According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Sandy Snakenberg has been performing as “the Bubble Pirate” in a local park for years. Despite the name, he doesn’t run around waving a cutlass and stealing other people’s bubbles as you might expect. He just dresses as a pirate (because why not) while blowing bubbles of various sizes for public enjoyment. The picture above, for example, shows a bunch of kids running around having fun with the bubbles (that’s Snakenberg’s pointy shadow at the bottom).

So of course the authorities had to put a stop to that.

On August 24, a park ranger wrote Snakenberg a ticket for allegedly violating the city’s ordinance against littering—more specifically, “littering prohibited fluids”—on the grounds that the Bubble Pirate’s bubble solution could damage the grass because it’s left behind after the bubbles pop.

Rangers told the Pirate “numerous times that the residual substances from the bubbles are in violation of the city’s municipal code as it relates to littering,” a city spokesman claimed this week, saying they had acted only “after witnessing numerous violations and receiving complaints from other park users.” He didn’t name any of these alleged bubble-haters or explain what “residual substances” are supposedly harming the grass.

Seems like he should’ve been able to do the latter if, as the citation suggests, this involved a fluid that is specifically prohibited because it could be toxic. But it didn’t. It would be a little unusual for a city ordinance to prohibit specific fluids (except for one particular kind that typically isn’t used to make bubbles), and San Diego’s ordinances don’t do this either. Snakenberg was cited for violating section 63.0102(c)(8) of the municipal code, which makes it unlawful to “leave or scatter about any boxes, empty or otherwise, waste paper, remains of meals, newspaper, tobacco, remains of any material capable of being smoked, or rubbish of any kind”—which to me seems pretty clearly limited to solid matter, unless you think there is such a thing as liquid rubbish. I do not.

San Diego doesn’t seem to, either. That part of the code doesn’t define “rubbish,” but that term is defined earlier, when discussing the “Weed, Rubbish and Waste Abatement Program,” and it’s defined this way:

“Rubbish” means non-functional, nonusable or abandoned material or matter. Rubbish includes ashes, paper, cardboard, tin cans, dirt, cut brush, yard and garden clippings or trimmings, wood, glass, bedding, cloth, clothing, crockery, plastic, rubber by-products, litter, machinery, vehicle parts, junk and other similar items.

That first sentence is a little vague, but all of the many specific examples that follow are solid material. Unpleasant liquids are mentioned in other places, but are generally referred to as “waste” or “liquid waste,” not “rubbish” or “litter.” So no, there is no such thing as “littering prohibited fluids” under the San Diego Municipal Code.

Those cynics at the Washington Post suggest this citation isn’t about protecting the grass, but part of a “years-long effort to rid high-traffic public spaces of street vendors” that is now being extended to performance artists like the Bubble Pirate. California decriminalized street vending in 2018, which allegedly led to vendors “swamping” the city’s tourist attractions, leading to increased (but non-criminal) restrictions by the city in an effort to fight back. Fine—but if they want to cite the Bubble Pirate or other bubble-blowers for “littering,” which is what happened here, they need to amend the ordinance. Right now this isn’t a violation.

The ranger who ticketed Snakenberg seemed to have some qualms about this himself, based on a statement he made in a video Snakenberg provided of the incident (available at the Post‘s site). “I’m going to feel like the biggest idiot taking this to court,” he said. He has about six weeks to contemplate that. The Pirate’s court date is on October 16.