February 2018

• Editor's Message
• Haulover Community Action Days
• Mid-Winter Naturist Festival
• Paul LeValley elected president of
American Nudist Research Library
• Three municipal anti-top-free
equality ordinances challenged
• SFFB February Board meeting
• AANR-Florida launches Nudist
Florida online magazine
• Palm Beach Naturists renews
drive for clothing-optional beach
• First nude photography festival
in Africa runs March 23-26
• Tampa Area Naturists still seeking
petition signatures for nude beach
• News from Treasure Coast
Naturists / Blind Creek Beach

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Join South Florida Free Beaches

Beach Education Advocates for
Culture, Health,Environment
& Safety (B.E.A.C.H.E.S.)

501(c)(3) nonprofit educational and charitable adjunct to SFFB

Find a nude beach group to join!

Grand Lido™ Negril
Au Naturel All-Suite Resort
Negril, Jamaica
An upscale and elegant naturist resort
Represented by Fox Travel American Express

daddy O hotel miami
Bay Harbor Islands, FL
Textile, but close to Haulover Beach
Mention SFFB for 10¢ discount.

Lake Como Family Nudist Resort
Lutz, FL
The place to be ... naturally!

Sunsport Gardens
Family Naturist Resort
Loxahatchee Groves, FL
Clothes-free recreation in a
natural, tropical paradise!

The Naturist Society
Body acceptance is the idea.
Nude recreation is the way.

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Learn all about Haulover Beach! Click on above image to download this informative, 20-page booklet.

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Bringing Together the Largest Nudist Community in the World
nusasun.com
Pick up a free copy at a newspaper dispenser box on Haulover Beach.

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Gay Naturists International, Inc.
Life is Great; Live it Nude! ©

Find a men's naturist club or naked yoga group to join!

Read GNI BuffBuzz, GNI's official blog.

Register to attend GNI's annual nude Gathering for men, August 17-26, 2018 (shorter options available).

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Looking for naturist places in Florida?

Click on above image to search for naturist clubs, resorts, yoga classes, and other businesses statewide. See alphabetical and geographical listings and an interactive map. Also includes a list of beaches.

by Seth Paronick

Haulover Community Action Days, February – April 2018

Six days of fun, growth, and community in the nude

30th Annual Mid-Winter Naturist Festival
Thursday – Tuesday, February 15-20, 2018
Sunsport Gardens Family Naturist Resort
14125 North Rd, Loxahatchee Groves, FL
(14 miles west of West Palm Beach)

Final reminder: Join other naturist men and women and their families from Florida and the rest of North America for the continent's first regional naturist gathering in 2018. Come for any or all of the days — it's up to you!

This nude gathering features nearly 250 scheduled activities (place cursor over document to open page controls), including a broad array of seminars, workshops, sports, music and dance (including nightly drum circle around a huge bonfire), and social activities. There are also a couple of off-site events, which are excursions to Haulover Beach in Miami and Blind Creek Beach in Fort Pierce, FL.

The Mid-Winter Naturist Festival is one of a series of Naturist Society-sanctioned nude events each year. Diversity is valued, and all are welcome. Pre-registration is encouraged for planning purposes, but not required. (It makes check-in quick and easy.) Proceeds of the Festival benefit The Naturist Society, South Florida Free Beaches, and Treasure Coast Naturists. (See related article below.) Get pricing and/or register.

Click above for a video tour of Sunsport Gardens Family Naturist Resort with Morley and Anne.

Be sure to visit the SFFB / B.E.A.C.H.E.S. booth in the vendor area. Volunteers are needed to help staff the booth each day of the Festival. If you can spare some time to cover one or more shifts, please contact SFFB.

Help get the word out! The Festival has a listing on Facebook. Click on Going or Interested if you will or may attend, and use the Share button to invite your friends, post the event on your timeline and in other naturist groups you belong to, and send it in a message.

Meanwhile, try Sunsport Gardens' nude drum circle, first Friday of every month from 9 p.m. to midnight. Free entry starts at 5 p.m.; visitors must depart by 2 a.m. Includes use of amenities such as the café, showers, pool, spa, and sauna. You must present your government-issued photo ID for admission. Get directions.

Paul LeValley elected as president of American Nudist Research Library

Retired Florida State University professor Paul LeValley has been elected as president of the American Nudist Research Library (ANRL). Housed on the grounds of Cypress Cove Nudist Resort in Kissimmee, FL (near Orlando; see ad below left), the library contains the world's largest collection of American nudist / naturist magazines as well as books, club newsletters, videos, interview tapes, court documents, and foreign magazines. Most of the magazines are kept in bound volumes, and all have been electronically scanned for computer searching.

Paul says his aim is to "bust out of these four walls" and make research tools available to scholars across the country and around the world. ANRL's website at anrl.org already contains several useful bibliographies, and the library's original card catalog will soon be available on line. Paul compiled some of those bibliographies during his 15 years as head of The Naturist Society's Professors & Researchers Special Interest Group (SIG).

Cain Kills Abel by Bartolomeo Manfredi, circa 1600, an exhibit from Dr. LeValley's book, Art Follows Nature.

For 20 years, Dr. LeValley wrote the art history column in the former naturist magazine, Naturally. Those illustrated essays have now been published as a book, Art Follows Nature: A Worldwide History of the Nude, as we reported in the December 2016 issue. You can read sample pages and/or order the book. His new book on the Gymnosophists, or naked philosophers of India, is expected in the next few months.

