The Battle for Bates Beach

Santa Barbara's Nude Beach Alliance is making a public statement on restoring a clothing-optional section of Carpinteria's Bates Beach.

In spite of the complaints registered against the clothing-optional beach that contributed to the increase in enforcement of restrictions on nudity, advocacy groups insist that the positive effects of a nude section of Bates Beach will outweigh the complaints. Supporters have taken a closer look at the financial influences of clothing-optional beaches, especially focusing on tourist dollars. According to Allen Baylis, a director for the Naturist Action Committee, nude beaches can stimulate the economies of the areas that surround them, as evidenced by other communities that have opted to create clothing-optional stretches.

The Alliance proposes a Beach Ambassador progam similar to Neighborhood Watch, where volunteers monitor beach behavior for potential problems, and claims that the return of clothing-optional status will actually improve the safety of the area. The clothed rally held this past weekend is just the sort of peaceful activism that is needed to help secure naturist rights on public lands.

I'm Nude Therefore I Am

This article on naturism at Bates Beach gets it all right.

I thought of a phrase that really seems to sum it up for all nudists who do not want to be judged, just as they do not judge others: Get naked, be happy.

For them, it’s really that simple and for that reason alone the clothing-optional status of the Bates Beach should be restored by state officials.

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked

California Nudists Mobilize

The Southern California Naturists Association (SCNA) has formed a Nude Beach Alliance to restore clothing-optional status to Bates Beach, and to try and save other venues, such as San Onofre.

Members have begun a sly campaign to raise awareness among local business owners of their numbers and purchasing power. Armed with fistfuls of $2 bills, naturists use the questions generated by the unusual currency as an opportunity to explain their mission and demonstrate that for a troubled economy, there is profit in numbers.

Yes, here is profit in numbers. There is also power, and safety, and influence. Organization is the key to furthering the naturist cause.

In a secluded backyard high in the Camarillo hills, SCNA’s outdoor party looks something like how you might imagine the Garden of Eden. Adults lounge in lawn chairs and sip margaritas in the buff; a 10 year-old girl with flotation devices strapped to her bare arms and middle darts toward the indoor pool, where a half dozen people tread water in birthday suits instead of swimsuits; and Vivian Weston, a former employee of the now-closed Elysium Fields nudist resort in Topanga Canyon, has jokingly nestled two tiny fuchsia flowers in her pubic area. Everywhere, people of all body shapes and sizes mingle easily, unabashed and unashamed in an environment Wilkinson calls “awesomely tolerant.”

Nudity, he says, is “magic. It’s so completely freeing. … It’s sort of like returning to the innocence of childhood.”

Links: SCNA, Nude Beach Alliance

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked