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Charles Daney's avatar

I may sound like a broken record on this topic. But the reality is that the basic problem affecting ALL these examples is economics. And I don't mean the rising real estate prices. The problem is the economic law of supply and demand. In this case, that boils down to insufficient demand for naturist properties - because there aren't enough naturists to sustain enough demand.

There's ultimately only one effective solution: persuade more people - many more people - to participate in social nudity. It doesn't matter whether that's called naturism, nudism, or something else. More people must want to participate in social nudity, or else there won't be enough demand for places that welcome it to exist.

Here's another way to think of it. People must have a sufficient supply of food to stay alive. To continue living in good health, human bodies require enough food to fuel bodily functions, and also various essential vitamins and minerals in their food. If there is insufficient essential nutrition, body health declines faster than it should, and the body dies long before natural age limits are reached. In this case, the "food" consists of people who participate in social nudity. And the "body" that suffers is organizations and physical infrastructure where social nudity is possible.

So the ONLY real solution to the loss of places for social nudity is a concerted effort to persuade more people - many more - to learn about and participate in social nudity. Unfortunately, both formal and informal organizations that currently exist for this haven't been able to do what's needed. But the problem is circular, since there need to be enough people seriously interested in SOCIAL nudity in order to join and work through the organizations.

By the way, this loss of social nudity places isn't only in California. Landed and nonlanded naturist/nudist clubs and resorts have been closing or going textile all over the country in recent decades.

Notice the emphasis here on "social". People who enjoy being clothesfree only in their own homes or with a small circle of tolerant friends may not be very helpful in the effort to keep the practice of social nudity from further decline. The number of people who like to be naked only in their own homes is probably much larger than the number of people active in traditional social nudity. So this much larger cohort is a natural and obvious target for inducement to participate in organized social nudity.

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Au Naturel's avatar

The current loss of nude recreational opportunities is just the acceleration of a long running process. Anyone else here remember Elysium? How about Mystic Oaks? Silver Valley Sun Club? There are others, shut down or sold off for clothed recreation, that I can't remember at the moment.

In Los Angeles, we have the Nude Comedy LA stage show. It is for sale. Who will buy it? Why can't we support even niche venues?

The problem is not so much the disappearance of older clubs but the lack of anything coming online to replace them. The price of real estate makes anything other than a nonlanded club prohibitively expensive. The nonlanded groups that have sprung up do not have nearly the activity level those resorts used to offer.

We need a paradigm shift.

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