News of the Nude, Apr. 2026
Volume 40: Naked in your own backyard, a case dropped, and a beloved beach slipping away
Spring is here, and so is News of the Nude—right on schedule, as always.
This month: a San Francisco judge dismisses charges against a nudist who was choked by a park ranger at a Grateful Dead memorial. A South Carolina man faces the sex offender registry for sunbathing in his own backyard. And one of the best naturist beaches in Spain is losing its identity—not through a ban, but through a business decision. All that and more below.
This is our fortieth edition, published on the last Friday of every month without exception since Planet Nude launched in 2023. News of the Nude is where most of our international news reporting lives—if you want just this and nothing else in your inbox, you can manage your subscription preferences at www.planetnude.co/account.
Forty issues in, and the world still has plenty to say about nudity. Here’s what it said this month. 🚀
News of the Nude, Vol. 40 🪐
Nature festival mixed up with nudist event
Naturists spend a lot of time explaining that they are not naturalists. So there’s something genuinely satisfying about a story where the confusion runs the other direction. Organizers of the Cumbria Nature Festival—a wildlife and conservation event scheduled for May in Workington, England—issued a public clarification after at least one prospective attendee apparently booked expecting something rather different. The post went modestly viral, gained the festival some unexpected followers, and ended with no refunds actually issued as far as I can tell. Committee member Sam Griffin told the BBC it was “a common misunderstanding” and that the response had been largely good-natured. It’s a light story, but it points to something real: the language around nudism remains genuinely slippery in the public mind, and the gap between perception and reality hasn’t closed as much as we might think. 🚀
World Naked Bike Ride confirmed for London this summer despite growing intolerance towards event
The Evening Standard’s headline does the work here: the ride is happening “despite growing intolerance,” not simply because it’s June and it always does. Reporter Megan Howe documents a familiar squeeze—routes rerouted around Victoria Park after Tower Hamlets warned of violence risk, Hyde Park still off-limits, Saturday abandoned for Sunday. An active petition to ban the event frames nudity as a child safeguarding issue. Organizers call it a moral panic. The paper doesn’t adjudicate, but covering the ride’s return as an act of persistence rather than a calendar item says something on its own. The WNBR has run in London every year since 2004 except during the pandemic. That’s apparently no longer enough to make it routine. 🚀
Dropped trou, dropped case: Judge tosses charges against nudist choked at Bob Weir event
The charges against Martin Moulton—the San Francisco nudist arrested at a January memorial for Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir at Civic Center Plaza—have been officially dismissed. Planet Nude reported on the arrest in News of the Nude in January. Body camera footage showed park ranger Antoine Fisher choking Moulton after Moulton told him not to touch him. Moulton was in the process of leaving voluntarily when the confrontation escalated. He spat in the direction of officers who continued to follow him, was tackled, and spent the evening in county jail. Judge Kay Tsenin granted the dismissal following a motion by the San Francisco public defender’s office. Deputy Public Defender Mark Goldstein said the rangers “needlessly escalated and inflamed this situation.” Moulton expressed regret about the spitting, calling it an “insulting gesture,” while maintaining that the nudists present had been “well within our rights and constitutional liberties.”
The legal outcome is clear. The broader questions the incident raises—about tactics, optics, and what effective nudist advocacy looks like in practice—a little less so. 🚀
Los Gatos nude resort no longer up for sale as owner assesses future
Lupin Lodge, the historic naturist resort in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos, has been pulled from the market after more than two years without a buyer. Listed first at $32.8 million and later reduced to $29.2 million, the property attracted serious interest but nothing closed. Owner Lori Kay Stout told the Mercury News simply: “Nothing stuck.” For naturists, the failed sale is a reprieve. When the listing first appeared in late 2023, the development language pointed toward a textile future. That Lupin is still standing, still operating, and still scheduling events—including the Naturist Society’s Western Gathering this August—is worth something. Founded in 1934 on the grounds of a Prohibition-era winery, it’s the oldest continuously operated nudist resort west of the Mississippi. It has survived a world war, recessions, wildfires, and a pandemic. A real estate downturn may just be next on the list. 🚀
Read our report
Greenville County man arrested for nude sunbathing in backyard raises legal questions
John Sullivan was arrested on March 13 and charged with indecent exposure after sunbathing nude in his own backyard in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. The arresting deputy’s report states he could clearly see Sullivan naked through the fence. Sullivan’s yard has an eight-foot solid fence on one side and a chain-link-and-slat fence on the other—a $12,000 upgrade he hadn’t gotten around to.
South Carolina’s indecent exposure statute carries up to three years and potential placement on the sex offender registry. Attorney Beattie Ashmore explained the legal line to WYFF4: being nude on your own property is generally permissible, but visibility to the general public can change the analysis, particularly depending on whether the viewer had to make any effort to see you.
It’s interesting how conditional “private” space actually is for nudists in many areas of the U.S. In South Carolina, the right to be nude at home apparently doesn’t come with much insulation from a neighbor’s sightline.
Sullivan’s case goes to court in May. 🚀
The COM has selected a candidate to build a naturist hotel at Orient Bay
For naturists of a certain vintage, Orient Bay is a place that exists partly in memory. Club Orient—the clothing-optional resort that anchored the southern end of the beach on the French side of Saint Martin—was one of the best-known naturist destinations in the Caribbean, a full-service resort on the sand that had been operating since the 1980s. Hurricane Irma destroyed it in September 2017. What followed was nearly a decade of permits, rebuilding plans, regulatory fights, and pandemic delays, with the site sitting largely in ruins while the beach itself quietly continued to draw nudists anyway.
