September 2015 President's Message

by Richard Mason

Raffle update: The raffle being held by South Florida Free Beaches and B.E.A.C.H.E.S Foundation is ongoing. You can order tickets on line. See article below for details. Great prizes and great odds - do it now!

Haulover Beach Park update:

North Parking Lot: We have been told that it may be ready in October 2015. This lot is being built under contract to the same company that is building the boathouse at the site. Thus, it is not under direct control of the Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Department.

A new, wooden pedestrian / wheelchair ramp has been built over the mini-marsh leading into the tunnel. The entrance / exit on the beach side of the tunnel has had a wheelchair ramp built for access. (Finally, after 24 years of requests.) This will enable those with wheelchairs to park in the lot west of Collins Avenue and have access to the naturist beach.

A special thank-you to Ken Tauer, Beach Ambassador and an officer with the Paralyzed Veterans of America, Louis Beach, Beach Ambassador for SFFB/FNA, Shirley Mason, Executive Director of B.E.A.C.H.E.S Foundation. Also, the South Florida Free Beaches Association for their continuous efforts to make the naturist beach wheelchair-accessible.

Lightning alert: We continue to get reports from Ocean Rescue (beach safety / lifeguard service) that they are ignored when they ask beach visitors to clear the beach. They only ask for people to leave the beach when their warning system informs them of lightning in the area. Hiding under your beach umbrella (read, lightning rod), one of the chickee huts, or the lifeguard tower (read, lightning-attracting building) can get you fried a burnt, hot pink color.

You'll notice that even the lifeguards leave the towers. We heard that one of the people hit by lightning last month spent a long time at the hospital. This is serious s**t.

Listen to and obey your friendly beach safety officer. They are risking their lives when they are on the beach trying to save yours. Go to either of the two tunnels until the danger has passed. Do we need more signs on the beach to inform beach visitors of this issue because many lack common sense?!

Drones attack Haulover nudies: This past month, we have had three sightings of drones. Each, we assume, had cameras. One of our Beach Ambassadors followed a drone to the parking lot. Although he did not witness the retrieval, he did see a person place an oddly shaped canvas bag in his car.

FYI, it is against a Miami-Dade County ordinance to launch and retrieve a flying vehicle from a public park. That includes drones. Do we need additional signs to inform the drone owners? Miami-Dade County Police's legal opinion is that a drone is not in violation if it is launched and retrieved from outside the park. They suggested that our Beach Ambassador Program acquire a drone for our mission.

Correction: Previous articles in this publication by this writer have been about inappropriate behavior on the beach and how that can lead to the closure of Haulover's naturist beach in the future. Inappropriate behavior in a public park is, upon conviction, a felony crime. Prison time and a listing on the sexual predator database await the perpetrators.

We, the creators of Haulover's naturist beach, take inappropriate behavior seriously. We will employ all our resources to have those involved caught, arrested, tried, and jailed. We will use cameras or whatever resources that are available to support our complaints to the police and the convictions of those caught

Anyone that uses Haulover Beach for inappropriate behavior is not a friend of this beach. They simply do not care if the beach gets shut down.

It is the responsibility of each beach visitor to take ownership of this naturist beach and report inappropriate behavior to the Ocean Rescue office at (786) 336-6990, visit a lifeguard tower, or flag down a beach ranger or Beach Ambassador. You can also personally intervene by speaking to the person involved. If you do not want to do that as an individual, find a few beach buddies to join you. We thank you!

Latest news from Sunny Isles Beach: The Ritz-Carlton Residences being developed two lots north of Haulover's nude-permissible beach, installed a large statue of two nude adults dancing, in front of the planned high-rise development. The sculpture was by a world-famous artist. That artwork was recently removed, we have been told, because of complaints concerning the statue's depiction of nudity.

That should be a warning about the community's acceptance of nudity in a public place - a statue gets removed. Let that be a lesson on the issues we face now and in the future for Haulover's naturist beach and why we have to self-police our beach.

