The Orbit: July 18
This week on Planet Nude: A win at Denny Blaine, losses and threats elsewhere.
This week on Planet Nude
Beach access had a strange week, the kind where a win and three separate threats arrive close enough together that they start to look like the same story told from different angles. A Seattle judge handed naturists a real, if narrow, victory: Denny Blaine Park stays open, and nudity stays legal there. The court drew a sharp line between nudity and lewd conduct, refusing to let bad behavior by a few become grounds for closing the beach to everyone. It is the kind of ruling advocates have been chasing for years, precise language that separates the body from the offense.
Everywhere else, the ground felt less stable. In San Mateo County, sixty years of tolerance at San Gregorio ended not through a court fight but through a change of ownership, as the ranch behind the beach becomes a state park and clothing becomes mandatory. No lawsuit, no dramatic villain, just a nonprofit land trust doing exactly what land trusts do, and a nude beach with civil-rights-era roots disappearing into a bureaucratic footnote.
In Toronto, Hanlan’s Point faces a more openly political threat, an airport expansion bill that lets the province seize land across the entire island chain without the usual expropriation safeguards. And at Bates Beach in Santa Barbara County, deputies interrupted this year’s Skinny Dip Day gathering, a reminder that even beaches with a long informal understanding can have that understanding revoked without warning.
What connects these stories is not that nudism is under siege in any coordinated sense. It is that the legal and cultural tolerance naturists depend on rarely comes from durable protection. It comes from precedent, private ownership, and municipal habit, all of which can shift without warning, especially if there are not steward groups there to fight for the privileges naturists often take for granted. Denny Blaine shows what it looks like when that tolerance gets codified—but that could have been a very different story if not for the tenacity of the “Friends of” group that sued their way into the lawsuit that sought to keep them out. San Gregorio, with no friends group, is lost without much of a murmur. Hanlan’s Point and Bates Beach both have steward groups, and those groups now have their work cut out for them.
Check out these stories and more from this week on Planet Nude.
Recent posts in Culture
This week on Strips
Greyfriar’s Isle #125
![Panel 1. Cass takes the form back from the dad. In the background, Gertrude wanders in through the door. Cass: This is all good - Here are the keys to chalet no.9, you can't miss it. [Or: you can pick any spot in the tents area.] Gertrude: Hey, Cass, have you seen Caroline? I need to- Panel 2. Dad (Allaerd): Come on, kids, let's get to our spot and get out of our c- Gertrude: EEEEEEE! Panel 3. Sarah looks surprised and the two parents and two kids bemused as Gertrude fangirls. Gertrude: It's Allaard van Oudenaerden tot Zuid-Oudenaerden (to Cass)The man who wrote the closing argument in the Art. 430a judgment in 2021, at the high court, September 17, 2021, ECLI:NLHR:2021:3778! Panel 4. Gertrude: And what a brilliant argument it was! Lemme tell you, it made my job so much easier after that verdict was handed down! Allaard: Well, er… Beatrix: Anne-Sofie, Quintus, let's just go to the spot, your dad will catch up later. Panel 5. Cass is left behind on her own. Cass: Well, la dee dah.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dcV4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb6d05585-6a7e-46d1-aacc-bef258a3e3aa_1920x1396.jpeg "Panel 1. Cass takes the form back from the dad. In the background, Gertrude wanders in through the door. Cass: This is all good - Here are the keys to chalet no.9, you can't miss it. [Or: you can pick any spot in the tents area.] Gertrude: Hey, Cass, have you seen Caroline? I need to- Panel 2. Dad (Allaerd): Come on, kids, let's get to our spot and get out of our c- Gertrude: EEEEEEE! Panel 3. Sarah looks surprised and the two parents and two kids bemused as Gertrude fangirls. Gertrude: It's Allaard van Oudenaerden tot Zuid-Oudenaerden (to Cass)The man who wrote the closing argument in the Art. 430a judgment in 2021, at the high court, September 17, 2021, ECLI:NLHR:2021:3778! Panel 4. Gertrude: And what a brilliant argument it was! Lemme tell you, it made my job so much easier after that verdict was handed down! Allaard: Well, er… Beatrix: Anne-Sofie, Quintus, let's just go to the spot, your dad will catch up later. Panel 5. Cass is left behind on her own. Cass: Well, la dee dah.")
More recent Strips
News of the Nude
Naturists skinny dip at Blind Creek for International Skinny Dip Day.
Five hundred seventy one people turned out at Blind Creek in St. Lucie County, Florida for this year’s Skinny Dip Day, hosted by Treasure Coast Naturists. It’s a useful counterpoint to the enforcement stories elsewhere this week, a reminder that the same event drawing sheriff’s deputies in Santa Barbara County drew a five-figure crowd and friendly local coverage in Florida.
Lake Geneva nudists fight for their lake section.
A small, thirty-year-old naturist community on an unofficial stretch of Lake Geneva shoreline says it’s facing mounting complaints, police visits, and fines as high as CHF 300. The group maintains the site is about a relationship with nature, not sexual behavior, but says growing publicity and inconsiderate visitors are putting the arrangement at risk. It’s a familiar shape: an informal tolerance, sustained for decades by a small group’s stewardship, coming under pressure once more people find out about it.
Discord Dispatch
The Discord settled into a summer rhythm this week. Members checked in from naked hikes, bike rides, and club events, while new faces continued to join the conversation and plan summer meetups.
Join us at discord.gg/8gt7D6ssMd — or click here to learn more.
Featured: 1 Naturist Life
This piece follows an ordinary week spent doing everyday chores nude at home, gardening, grilling, and cleaning, to make the case that domestic nudity, not beach trips or resort weekends, is where naturism actually lives for most practitioners. Weeding becomes meditative without a fabric barrier (with a nod to World Naked Gardening Day), grilling calls for some practical caution around heat and flame, and folding laundry or doing dishes nude turns out to be mundane by design, which is kind of the point. He ties it back to research linking casual social and personal nudity to better body image and lower anxiety, framing the unglamorous repetition of ordinary tasks as what actually shifts how you relate to your own body over time.
The Orbit is Planet Nude’s weekly digest. Published every Saturday. 🪐