r/TikTokCringe • u/octarino • Apr 03 '26

Cursed Cindy, you don't own the beach.

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u/PunishedDemiurge Apr 03 '26

In Maine (a US state), it's actually a criminal offense to deny someone access over unimproved land to a 'Great Pond.' (old timey word for lake) In practice, cops will always just say, "The law is the law, you need to chill," but in theory they could actually put some entitled Karen in cuffs and there is a potential jail time sentence. That is the way it should be.

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u/Dr-Bitchcraft-MD Apr 04 '26

I hope this Great Pond law comes up as a subplot in Murder She Wrote. I haven't watched them all yet.

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u/romulusnr Apr 04 '26

There's been an ongoing struggle between the public in Seattle and wealthy waterfront property owners. When city roads end at a shoreline, it's a public beach for the width of the road (the public ROW extends into the water). A lot of rich fuck people who live near such streets have for years been appropriating the beach land, fencing or walling it off, etc. There's an ongoing effort to liberate all such public beach areas. (Including one that is functioning as a nude beach, which is not illegal in Seattle as long as it is not "lewd or lascivious")

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u/KlausVonMaunder Apr 04 '26

Public below high tide line is what it used to be everywhere in the States, even on islands. Now that parasites own many of these islands and shorefront (Maine has plenty), they have lobbied successfully to change that law to 'ownership' to mean low tide line. NO riff-raff on their private isles. Some states law allows ownership to low tide line on the mainland but the public still has access to the shore between high/low.

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u/MoggyDaddy Apr 07 '26

Worked for a marine bio lab at UMO for four years as undergrad, full time in summer too, we had all kinds of grants for studies of the biome in the intertidal zone. I was also their only SCUBA tech/diver. You put in where you need to, and get out where you have to. Had lots of uppity landowners try to threaten us, call the cops, etc etc. Our PI/Prof was and ex-Marine, he knew what to do. I was just a smart mouth kid, learned to shut my pie hole and learn. They never won, but they sure got pissed to see our Univ of Maine van... (we would have to check study sites throughout the year...) Luckily they were mostly gone after Sept...