Another naturist beach is closed: A naturist beach that was created over 30 years ago in Russia, shortly after the end of the Cold War, was recently closed to nude use because of sexual behavior on the beach. There was no organized naturist group to support a Beach Ambassador program, and most of the beach visitors "did not want to get involved." Is there a lesson here?

Until next month, stay kind to yourself, the other beach visitors, and Haulover Beach.

Beach Ambassador training

This year's remaining Beach Ambassador (BA) trainings are currently scheduled for Haulover Beach in Miami on Sunday, September 27 and Saturday, December 12.

BAs are volunteers that serve as beach monitors and greeters, a combination of block watch and welcome wagon. For their service, BAs at Haulover Beach get a cool hat, ID badge, and free parking on their duty days. Seasonal residents are welcome to participate. If you have any questions or wish to sign up for a training session, contact Ken.

Reminder: Win a nude Caribbean cruise for two

B.E.A.C.H.E.S. Foundation Institute and South Florida Free Beaches / Florida Naturist Association continue to promote the 2015 "Keep Our Beaches Bare" fundraising raffle. Make a donation* and enter the drawing for a chance to win a balcony stateroom for two on the Bare Necessities nude cruise, February 6-16, 2016, from Fort Lauderdale, FL to the multicultural Caribbean or one of six other, three-day, two-night naturist vacation packages in Florida (except as otherwise noted) for two persons, including stays at

• Hidden Beach Resort - Au Naturel Club by Karisma (6 days/5 nights), Kantenah, Riviera Maya in Mexico's Yucatán peninsula (one hour south of Cancún)

• Cypress Cove Nudist Resort & Spa, Kissimmee (two prizes)

• daddy O hotel miami, Bay Harbor Islands (textile, but near Haulover Beach)

• Lake Como Family Nudist Resort, Lutz (near Tampa)

• Sunsport Gardens Family Naturist Resort, Loxahatchee Groves (near West Palm Beach)

and two lunch or dinner packages for two at Werner Staub's Peppermill Restaurant on the Intracoastal Waterway in Sunny Isles Beach (textile, but walking distance to Haulover Beach).

Get all the details and order your raffle tickets at: beachesfoundation.org/fundraiser

Tickets may be ordered on line through Friday, November 27, 2015. They are also available on Haulover Beach in Miami at the SFFB information booth when it is set up at the South Chickee (thatch-roofed canopy) near lifeguard station 13. The drawing will take place in the same location on Sunday, November 29, 2015. Winners need not be present to claim their prize; they will be notified. Give your friends the link or print out a brochure for them from the raffle page.

* Donations will be used for naturist education, free beach advocacy, capital improvements to Haulover Beach or other clothing-optional beach sites, disability beach access program, and other purposes as listed in the scope of B.E.A.C.H.E.S.' mission.

35 years ago: South Florida Free Beaches was born

By David Baum

First came the Free Beach movement

There used to be a lot of places to go skinny-dipping in the United States.

By the mid- 1970's, clothing-optional beaches were about to get organized.

In California, Eugene Callen published a newspaper called Bare in Mind, which contained clothing-optional beach info for that state.

Lee Baxandall was living part-time in Massachusetts, where Brush Hollow Beach in Truro was the clothing-optional beach.

In 1975, the National Park Service, which administered the Cape Cod National Seashore, announced it was putting an end to nude use. In August, Lee was involved in organizing a protest of 2,000 people on Brush Hollow Beach. (Most of them got nude; there were no arrests for nudity.)

One of those participants was Tom Chittenden. He was also active at a local nudist camp and participated in talk shows and the club's stage productions. He formed a wintertime nudist club in Boston which held gatherings in homes of nudists he described as having "big fireplaces and ... one with an enclosed, heated, enormous swimming pool." He heard about the upcoming event on the radio and got nude on the beach.

After the event in Truro, Lee realized that the East Coast beaches needed a network with a publication similar to the one in California. After a phone call of congratulations from Callen, the two met and began organizing nude events between the East and West Coast beaches. After months of knowing about each other, Tom and Lee finally met on the beach at Truro and they became longtime friends.

