but the amended law stipulated for the first time that yoga and some other activities are commercial.
Zaiser said last week that during the city’s analysis of the amendments, officials became aware that many residents were also quietly upset about the increasing commercial use of their favorite parks and beaches — including yoga classes.
“The issue is not about the practice of yoga and its benefits to mental health,” said Pacific Beach resident Madeline Damasceno in an email to the city. “The community desperately needs your team’s continued to protect beach access, enforce crowd control, illegal parking and business taking place at the beach and parks.”
Zaiser said complaints like that and concerns raised by lifeguards prompted city officials to consider new restrictions on commercial activity in parks and on beaches. In some cases, he said, restrictions were already on the books but hadn’t been enforced in years.
Ultimately, city officials decided new restrictions were needed for yoga instructors, Internet businesses organizing volleyball games and private companies that stage picnics, corporate events, bonfires and other activities in beaches and parks.
The companies that stage picnics and bonfires are now prohibited from doing so on all city beaches. They can now only stage events at 12 sites in city parks — five in Mission Bay Park, four in shoreline parks and three in Balboa Park.
City officials have also been meeting in recent weeks with volleyball companies to determine how many pop-up courts — where s must bring their own nets and poles — the city will allow moving forward.
“It’s not a free-for-all,” said Zaiser, noting the city has created many permanent beach volleyball courts that are open to the public. “There were too many pop-ups happening across the board, where lifeguards raised concerns about ingress and egress of emergency vehicles.”
He said the city will most likely designate specific locations for pop-up volleyball courts, like it did for the professional picnics and bonfires.
“The volleyball conversation is ongoing,” he said.
The city is handling yoga in a similar way. Zaiser said instructors, many of whom don’t charge a fee but do request donations, were notified this spring that they were facing new restrictions on where they could host classes.
“It could be a hard conversation where folks may not be permitted in the spaces that they want to be,” said Zaiser, saying some classes are so popular they take over some parks or beach areas. “We’re talking about dominating parking lots and rows and rows of people.”
Defenders of the yoga classes, including more than 600 who have signed a petition opposing the city’s crackdown, say they want to keep hosting and attending classes in the same spots they always have.
“Yoga classes have become a staple of my life in San Diego,” said Hillcrest resident Elizabeth Driscoll, who attends classes at the beach. “It helps my mental and physical health. And because they are donation-based, you get to do yoga without spending an astronomical amount of money.”
Yoga teacher Jackie Kowalik said it’s ridiculous how the city suddenly decided she can no longer teach classes at Sunset Cliffs after many years.
“I didn’t know about this until they showed up a couple weeks ago to tell me,” Kowalik said. “People complained about street vendors, and now we can no longer use shoreline parks for yoga? It’s crazy.”
Critics of the yoga crackdown say city officials didn’t make it clear in February when they designated yoga a commercial activity that a crackdown was coming, so yoga ers didn’t protest or complain before the council’s vote on the free speech amendments.
“Everyone deserves to have their voices heard,” Kowalik said. “This is a democracy.”
Kowalik said she’s also frustrated that the mayor canceled a meeting with yoga instructors that had been scheduled for Friday after an attorney assisting the teachers threatened legal action.
Things have been less contentious with volleyball.
Greg Sileo, a vice president with online volleyball reservation company Volo, said his company is working with the city to create a permitting process that makes sense for everyone.
“There’s good discussion happening, and we’re confident the city will figure it out,” Sileo said. “What we care about is getting people as much access to play volleyball as possible.”
Jean Walker, who owns a company that hosts luxury picnics and bonfires in beaches and parks, said another major failure by city officials was promising companies like hers that there would be a permit process and then reneging at the last minute.
Walker said she discussed how permits would work with city officials for months, before the city suddenly decided this winter to completely ban professional picnics and bonfires on the sand.
She and the yoga teachers say other coastal cities have easy-to-navigate permit systems that allow their activities on beaches and in parks.
It’s clear there is significant demand for these services and activities, and the city needs to find a way to allow them, said Larry Webb, president of the Mission Beach Town Council and leader of the Coastal Coalition, an umbrella group of beach communities.
But because some commercial uses take up too much space or are too disruptive, Webb says the city needs a permitting process that strikes the right balance between commercial use and public access.
“I think the city has fumbled the ball — not on their intent, but how they’ve gone about it,” Webb said. “They didn’t focus on this during the work on free-speech rights. It kind of got slid in.”
Meanwhile, visitors to Balboa Park should notice fewer vendors starting Monday, when summer rules kick in that allow them in fewer parts of the park.
In the Gaslamp Quarter, which had been another hot spot, enforcement of the new rules has gone mostly smoothly, said Michael Trimble, executive director of the Gaslamp Quarter Association.
His only complaint is that the four-officer police enforcement team isn’t large enough for the kind of sweeps needed to crack down on some illegal vendors that still pop up on some weekend nights, he says.
Zaiser, the Gloria aide, said city officials are mostly pleased with the new law and how it’s being enforced. But he conceded things could have gone more smoothly.
“Hindsight is 20/20,” he said. “I would have loved to have done this in one stab, not five.”
