Overheard a guy at city hall saying the 1967 law about no dancing in bars was never actually enforced and it made me realize how many dumb laws we just accept as real.

He pulled out the actual code book and showed me the fine was $5 and had no punishment assigned, so I looked up three other local laws my town claims exist and found two were completely made up by some clerk in the 80s - has anyone else caught their town faking old ordinances?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_patricia25d ago

That line about "no punishment assigned" really hits home. I think a lot of local rules are just passed down like family rumors. People hear "that's the law" from some old timer or a clerk who heard it from someone else, and nobody ever bothers to check the actual books. It's like how everyone knows you can't pump your own gas in Oregon, but half the time you see people doing it anyway. Makes you wonder how much of "the way things are" is just copy-paste from someone's mistake 40 years ago.

price.tara25d ago

@the_patricia exactly. I read somewhere that a lot of these "laws" started as someone's opinion in a town meeting and just stuck. Kinda like how my grandpa swore you couldn't have an open container in a parked car here, but I looked it up and it's totally fine. Makes you think how much we just accept without checking.