It is illegal in Baltimore to leave a hogshead in the street for 12 hours, punishable by a $1 fine.
A city law says merchants can't sell contraceptives to anyone under age 16, though municipal programs distribute condoms for free.
And, technically, city officials could issue a $100 fine every time a performer pauses while Orioles fans yell "O" as "The Star-Spangled Banner" is sung at a baseball game.
These and other anachronistic bits of Baltimore code should be deleted or updated, according to City Councilman James B. Kraft, who introduced a raft of legislation yesterday to modernize police ordinances.
Some of the rules are unenforceable, he said, and others wouldn't pass constitutional muster. In other cases, Kraft seeks to clean up archaic language and increase fines.
A lawyer, Kraft said he read each of thousands of dense pages of city code after his first election in 2004, filing away odd regulations he noted. Now, as head of the council's Judiciary Committee, he said the time has come to make updates.
"When we put a law on the books, it should mean something," Kraft said in an interview at his City Hall office. "Some of these laws are really old, and they are not applicable."
The proposal with the greatest potential for attention is Kraft's quest to repeal a city rule governing the performance of "The Star- Spangled Banner."
A 1916 ordinance says the song must be sung "as an entire and separate composition or number without embellishments of national or other melodies." It was adopted 15 years before Congress designated the melody as the country's anthem.
In July 1916, city police distributed copies of the new rule to theaters and music halls, along with a statement explaining that altering the song's composition "tends to lower the esteem and reverence" of it, according to a Sun article from the time.
The measure sparked a fury, with local papers publishing numerous letters in opposition. The New York Times weighed in in September 1916, saying: "It is seldon [sic] that a municipal ordinance provokes as much general criticism as the one recently enacted by the City Council of Baltimore." The Times story quotes an unnamed official "very high in city government" saying "there will be no prosecutions under this ordinance."
Kraft believes that removing the restrictions is the "patriotic thing to do," because it would endorse performances of all types.
