San Francisco Supervisor Alan Wong just launched something that honestly feels long overdue: a contest asking residents and small businesses to call out the city’s most ridiculous regulations. And we’re talking about the rules that make absolutely no sense in 2026.

Wong held a media event Wednesday to roll out the “Dumb Laws” contest, inviting anyone across SF to submit examples of outdated, overly complicated, or straight-up unnecessary city laws, permit requirements, fees, or administrative processes. The whole point is to actually do something about them, like getting them reviewed, simplified, or even repealed. “I want to work on just things that don’t make sense and are making the lives of every day people harder”, Wong said.

Some of these rules are genuinely wild. There’s an actual prohibition on carrying bread or pastries in an exposed container. There’s another one that bars people from picking weeds or removing soil, flowers, or grass from city parks without permission from the Recreation and Park Department. Like, okay, we get protecting park infrastructure, but really?

But it’s not just silly restrictions, some of these rules create real financial pain for business owners. Take Cyn Wang from Wang Insurance in the Outer Sunset. When vandals smashed her office windows in 2023, she thought it would be a quick fix: replace the glass, add a gate for protection, done. Wrong. The city’s storefront design rules required her to hire an architect and meet specific transparency standards before she could even get a permit. The whole process took over a month and cost around $30,000. “What we thought would be a simple fix turned into a bureaucratic nightmare”, Wang said at the contest announcement roundtable.

Wong acknowledged that these rules usually started with good intentions. “Over time, every city accumulates regulations that may have been created with good intentions”, he said. “But as the city evolves, some of those rules become outdated, overly complicated or simply unnecessary”.

The winning entries will get showcased on Wong’s social media and could actually influence future policy changes to San Francisco’s municipal code. The contest deadline is March 30, with winners announced in April. It’s a low-barrier way to participate, you just need to fill out an online form with your example.

Look, San Francisco’s bureaucracy has a reputation for being unnecessarily complicated, and honestly, it deserves it. But this contest gives us a chance to actually do something about it. If you’ve got a rule that’s been making your life harder or clogging up local business operations, this is your moment to make it visible and maybe, just maybe, get it changed.