Is Apollo’s Nudist Beach In Trouble?
What was a big success story for nude beaches in 2000 may now be endangered. One of Florida’s two legal nude beaches, Apollo Beach welcomes thousands of nude visitors each year.
Carol Clark, who became Park Superintendent two years ago, says the nudists effectively block others, especioally families, from access to Klondike Beach, which lies beyond the designated nude beach area. She says “You cannot bring children there. I do have to try to deal with that, because no area of the park should be closed to anyone. I don’t have an answer.” Clark also said “We actually do not have clothing-optional beaches. Just to make that point clear: That’s their term.”
An agreement between several nudist and naturist groups and Canaveral National Seashore, signed on April 14, 2000, provided for a one year trial period, renewable for up to five years, before being reevaluated. Although the agreement has expired, so far, no changes have been made in policies regarding nude use.
While Clark’s options for blocking nude use are limited, she also has no intention of signing a new agreement with naturists.
Text of the Agreement (MS Word Format)
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Local/newEAST01042907.htm
April 29, 2007
No shirt, no pants, no problem
Clothing optional at Apollo
By M.C. MOEWE
Staff Writer
The question usually comes from an embarrassed couple, the man quietly asking directions while the woman looks at her shoes and shuffles.
They look relieved when Deborah Boyd, executive director at the New Smyrna Beach Visitors Bureau, proves knowledgeable about one of the area’s lesser-known tourist attractions.
“You mean the nude beach?”
Though it may be the least known tourist site in Volusia County, Canaveral National Seashore’s Apollo Beach is one of two clothing-optional beaches in Florida — and one of only 11 nationwide — to be recognized in the most recent edition of the North American Guide to Nude Recreation.
Whether that distinction is official depends on whom you ask. And nudists are concerned that the quiet accord they’ve enjoyed with the National Park Service — one that’s always depended to an extent on officials looking the other way, so to speak — is coming to an end, threatening one of the few beaches where their way of life is tolerated.
On a recent sunny afternoon, about 30 people had trudged 120 yards through soft sand from the park’s southern-most parking lot past a sign that warns “You may encounter nude sunbathers.” On a clear summer weekend, it’s not unusual for a couple hundred beachgoers to frequent the spot.
“I love the ability to do this within a half-hour drive of my home,” said Jack Shuffstall, 57, of Edgewater. “Why would it change? This is not impacting anybody.”
But they’re not invisible, and current park Superintendent Carol Clark notes that the nudists’ presence effectively blocks other users, particularly families, from Klondike Beach, a six-mile stretch that’s accessible only by walking past areas frequented by nudists.
“You cannot bring children there,” said Clark, who took her post two years ago. “I do have to try to deal with that, because no area of the park should be closed to anyone. I don’t have an answer.”
While Clark has not said she intends to block nudists from using the beach — and her legal options to do so are limited — she points out the agreement that established Apollo as a clothing-optional beach expired last year. She has no plans to negotiate a new one.
“We actually do not have clothing-optional beaches,” Clark said. “Just to make that point clear: That’s their term.”
UNTAPPED MARKET?
Statistics are not kept on how many of the park’s more than 400,000 annual visitors are coming to Apollo for nude recreation. But both park officials and nudists said getting one of the 37 parking spaces in lot No. 5 can be difficult during the peak season.
“I had to wait an hour,” a 50-year-old New Smyrna Beach man who asked that his name not be used said on a recent sunny weekend. While four other cars also waited, 10 others drove up and left.
With a little marketing, like-minded tourists would flock to the area, nudists say.
“I mentioned it at one point to my board of directors,” said Boyd, of the visitors bureau, which decides what tourist attractions to market. “That wasn’t something that my board felt we should be marketing.”
Even without marketing, about one-fourth of the people who stay at the Aloha Motel located a few yards from Canaveral’s entrance south of New Smyrna Beach come to enjoy nude recreation at Apollo Beach, the motel’s manager Suzette Todorovich said. Most of the nudists are couples over 40 and several have been returning for many years, staying weeks at a time.
The motel, which is a large home renovated into eight apartment-style rooms that cost $110 a night, does very little advertising, she said. “It’s really a word-of-mouth thing,” Todorovich said.
Shirley Mason of South Florida Free Beaches has been looking for someone in Volusia to start a business built around nude recreation at Apollo. She has written a business plan and secured the financial backing for a shuttle service that would partner with area hotels and restaurants and take tourists to the beach. “I have no doubt this would be a money-making venture,” Mason said. “I just need someone to run it.”
Mason points to Haulover Beach, a clothing-optional beach in a Miami-Dade County park that was recently named one of the world’s top 10 nude beaches by the Travel Channel. About 1.2 million people visit the nude beach annually, netting an estimated $800 million in tourists dollars.
At noon on a chilly day in December, as hundreds of people sunbathed on the North Miami nude beach, Mason stood at an information hut and told how she, her husband and a few other nudists created the beach starting in 1991. “Every step was like pulling teeth,” Mason said.
Promoting Apollo might be even tougher. Frank Cervasio, spokesman for Central Florida Naturists, said he has tried to implement Mason’s business plan, but park regulations preclude the necessary commercial permits.
IS IT LEGAL?
Several nudists at Canaveral and Miami’s Haulover were arrested in the 1990s, and the long court battles that developed eventually ended with rulings that simple nudity under U.S. and Florida laws does not constitute a criminal act. And while local jurisdictions can pass tougher laws, national park officers cannot enforce local laws.
In 1995, Brevard County commissioners passed an anti-nudity law to try to stop nudists from using Playalinda, another remote beach in Canaveral National Seashore. Volusia officials declined a proposal by the park superintendent at the time to create a similar regulation.
The park posts large signs warning visitors that Brevard anti-nudity laws could get them arrested. “We went to Playalinda yesterday, but the signs were not welcoming,” said a Syracuse, N.Y., woman as she sunned herself at Apollo. “I’m super comfortable here. I feel very natural.”
The American Association for Nude Recreation recommends its members come to the Volusia side of Canaveral. “The sanctioned beach is Apollo and we do not encourage anyone to go to Playalinda,” said Pat Orner, a spokeswoman for the Orlando-based association.
Ironically, nudists say Playalinda remains more popular because the available parking is more than double that at Apollo.
Central Florida Naturists worry how much longer they’ll be welcome. In November, Clark added a new sign at the parking lot near Playalinda warning beachgoers of Brevard County’s anti-nudity ordinance.
“It’s a reminder,” Clark said. “We have gotten complaints.”
Naturists, who met with Clark in December, worry the signs foretell of more efforts to drive them away.
Though rangers aren’t authorized to enforce local laws, such as Brevard’s nudity ban, Clark has spoken of others ways that could make the park less inviting to nudists.
Clark said she has begun examining “social trails” throughout the park — including any paths through the dunes in the traditionally clothing-optional areas — to determine if they are hazardous to the park’s natural environment.
“Any activity based on resource damage can be suspended,” Clark said.
For now, nudists enjoy the freedoms the beach affords them, measuring their progress in the fact that they can at least get directions to the beach.
“There was a time when we would say, ‘No, we don’t have a nude beach,’ ” said Lorna Reed, with the Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce in New Smyrna Beach. “I don’t think people really understood that it isn’t illegal and it is permitted.”
mary.moewe@news-jrnl.com
