Do they have de facto rights to party?

It's a serious, if unanswerable, question.

Has long custom, in effect, grandfathered in the right to light up or strip down in specific zones of safety?

At the risk of offending just about everyone, let me say this:

If there's no sex and drugs, it can't be what most fans know as rock 'n' roll.

Look, for the last 40 years, rock concerts have styled themselves as pagan festivals of misrule.

This isn't a cynical – or approving – view. It's just true.

It was true at Woodstock; it's true today at, let's say, a Ziggy Marley reggae concert where the turf meets the surf.

Clearly, not everyone who attends a concert is going to break the law. But once the music starts, defiance of the law is a cultural norm that would require a police state to stamp out completely.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is out to lunch – or on prescription drugs.

The pragmatic police custom is to control the concert crowd as a whole but not strictly micromanage behavior within the crowd.

Chasing the source of marijuana clouds, for example, would be a fool's errand if it led to a riot that endangered not only the officer but concertgoers.

Nevertheless, the parents and drug-prevention experts who recently complained to the 22nd District Agricultural Association board make a fair point about fairground events being engulfed in marijuana smoke.

They have a right, if not a personal obligation, to decry rampant lawbreaking and to plead for aggressive police intervention.

Theirs, after all, are the voices of adult reason.

The problem is that rock music celebrates a sort of Dionysian release that is, at its wildly beating heart, unreasonable, unadult and dangerous.

So what do you do if you're the ag district?

You have to like the revenue that headliners like Marley bring in. At the same time, the fabled fairgrounds can't risk being pilloried as a sanctuary for rampant lawlessness.

It's a Catch-22. Crack down on drugs (and booze) and trigger riots. Or do what you're doing, which appears to be looking the other way, and risk public humiliation.

There really is no good answer except one.

Book really lame bands.

At San Onofre State Beach, complaints about nude 'n' lewd excess at Trail 6 are testing the laissez-faire policy that has ruled for more than 30 years.

Like tokers at outdoor rock concerts, naturists have grown to expect a public zone of tolerance at this clothing-optional refuge.

Though they would be arrested in any other public place for going au naturel, they would be ready to revolt if they were cited like criminals at Trail 6.

It's a basic principle: Once you grant a de facto right to someone, it's awkward to take it away.

Referring to complaints of lascivious behavior, park officials announced in June the end of the clothing-free ride.

A 30-year policy of ignoring nudity was shelved and, come September, the trunks and bikinis had to go back on or risk getting a misdemeanor citation.

Outraged nudists groups sprang into action, arguing to an Orange County judge that the so-called “Cahill policy,” which state attorneys downplay as a mere “internal department guideline,” could not be reversed without a full public hearing and a formal clarification of the law.

In a preliminary ruling, the judge backed the beach strippers, at least for the time being. Her final ruling is expected soon.

Once again, we're facing the conflict between a dubious, but time-honored, activity in public and the public's right to enjoy public land without being faced by what, in any other public context, is patently offensive and illegal.

Like its evolving tolerance of dogs running off-leash, society has, over the years, accepted isolated zones where music-loving pot smokers and sun-worshipping nudists can gather without fear of arrest.

Obviously, it's an imperfect system.

But in light of the obvious – America, this puritan country, won't turn into the permissive Netherlands; America, this freedom-loving country, won't turn into the repressive Saudi Arabia – perfect is out of the question.

  Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.