Lee's other home was in Wisconsin, where he created the Free Beaches Documentation Center while running his family's printing business. This made it logical to print and send out announcements of an event to the many small, independent newspapers that existed then. In 1976, Lee began publishing his own tabloid-format newspaper. He began using the European terms, "free beach" and "naturist" to describe the clothing-optional beaches and their users.

When Tom moved to South Florida in the late '70's, he began visiting the clothing-optional section of Virginia Key Beach.Tom found only a few couples sitting alone, sometimes being harassed by small groups of rowdies, so he knew they needed to band together in a group for protection. He typed a one-page explanation and began handing it out on the beach and taking down names and addresses of people who agreed with him.

Florida joins the Free Beach movement

In January 1980, Lee asked Tom if he would be the contact to supply local information for that area. Because he would be covering the South Florida end of the free beach movement, Lee suggested he could call himself South Florida Free Beaches.

Tom put that title and his home address into the contact section of Lee's The Naturist Sun (forerunner of today's N Magazine) and Bare in Mind, which had a separate section called The Beach Head, containing contact information for clothing-optional beaches.

There was an area on the north end of Virginia Key Beach called "The Cove." This small, crescent-shaped beach around the bend was where Barbara Khan sunbathed and socialized. The Cove was quite a busy place. People were known by their first names or nicknames. There was tremendous camaraderie. People shared food and drinks and new people were welcomed.

Boats could pass along the small waterway facing The Cove. Sometimes, a boat would stop at the beach and pick up a passenger. Some skinny-dippers would hold their clothes over their head to swim to the opposite bank, then get dressed and walk to the nearby bait and tackle shop for sodas.

Still, without an authority to monitor the beach, there were undesirables and gawkers, especially toward evening as the crowds thinned out. The few gawkers that ventured too close to sunbathers would be surrounded by nudists and leave.

Barbara and some others got away from the crowded cove by moving to another part of the Key; it turned out to be the part of Virginia Key Beach that Tom had been organizing. With people getting together and more groups using Virginia Key Beach, the problem with rowdies was gone.

Although the beach was not "legal," the Dade County police tolerated the nudists. This new section of beach was bordered by rock jetties, so the gawkers who stared at them from there were called "the rock people."

Tom recalls giving Barbara his hand-out on this beach. After she wrote to "South Florida Free Beaches" to get more information, Barbara and a friend met Tom at a restaurant/bar and discussed their ideas for a free beach nudist club. They put together the names Barbara had from the people she socialized with, while Tom added his list of people from the beach and those he got as a "contact."

They decided on a meeting date and began walking the sands of Virginia Key, taking down more names of interested people and contacting those on their mailing list about the upcoming meeting. One veteran beachgoer recalls that the announcements began three weeks ahead and were on a 4x4 colored sheet of paper; another recalls hearing of the upcoming meeting by word of mouth.

There is also a letter in the club archives, dated August 21, 1980, announcing the meeting. It began with:

"DEAR FRIENDS OF FREE BEACHES: The Free Beach Nudists in the Miami area are finally getting organized."

Tom called himself "the contact person for the South Florida Free Beaches," while Barbara was "the assistant organizer and a regular user of South Florida Free Beaches."

"In talking with Free Beach Nudists over the past several weeks it has become apparent that some form of organization would be to the benefit of all nudists in South Florida. There seems to be a tremendous amount of interest for starting such an organization."

They already had over 100 names and addresses, and noted the problems they were experiencing:

"If you are interested in the Free Beach Movement and would like to help end the harassment we get from both the perverts and the police; if you would like group cookouts, group travel, parties and other social contact with other nudists then come to this get-together and let your voice be heard.

"We need the strength that only numbers can afford and we would like to build an organization that can truly be representative of the needs and desires of nudists everywhere."

They wrote that, since it was their first meeting and the host has letting them use his house, they would appreciate attendees bringing their own refreshments.