In other exciting library news, the four nudist libraries in the U.S. — Western Nudist Research Library in Corona, CA, Northwestern Nudist Library in Springfield, OR, Naturist Education Foundation (NEF) Research Library in Oshkosh, WI (see related article in the October 2017 issue), and ANRL — are beginning to talk with each other. ANRL is years ahead of the others, who are mainly discussing the best way to catalog their collections. This should lead to some exchanges of surplus materials, and eventual online sharing of scans.

The American Nudist Research Library gratefully accepts donations of volunteer time, computer skills, media, materials for the collection, and funds.

Three municipal anti-top-free equality laws challenged

We reported in last month's issue on court appeals in cases involving anti-top-free equality ordinances in Fort Collins, CO and Laconia, NH. Oral arguments for and against the concept that the Fort Collins ordinance discriminates on the basis of sex, in violation of the equal protection provision of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, were heard on January 17 before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. A decision is not expected until sometime in spring, but the judges appeared by their questions and comments to be sympathetic to the plaintiffs' argument. For coverage of the January 17 hearing, read Appeals court hears Fort Collins topless ban arguments.

All three women who were arrested in May 2016 and later convicted of violating the anti-top-free ordinance of Laconia, NH were to have their appeals heard on January 4 before the New Hampshire Supreme Court. At almost the last minute, the hearing was postponed to February 1. Audio and video of the hearing are available at courts.nh.gov. A decision is not expected for several months. For coverage of the February 1 hearing, read Topless beachgoers: Ban is unconstitutional, discriminatory.

In the July 2017 issue, we reported that Ocean City, MD had passed an ordinance banning the public exposure of female breasts and asserting that, despite the Maryland constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law regardless of sex, the Town is not obliged to ignore physiological differences. On January 17, 2018, Chelsea (Covington) Eline, a top-free activist in Maryland and author of the blog, Breasts are Healthy, and four other women filed a Federal lawsuit seeking an injunction against enforcement of the ordinance.

At press time, a court date was not yet set. For details about the Ocean City lawsuit, read Fight over Ocean City's ban on bare breasts goes to federal court and Ocean City mayor responds after lawsuit claims women have right to go topless in public. We will continue to monitor these three stories and bring you updates.

AANR-Florida launches Nudist Florida e-magazine

After several months of development and input from various organizations, including South Florida Free Beaches and B.E.A.C.H.E.S. Foundation Institute, AANR-Florida (the Florida region of the American Association for Nude Recreation) has launched an online magazine titled, Nudist Florida. This project was made possible with the help of a grant from VISITFLORIDA_®, the state's official tourism promotion agency. The publication is dynamic; AANR-Florida intends to update and expand it over time.

If you have a bar code scanning app on your smartphone or tablet computer, you may point its camera at the above QR code to be taken directly to Nudist Florida.

Palm Beach Naturists renews drive for nude beach

Palm Beach Naturists (PBN) is renewing its call for Palm Beach County to select and designate a clothing-optional section of beach. If the County Commission doesn't act by April, the group will initiate its own designation with signage. In the meantime, PBN requests signatures on its petition.

SFFB Board meeting on Haulover Beach, February 10

The Board of Directors of South Florida Free Beaches usually meets on the second Saturday of every month at 2:00 p.m. under the North Chickee (thatch-roofed shade structure) near lifeguard tower 15 on Haulover Beach unless another date and time or location is announced. See below for the long-term schedule. Any planned exception to the second Saturday pattern is noted with an asterisk.

The meetings are open to SFFB sponsors / members, supporters, and invited guests. Prior to setting out, check the upper left-hand corner of SFFB's home page at sffb.com (under Today's Beach Reports) for any change in date, time, or location due to unavailability of Board members or in case of bad weather, when the meeting may take place indoors.

Don't miss an SFFB Board meeting — add the schedule to your calendar now!

First festival of nude photography in Africa

The first African Festival of Nude Photography takes place March 23-26, 2018 in Cotonou, the largest city of Benin, in West Africa. Submissions were accepted for the past couple of months, ending on February 1. The festival aims to build on the acceptance of nudity in certain African cultures to start a dialog toward overcoming negative perceptions of it in other parts of the continent. Watch a television report.

Tampa Area Naturists still seeking petition signatures

Tampa Area Naturists is still collecting signatures on its petition for a clothing-optional beach in the Tampa Bay Area. For info, read the related article in last month's issue.

News from Treasure Coast Naturists / Blind Creek Beach in Fort Pierce, FL

Following up on our report in the January 2016 issue, there are now three portable outhouses in the south parking lot at Blind Creek Beach in Fort Pierce, FL. Their installation and regular servicing are arranged by Treasure Coast Naturists (TCN), the group that mentors the beach, and supported by private donations. (This amenity is not provided by St. Lucie County, which has no plans to add any facilities.)

TCN welcomes contributions toward maintenance of the port-a-potties and can now receive donations on line. The group reminds visitors to use the facilities (cover up before crossing back over the dunes from the beach) and refrain from urinating on the beach.

In its continuing effort to educate the public about the beach environment and to promote its conservation, TCN has added information to its website about beach wrack, which is the material, composed mostly of marine vegetation, that washes up on shore and contributes to beach ecology. The page includes a link to download and print a beautiful, informative poster, suitable for framing.

Treasure Coast Naturists recently relocated its post office box. The new mailing address is PO Box 882281, Port St. Lucie, FL 34988-2281. Donations by check are gladly received there. Other means of contact are shown on TCN's contact page.

The nude bowling night that TCN had scheduled for February 18, 2018 in Jensen Beach, FL has been postponed, due to flak that the bowling alley received about it in late January from non-naturists in the area. News that the event had been called off went viral on social media. While detractors gloated, there was a huge outpouring of support from others for TCN, the event, and the bowling alley. On that basis, TCN hopes to reschedule nude bowling and to promote it to those that have indicated an interest.