This month, Saint Martin’s governing body selected a developer to build something new there. SAS Griselle—whose partners are described as former owners of Club Orient and the Orient Beach Club—prevailed over a competing bid on the strength of a larger investment commitment and a faster timeline. The lease runs 60 years. Nothing is built yet and the opening is 36 months out at best. But for a destination that’s been in limbo since Irma, the selection of a developer with actual roots in what the place used to be appears to be meaningful.
This News of the Nude is sponsored by
Naturist Action Committee (NAC)
Dedicated to making naturism an accepted part of society.
‘Clothing required’ clarification reignites Denny Blaine Park nudity fight yet again
Friends of Denny Blaine filed a motion on April 20 asking King County Superior Court to confirm that toplessness is lawful throughout the park — including in zones where court-ordered signage reads “clothing required.” A hearing is set for May 1.
The filing responds to a documented pattern: private security guards hired by neighboring homeowners have been using the abatement plan—put in place last August to address public sex acts and indecent exposure—to confront and photograph topless parkgoers. Seattle police and park rangers have both confirmed that toplessness is not illegal anywhere in the park. FoDB is asking for updated signage that specifies bottoms covering genitals are required, specific enough to close the gap the guards have been exploiting. Washington’s Equal Rights Amendment, the motion argues, makes gender-selective enforcement unconstitutional regardless.
Planet Nude has been covering the fight over Denny Blaine since 2023. 🚀
Read our report
Readers defend ‘unofficial’ nudist beach after petition calls for Coolum Bay ban
A petition to ban nudists from Third Bay at Coolum Beach on Australia’s Sunshine Coast drew more pushback than signatures. The petition, titled “Ban nudism from Third Bay Coolum Beach” and citing concerns about “creepy old guys”, had gained only a handful of names when it started making the rounds, but it sparked a strong reader response that broke heavily in favor of leaving the beach alone.
Unfortunately the post is now paywalled, but the comments were worth reading. Defenders pointed out that Third Bay has operated as an unofficial nude beach for decades, that Queensland has no legal nude beaches at all despite toplessness being perfectly legal, and that the solution to not wanting to see nudity is simply going to one of the region’s many other beaches. Critics pushed back on the “creepy old guys” framing as a conflation of nudism with predatory behavior—a familiar and frustrating stereotype. 🚀
Naturists no longer welcome at popular Costa Tropical beach bars
Cantarriján is one of the most celebrated naturist beaches in Spain—a protected cove on the Costa Tropical near Almuñécar, inside a natural park, consistently listed among the best in Andalucía and well known to European naturists as a destination worth the trip. It has operated as a mixed naturist-textile beach for decades, with the clothing-optional section at the southern end and chiringuitos that served everyone without much fuss.
That arrangement is ending. This spring the two beach bars told the local naturist association that naked customers were no longer welcome. The reasons are economic rather than ideological, which makes it harder to fight—no law is being broken, no ordinance to challenge. Cantarriján has no formal legal status as a naturist beach. Its identity is entirely customary, which turns out to be a thinner foundation than it looks. Still, for the naturists that occupy the beach, the stakes are real. As the local association’s president José Gamero put it to Sur in English: “Little by little the naturist character of the beach could be lost.” 🚀
Researchers unmask trade in nude images on Telegram
Research group AI Forensics tracked more than 80,000 files shared across 16 Telegram channels between December 2025 and February 2026, finding nearly 25,000 active users exchanging intimate images of women, mostly without consent, often for money, and in some cases involving minors. Researchers also documented coordinated harassment, doxxing, and calls for sexual violence against the women depicted. It’s a serious report about serious harm, and it has nothing to do with naturism.
It does, however, have everything to do with how nudity gets talked about in policy and platform conversations—and those conversations have a way of affecting everyone. We wrote about this recently. Worth reading the report. 🚀
Read our take:
Wisconsin governor vetoes age-verification bill
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers vetoed AB 105, calling it “an intrusion into the privacy of Wisconsin residents” and citing interference with access to constitutionally protected content. He pushed legislators toward device-based solutions instead. The Free Speech Coalition, which fought the bill alongside the ACLU, EFF, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, and Fight for the Future, called it a win.
It is one, for now. These bills have been passing across the country with enough momentum that a single veto doesn’t change the trajectory—it just slows it in one state. For naturist publishers, educators, and anyone running a clothing-optional community online, the practical concern has always been the same: broad definitions of adult content don’t make room for nonsexual nudity, and the data-collection requirements these laws impose create their own chilling effect regardless of what the content actually is. Wisconsin gets a reprieve. The fight continues elsewhere. 🚀
Even a nudist colony got a Maine moose permit. Guides want to change that.
Maine’s coveted moose hunting permits—allocated through a lottery system that distributes a small block of “lodge tags” to qualifying businesses—were apparently claimed in a prior year by an unlikely applicant: an unnamed nudist club in southern Maine. The club applied alongside restaurants, hotels, and hunting outfitters, and received a tag through a process that has drifted well beyond its original intent of supporting struggling sporting camps. The article doesn’t name the club, which makes independent confirmation impossible.
A legislative reform bill has since passed the Maine legislature to tighten eligibility and close exactly these kinds of loopholes. The club goes unidentified throughout all coverage of the story, which jokes that eligible members would still be required to wear an orange safety vest.
No comment from the club. No controversy. Just nudists, quietly participating in the civic life of their state, the same as everyone else. Which is, of course, the whole point. 🚀
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Later on, April
That’s a wrap on Vol. 40. Somewhere in southern Maine, a nudist club is sitting on a moose permit. We’ll all be okay. See you on the last Friday of May. 🪐