HAULOVER BEACH | 17TH ANNIVERSARY
Haulover Beach’s nude stretch celebrates 17 years in the buff
Celebrating Haulover Beach’s 17th year as a nude beach, devotees reminisced about their naked fun. The party continues on Sunday.
Posted on Sat, Jul. 26, 2008
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BY ELY PORTILLO
NISSA BENJAMIN / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Larry Fleischman, self-proclaimed mayor of the section of beach that is open to nudity, relaxes at his favorite spot on Saturday afternoon.
No one at a Haulover Beach party on Saturday seemed embarrassed that nearly everyone showed up in the same outfit — their birthday suit.
The party was on Day 2 of a three-part celebration of the 17th anniversary of Haulover’s establishment as a ”clothing-optional” stretch of sand. It also marks a belated observance of National Nude Recreation Week. Festivities continue Sunday.
The activists who worked to get Miami-Dade County to allow them to swim without swimsuits were out in force to mark the occasion.
”We’ve seen so many people learn to enjoy the beach. It really does feel good,” said Shirley Mason, one of the early pioneers with the group South Florida Free Beaches that brought nude bathing to Haulover in July 1991.
Mason said she realized the county needed a nude beach when a doctor told her husband that sun and salt water may help treat his painful full-body psoriasis. But they had trouble finding a place to go.
After researching the law and working to raise awareness, Mason’s group succeeded in getting the county to designate several hundred yards of Haulover Beach as clothing optional.
But after all her work, on Saturday Mason was one of the only clothed people in sight. She said she had too much organizing to do outside the beach for the party to relax in the buff.
Almost everyone else on the crowded beach was stripped down to bare skin, lounging under umbrellas or soaking up rays for a line-free tan. A picnic, ice-cold margaritas and even a kiosk offering therapeutic massages were all part of the fun-in-the-sun festivities.
MORE ACCEPTING
Longtime beachgoers said they’ve seen the nude portion of the beach gain much more acceptance from the community over the years.
”You’d see big gangs of people from the textile [clothed] part of the beach come and yell — well, you can’t print it in the paper,” said Bruce McEachern of Fort Lauderdale about the beach’s early days.
He gave a long list of obscenities that clothed folks sometimes screamed at the naked, but said in the 15 years he’s been coming to Haulover, such verbal attacks have mostly stopped.
The biggest problem at the beach on Saturday was a family emergency that delayed the DJ from spinning tunes until after 2 p.m.
Annie Bernstein of Tamarac has been coming to Haulover Beach to shed her clothes and swim for 15 years. She said the beach has a more friendly atmosphere than its clothed counterparts, as she observed on a recent trip to a Fort Lauderdale beach with her 16-year-old stepdaughter.
WANDERING EYES
”Everyone was hitting on her — and that’s with a bathing suit on,” Bernstein said. “That doesn’t happen here.”
One reason for the friendly atmosphere is people like Miami resident Ed Christin, who said he’s been coming to Haulover once a week since 2002. He hands out cards with nude beach etiquette rules to people who are rude.
”It’s OK to look at beauty, just don’t stare,” he said. Most people are too embarrassed to keep up their ogling once Christin gives out a card, but he admits a few bad apples persist.
Standing nude under the broiling Florida sun, Christin sighed: “Some people, they have no shame.”
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