If you look at it from a certain perspective, a N.J. town is cracking down on crack.
For what seems like years, activists, politicos, and communities — in places like Florida and Louisiana — have attempted to put whatever capital it had behind getting young people to pull their pants up. Speeches. Advertisements. Billboards. Television spots.
And a seaside town in Jersey has also had enough.
From the AP:
A Jersey shore town is hoping to put a problem behind it.
Wildwood is set to pass a law prohibiting overly saggy jeans that show underwear or skin when worn on the boardwalk.
Mayor Ernest Troiano says families that have been coming to the popular resort for decades are telling him they no longer will if they have to look at people’s rear ends while walking the boardwalk.
The law is set for a final vote Wednesday and brings fines of $25 to $200. It also bans going shirtless or barefoot on the boardwalk.
The mayor is confident the law would withstand a court challenge, but civil libertarians predict it wouldn’t.
Even with a vote, many seem split on whether it’s local government’s role to try and correct what and how people — many of them young men — wear pants. At least one writer is calling the action much ado about nothing.
“Critics, however, are mocking the baggy-pants crackdown,” writes MSN Money, “which could be unconstitutional, saying it’s a clumsy attempt by Wildwood to shed its reputation as a raucous party town whose year-round population of 5,400 swells to more than 150,000 in summer.
“If Wildwood wants to ‘maintain a family-friendly image,’ their better bet is to stop letting houses rent to packs of 18-year-olds and their much younger friends on senior and prom week trips,” Jen Miller wrote on Phillymag.com.”
Read more at MSN Money.