From Canyon To Cove:

It’s said that “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” — so of course like a heat-seeking missile I have to go there.

Where I’m going is to the very sticky and sensitive issue (for us) of news racks.

You see, we — like all the papers and other sundry publications that have a street presence in Laguna Beach — have for years and years been placing our papers on news racks on the sidewalks.

These freestanding wire racks — not to be confused with the heavy, cemented coin racks for the dailies and some other papers — are easily moved, and many times they have “disappeared” or moved around, possibly by people trying to get a better spot for their own news rack, or possibly by folks who just like to rearrange the furniture. It sort of comes with the territory.

We’ve had racks moved across the street, for instance, or sometimes they just go away, to be replaced by a competitor’s rack.

Sometimes they appear to get up and walk a few feet farther from where we’d like them to be, or they switch places with another news rack. Who knows why? News racks don’t tell.

The news rack may be humble, but it is very important to the dissemination of publications; vital to the spread of news and information — and yes, advertising, the life blood of serial publishing.

So we keep a close watch on our vulnerable news racks and try to adhere to all the city rules and codes regarding them. Given the competition for space, we have to be on top of things.

The other day I got a call from the city of Laguna Beach telling us that we could no longer have racks in three prime locations in downtown Laguna.

City Manager Ken Frank had apparently ordered all the news racks removed from the No. 1 “prime” news spot in Laguna — Ocean Avenue next to the News Stand.

We also have to take away our rack in front of Golden Spoon on Broadway, and also the one on Glenneyre Street near the cigar shop, which had asked us just last year to please put a news rack there so the folks sitting in the shop to smoke could have something to read. They even called back several times when the rack was empty asking for more papers, which I hustled over personally.

But now we have to remove these racks because Frank wants it that way.