Nude beach supporters must cover their bases

TROXLER E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times
published April 22, 2002

What I enjoyed most about the effort to establish a clothing-optional beach at Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County was the colossal overoptimism behind it.

Let's face it. If you did a free-association test on a thousand people using the words "Pinellas County," you would cover just about the whole dictionary before somebody came back with the phrase "nude beach."

So you might think that anybody trying to change that culture would understand the uphill nature of it. Start small, as it were.

It is not Miami, and it sure as heck isn't Europe.

Think Peoria-by-the-sea.

But, no one ever asks my advice on these things. So Tampa Area Naturists Inc. marched right in and made the fatal assumption that facts, figures, reassurances and a certain amount of sophistication bordering on smugness would carry the day, as if Pinellas County might suddenly slap its forehead and say, "Oh, no! We don't want to be perceived as rubes! Please, disrobe at once!"

"Textile beaches," indeed.

"Textile beaches" is the naturists' lingo for those beaches where people are still so backward as to wear clothes. Such people are referred to as "textile beach users." Besides the fact that the term simply sounds stupid, it is distinctly off-putting.

So my first bit of advice to the naturists would be, if you want to politick people into giving you a corner of their public beach, avoid calling them "textile beach users." This only reinforces their preconception that you are, yes indeedy, some kind of nut.

Next, as to the location:

Listen. I understand the natural beauty of the human body. I know that our relationship with the world around us is enhanced by being in that natural state. I know that naturism is not salacious.

I know this. You know this. But you are not going to convince anybody else who doesn't believe it.

So if you ever want to have a prayer of getting a sliver of Pinellas County beach, it is not going to happen because you have somehow brought enlightenment to the majority.

It will be, instead, because they have somehow made absolutely sure that neither they, nor their children, nor anybody who votes for them, nor their parents, nor their visiting relatives, will ever have the slightest chance of seeing a naked person.

Never. Not by their kids wandering too far down the beach. Not by an innocent European guest wandering too far past signs he or she didn't understand.

Never.

Therefore, your enthusiastic promises that 750,000 people a year or more would flock to this location, which you think ought to be a great selling point, is not, by itself, exactly reassuring to them.

What's more, it might be just a tiny bit of a reach that you propose a stretch of the North Beach, just three-quarters of a mile above the fort itself, as one of your three possible locations.

(As for any beachgoers -- or should I say, textile-wearers? -- who stroll there along the Gulf of Mexico now, the naturists cheerfully suggest there is "ample space to allow walkers to detour to the east of the site.")

One of the other two sites is at the north end of the island. Of course, this site does have the slight, mild disadvantage of being along the route to the park's boat ramp. So I am going out on a limb here and suspectin' that the county would never go for that one either.

This deal is probably shot for now. I cannot imagine the County Commission reversing the park board after this spate of publicity.

So the way to do it is to let things die down, then come back later mindful of all these sensibilities -- and agree that the first thing that goes wrong, the whole thing gets shut down. Then, maybe, possibly, you might get something done one day.

By the way, it couldn't hurt to do like all the developer guys do and give the County Commission a bunch of campaign contributions and hire a fat-cat lobbyist. It works great for people who destroy nature -- why not for naturists, too?

-- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.

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