Wednesday night, September 3, 1980

About 30 people gathered in the Coral Gables home of Barbara's friend. Some of those who were there remembered that they stood crowded into the small kitchen and living room, with Barbara and Tom at the dining room table. On hand were snacks like pretzels and sodas.

Each person (or couple) paid $5 to cover mailing and administrative costs. They decided to continue using Virginia Key Beach and use the end nearest the public beach for protection in numbers from the perverts. They spoke of making a flag to locate the group on the beach. They discussed the problem of keeping the beach clean and doing their best to do so. Trash bags could be supplied. They planned to work closely with a new free beach organization in the Palm Beach area.

A member of a group in the Florida Keys published directions to the free beaches that existed in the Keys at the time. They hoped to put together a listing of Free Beaches throughout Florida. They decided to take $20 out of the treasury to pay for the registration of a club representative to the Florida Parks and Recreation Association Conference later that month.

A cook-out was planned for October, when Lee Baxandall would be stopping in Miami. Someone offered his small boat to ferry nudists to a small island in Biscayne Bay. They hoped to get more members with boats to help with the taxiing. Attendees could volunteer for various committees which would be put together at the next meeting.

They wanted a name and logo for the group. Some names had been suggested and they hoped to decide at the next meeting. They wanted T-shirts with a logo and/or name of the group. They even decided on the topics for the next meeting, planned for October. One of the couples felt this house was too warm, so they offered their house in South Miami for the next meeting.

This group was not a bunch of casual beachgoers; they took their cause seriously and hit the ground running. A letter was mailed out from "Florida Free Beaches," using Barbara's address, telling the details of that first meeting. It began with:

"DEAR FELLOW FREE BEACH NUDISTS: Miami now has an organization of Free Beach Nudists!"

South Florida Free Beaches was born.

• Virginia Key Beach was closed to nude use in 1982.
• Most of the sand at The Cove eroded due to Hurricane Andrew.
• Today, the only "official," legal, clothing-optional beach is at the north end of Haulover Beach Park in Miami-Dade County.

Reminder: Gay Naturists International (GNI) offers membership discount

Gay Naturists International (GNI) is the world's foremost association of male naturists. As reported in the March 2015 issue of this newsletter, GNI has collaborated closely with South Florida Free Beaches in running joint membership drives, providing complimentary exhibitor space at each other's events, and exchanging ads in their publications. In February, GNI joined B.E.A.C.H.E.S. Foundation Institute, SFFB, and Bare Necessities Tour and Travel Company in co-sponsoring and attending the first Naturist Unity Summit.

First, there is a 25% ($10) discount off the regular $40 dues for a one-year membership in GNI for applicants referred by SFFB or B.E.A.C.H.E.S. (Note that membership is limited to men aged 21 or over.) Furthermore, for each one that joins GNI or renews his GNI membership through this promotion, GNI will donate $10 toward the expenses of The Celebrated Nude Art Festival and Naturist Unity Conference in Miami. These offers are valid through the end of October 2015.

When joining GNI on line at www.gaynaturists.org, be sure to enter UNITY15 in the promo code field of the payment form to qualify for this deal. (This is not the "club promotional code" in the "Member Information" section.) The discount and GNI's donation are valid only if the above code is entered in the application; it may not be claimed after the fact. Get details of this offer.

Newbie's Guide to Nudism - a tutorial A blog series by Larry Darter, Dallas Nudist Culture specialist for Examiner.com. With each installment until the series is completed, a new article focusing on a different aspect of nudism will be published. Reading this series will allow you to learn what authentic nudism is all about, how to become a nudist if you aren't one already, what to expect when interacting with other nudists, and, just as importantly, what they will expect from you. In last month's issue, we provided links to the first five articles in this series, Introduction to nudism, The history of contemporary nudism, 9 good reasons to become a nudist, Nudism and the law, and Where to go nude. The next article in the series is titled, Nudism and women. At press time, it had not yet been published, but was expected soon.