Shut the dunes down to vehicles

Retired attorney John Donegan’s screed (“Learn to share,” March 5) is really off-putting. He likes vehicles on our beaches and wants to keep it that way.

Here, he has dredged up all the usual right-wing political claptrap in an attempt to make his point, wrong-headed though it is.

Well John, here’s something you missed: The Oceano/Pismo dunes is the only beach area in the entire state that allows vehicles such free rein, the reason being that it was grandfathered in here by entitled gearheads who then lawyered up bigtime (the mis-named Friends of Oceano Dunes), and no one here seems to have the connections or the cajones to shut the dangerous and destructive activity down entirely.

If that were to happen, tens of thousands of area residents (and taxpayers!) would then have a chance to enjoy the beach and dunes areas without having to dodge vehicular numbnuts from the Valley who think they have the divine right to do doughnuts in the dunes, trash the place, and spread their two-cycle stink along the entire pristine shoreline.

The now-missing SLO county residents would come on a regular basis, too, if they weren’t afraid for their very lives out there.

Donegan, as usual, your Trump is showing.

How absolutely predictable. And wrong, too, also as usual.

John Winthrop
Cayucos

This article appears in March 19 – March 26, 2026.