SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Summer in San Diego means crowded beaches, but when the city banned alcohol on beaches in 2008, partygoers found a creative workaround.
The alcohol ban didn't explicitly prohibit drinking on floating devices in the water, which led to massive offshore parties dubbed "Floatopias" beginning in 2009.
In 2010, these floating parties continued at locations like Fiesta Island, with revelers taking advantage of the legal loophole while city officials struggled with the costs and logistics.
"The party raged on in the water, police dealt with their fair share of problems at today's Flotopia," I reported at the time. "One person was detained for public intoxication while 10 feet away, lifeguards treated this woman for hypothermia."
From lifeguards and security to traffic control and portable toilets, these events consumed significant city resources. The question of who should pay for these services became complicated because the events had no official organizer.
When asked who organized the event, attendees were uniformly puzzled.
"You know what I don't know. That's a mystery to everyone," one partygoer said.
"Oh no, no idea," another responded.
City officials confirmed the challenge. "The reason the event is organized anonymously on Facebook," I noted in my reporting.
"As a result of that, you end up with 1,2,3,4, 5,000 people showing up at an event. But when you go back to a cost recovery system where you're saying, OK, who do we identify that are sponsoring, promoting... There is no one," a city official said.
This meant taxpayers were footing the bill for these impromptu gatherings. Partygoers had effectively found two loopholes: one allowing them to drink legally in the water and another getting the city to pay for their festivities.
When asked if participants were cheating the system, the city official responded: "I don't think they're cheating the system. I think what they've found is what so many people find in the law... And that is a loophole."
Despite the concerns, authorities reported that the crowd was generally well-behaved, with only a few arrests on Fiesta Island that day.
Not long after this story aired, the San Diego City Council closed the loophole by extending the alcohol ban to include waters up to three miles offshore.
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