The City of Huntington Beach, also known as "Surf City," situated between Los Angeles and San Diego on the California coast, could see the mask mandates creeping up on their political spyglasses on the horizon.

So, they got proactive, according to this report from KTLA:

Huntington Beach voted to ban mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates across the city on Wednesday as cases continue rising across the state.

Council members approved the ban 4-3 following an hours-long meeting that began on Tuesday night.

The motion introduced by Mayor Pro Tem Gracey Van Der Mark was met with both supporters and detractors during the hearing, with at least one attendee being removed after yelling at Van Der Mark.

After “declaring the city to be a no-mask, no-vaccine mandate city,” Van Der Mark mentioned an exception to the order would apply to those who have tested positive for COVID. Those individuals would still be required to wear masks in certain settings. 

And they knew very well what this was about. According to the Orange County Register:

Huntington Beach is moving ahead to likely declare itself a “no mask and no vaccine mandate” city, preemptively taking a stand ahead of any future orders from health agencies.

Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark created the proposal. After a 4-3 approval vote from the City Council, the city manager will return with a resolution at the next council meeting for formal adoption.

“This is all about individual liberty and standing against government intrusion,” Van Der Mark said.

Due to the spread of a new COVID-19 variant, the proposal aims to get ahead of “additional discussion of possible new broad (universal) mask-wearing mandates and pushes for vaccination boosters.”

Yes, it was pre-emptive. They already have been around this bend once before and knew the kind of absurdities that would be coming next.

During the first year of the COVID pandemic in 2020, California's lockdown enthusiasts in government were at their most idiotic in this part of Southern California, putting out the most ridiculous, stupid, brain-dead mandates ever known to man.

They filled a skate park with sand to keep skateboarders from skateboarding in nearby San Clemente, ignoring the hard fact that COVID was bred in closed spaces, not open ones.

They closed beaches, despite their wildly fresh air that dissipates and disinfects COVID, but that was hardly enough for them. They actually dispatched cops to chase down defiant surfers who were out in the water. They got one in nearby Manhattan Beach, and threw the cuffs onto another in nearby Malibu. At least one of the surfers got a $1,000 fine for ignoring the mask and lockdown mandates that actually went against science. By late 2020, sheriffs from all counties in Southern California couldn't take it anymore, and refused to enforce this garbage mandate.

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, when he was not dining maskless at the French Laundry gourmet restaurant with his lobbyist pals, specially singled out Orange County's beaches for closure, which included Huntington Beach's, but not adjacent San Diego County's, despite the identical crowds flouting the nonsensical closures. O.C., see, tended to have more red voters. San Diego's county coasts had safely gone blue, as did Los Angeles's to the north.

Orange County was indeed a special case to Newsom. As I noted here:

 Never mind that Orange County has a far lower rate of COVID-19 infection than the heavily urbanized areas such as Los Angeles.  COVID-19 deaths in the O.C. number 45, while deaths in next-door Los Angeles County have hit 1,045.

This didn't stop Newsom. He actually sought to damage Orange County's coastal economy in a way that didn't damage the others. As I noted at the time:

Thing is, the Orange County beachgoers can now flock to San Diego and Los Angeles Counties for their fresh air fix.  That's not a big problem.  They'll get their beach in San Onofre and Vista and Oceanside, in Del Mar and Encinitas and Carlsbad and La Jolla, as well as El Segundo and Venice and Santa Monica and Malibu, making all of those beaches more crowded.  But hey, nobody's enforcing in those parts.

 

The people the shutdown is really going to hurt are all the Orange County small businesses up and down the crowded Orange County coast.  Those are the ones who just got the Newsom death sentence — the bike shops, art galleries, surfboard rentals, flip-flop-making companies (hey, Rainbow!), bars, restaurants, and cafés.

 

It raises questions about what Newsom might be thinking.  Orange County is historically right-wing and there's an election coming up.  The county has just swung blue in the last midterm, based not on election night returns, but ballot-harvesting, which one by one by one managed to flip every seat in the historically red county blue.

It was a sickening effort to kill Huntington Beach's economy, and the economies of all the Orange County beach communities.

The mask and lockdown enthusiasts also constantly moved and moved the goalposts, as San Diego County conservative Supervisor Jim Desmond noted in this essay that ran on American Thinker here.

Huntington Beach organized some of the fiercest protests in those years for that. And they sued Sacramento for the disparate treatment.

It didn't stop leftists from mocking them for it back in 2020.

According to Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo "Ask A Mexican!" Arellano:

In this year, the lack of masks being worn and outright disbelief about the severity of coronavirus are hallmarks. In all years, the overwhelming whiteness of the crowd in an Orange County that has been majority minority for nearly a generation.

And anger, anger — so much anger.

The protests happen so much that the city’s tourism website should list them alongside surfing and volleyball under “Things to Do.”

...and...

Wearing a mask and acting for the common good during a pandemic, of course, should be a nonpartisan act. But in these polarized times of ours, our outgoing president and his followers see such common sense acts as lefty wimpiness.

In the past, it was the San Fernando Valley, San Diego and the Inland Empire that led the anti-lib revolt. Today, no place is more fertile for Golden State grievance politics than Huntington Beach.

Because, as always, participants think of themselves as guardians of the California Dream they fear is slipping away.

He, uh, missed that Huntington Beach is 20% Latino, Mexican Latino, to be precise, and those Mexicans were indeed in those Huntington Beach protest crowds, being the owners of many small businesses that were specially targeted for mask mandates and lockdowns.

The left also mocked those from the area who died of COVID.

Obviously, this kind of backstory might just make Huntington Beach just a little more vigilant than other places about what the governing class is capable of with its mask and vaccine mandates. They could see what was coming down the pike and sought to stop it cold with a law prohibiting mask mandates.

A sounder bit of legislation has never been devised. The Sacramento mask enthusiasts can go p--- up a rope for this kind of tyranny. The Huntington Beach council members have got their number. 

Photo Illustration by Monica Showalter with use of public domain images