RIVERSIDE — After four hours of public comment that one council member described as “the longest night of my civic life,” the Riverside City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday to establish the city’s first official Sexy Costume Threshold, capping costume-based suggestiveness at a level the ordinance describes as “festive, but stop it.”
The ordinance — Ordinance 2026-44, titled the Modest Merriment Measure — empowers the newly formed Costume Compliance Board to evaluate Halloween costumes worn in city buildings, at city-sponsored events, and within 500 feet of the municipal pumpkin patch. The threshold is measured on the board’s proprietary Suggestiveness Index, a 1-to-10 scale calibrated by what board chair Margaret Hollis called “extensive community input and one very uncomfortable spreadsheet.”
“A costume scoring a 4 is ‘playful,'” Hollis explained at the hearing. “A 5 is ‘flirtatious.’ A 6 is where we start having conversations. Anything above a 7 is, per the ordinance, ‘a lifestyle choice, and please take it outside city limits.'”
The lone dissenting vote came from Councilman Pete Dugan, who argued the ordinance was unenforceable. “Last year my wife went as a ‘sexy traffic cone,'” Dugan said, to gasps. “I still don’t know what that means. Nobody does. The cones were just… orange. And yet.”
Public comment produced the evening’s most memorable moments. Retired nurse Gladys Fenimore, 78, held up a diagram of last year’s “sexy nurse” costume and announced, “I was a nurse for 40 years. I have never once been handed a stethoscope that short.” A man identifying himself only as “Kevin, the Sexy Gandalf of 2024” asked the council to consider “the wizard community’s perspective,” then was gently escorted back to his seat.
The Costume Compliance Board will operate a costume-approval hotline from October 15 through November 1. Residents may text a photo of their planned costume to the hotline and receive a rating within 24 hours, along with one (1) free suggestion for making it “more spooky, less spicy.” The board stressed the ratings are advisory — “we are not the costume police,” Hollis said — though the ordinance does allow fines of up to $50 for scores above 8.5 at city events.
“We know we can’t stop sexy,” Hollis said, closing the session. “Sexy finds a way. We just want it to find a way that doesn’t make the mayor’s receptionist file another incident report.”
The mayor’s receptionist declined to comment, but sources confirm she has filed three.
Join the conversation
Load Facebook comments to read and reply using your Facebook account.