Here's a fun exercise in government transparency: try figuring out whether you can bring a portable pizza oven to Ocean Beach. Go ahead. We'll wait.

A local resident recently attempted this exact research — a simple question about whether a propane-powered portable pizza oven is allowed at one of San Francisco's most popular public beaches — and came up essentially empty-handed. The city's regulations cover wood-burning fire pits in detail, but when it comes to portable propane cooking setups? Crickets.

This is a tiny story, but it's a perfect microcosm of a bigger problem. San Francisco has layers upon layers of regulations governing what you can and can't do in public spaces, managed by a patchwork of agencies — the National Park Service (GGNRA controls Ocean Beach), SF Fire Department, SFPD, and probably three other bureaucracies we're forgetting. And yet a straightforward question about cooking food for your friends at the beach has no clear, easily accessible answer.

Let's be real: a guy making pizza for his buddies in a parking lot with a propane Ooni is not a public safety threat. It's arguably the most wholesome weekend activity imaginable. But in a city that seems to specialize in making simple things complicated, even this becomes a research project.

The resident also got flagged by fellow San Franciscans about sand getting into the oven — which, fair point, that's just physics — and pivoted to considering the parking lot instead. A reasonable adaptation. But the fact that crowd-sourced advice from strangers online was more useful than any official city or federal resource tells you everything you need to know about how our public agencies communicate with the people they serve.

Here's a radical idea: if you manage public land, publish a clear, searchable list of what's allowed and what isn't. Not buried in a PDF from 2014. Not scattered across four different agency websites. Just a simple page. "Can I do this thing? Yes or no."

Until then, we guess the real San Francisco tradition continues: do the thing, hope nobody complains, and pray you don't get a citation from an agency you didn't know existed.