This really bothers me, and it apparently bothers Mead, too.
Ultra-wealthy Southern California residents have just won a victory in the battle to impose their social preferences on the poor. The neo-puritan landowners of Newport Beach, worried about their “asthma and allergies,” have convinced air-quality regulators to make it impossibly hard for the public to use the beach fire-pits that have lined California’s coast for half a century. Sixty fire pits in Newport will be removed, and local officials can now ban them entirely if they decide “that the fires are causing a nuisance.”