BEACHFRONT U.S.A.

Beachfront U.S.A. was born in 1972 in the mind of Eugene Callen, a German-American resident of Santa Monica, California. Callen was a frequenter of Los Angeles nude beaches, and one day on the way to the ocean, he noticed a sign BEACHFRONT. Tacking on “U.S.A.”, he achieved a euphonius name for an organization he felt was becoming increasingly necessary. He liked the name so much he registered it.

The world's first “freebeach” was initiated on the German North Sea island of Sylt in 1925. The concept of a nudist beach where any member of the public could visit soon spread to France, but it did not solidify into reality in the United States until 1967, which saw the first American freebeach at San Gregorio in northern California. Once the idea proved viable, other free beaches began springing up all along the California coast as well as on the east coast.

Unfortunately, law officers began sporadic arrests of nude sunbathers, charging them with indecent exposure, a criminal sexual offense under the state's penal code section 314. But in 1972 in the Chad Merrill Smith case, the California Supreme Court unanimously decided that mere nudity unaccompanied by lewd intent was not a sexual offense. The police found themselves disarmed.

On Monday 15 Oct 1973 Eugene Callen called a meeting of friends and nude beach activists to translate the “Beachfront U.S.A” into a formal organization. About 50 people gathered at a private home in West Hollywood. Here were introductory remarks by Callen, a less than riveting speaker, and then an amateur but skillful motion picture documentary of police misbehavior at area nude beaches was shown by Bill Ehrhart (still a member of BFUSA today). Finally, as the evening's last item, a pro tem organizing committee was appointed more or less off the top of his head by Callen, acclaimed the group's first President. The head of the committee disappeared after a couple of weeks, but the organization muddled on.

The subsequent nude beach at Venice, California, was the first success for the embryonic BFUSA. A thousand Venice maps were passed out at other area freebeaches such as Pirate's Cove, Malibu, and the number of nude bathers increased steadily at Brooks Beach, Venice. The police were informed that in the absence of specific anti-nude bathing legislation. BFUSA would challenge any arrests in the courts.

Politicians are practical people. Seeing the popularity of the nude beach, Los Angeles City Council members were ready to cooperate in setting off an area for the nudists. They were even working together with Beachfront to bring it about.

At first the Council's legislation passed by a 10-3 vote! Unfortunately, since the vote was not unanimous, the Council was forced to vote a second time to direct a wave of letters and calls at Council members. When the vote came up again, the meeting was well attended by nudists but also by scowling Bible-toting matrons.

“From the beginning of the 90-minute discussion,” said the L.A. Times, “the change in the lawmakers' attitude became increasingly apparent. Several councilmen who reversed their positions conceded that they were under heavy pressure from constituents to outlaw nudity without exception.

Conceding they had been receiving unusually heavy pressure from church groups, Council finally voted 12 to 1 to ban nudism on Venice Beach completely, rearming the police this time with a City ordinance specifying a remarkably conservative dress code for beachwear.

Employing noted First Amendment attorney Stan Fleishman, Beachfornt, in concert with the American Civil Liberties Union, filed for a permanent injunction against the ordinance. The injunction was denied and in September 1974 Beachfront filed an appeal, raising six Constitutional issues- the ordinance discriminated against females; was in conflict with state and federal constitutional provisions guaranteeing the right to enjoy life and pursue happiness and privacy; had no legitimate urgency; attempted to regulate an area pre-emptied by the state violated religious liberty and was unconstitutionally vague and broad.

But again Beachfront’s suit was denied. Meanwhile, the ACLU dropped out of the fight. By now Beachfront, worn out and demoralized, had neither the funds nor the energy to carry the case higher in the state court system.

The following summer L.A. County passed a similar ordinance, and before long done ordinances of almost identical language were appearing in many municipalities and other counties in Southern California.

Everyone remembers that 1976 was the great BiCentennial Year, and there was a good deal of talk in the air about freedom and all that Beachfront planned a mass rally, to take place on Zuma Beach on “Nude Beach Day” (later dubbed National Nude Beach Day as BFUSA began to coordinate with Lee Baxandall and others in the East). The rally was widely advertised in the underground press and on liberal radio stations like KPFK. An attendance in the thousands was anticipated.

As it was 1,200 nudists showed up. And that day saw all of them controlled by 70 sheriff's deputies from 8 a.m. until late afternoon. There were cops in patrol cars, cops on motorcycles, cops on foot with walkie-talkies, cops in helicopters, cops on boats, and even cops on horseback outlined against the sky. The cops controlled the beach, the water, the air and even the surrounding hills. Towards midday, the 1,200 nudists present gathered together in a large circle in the middle of the otherwise empty beach. Games were played and speeches were made, but there was no nude-in.

No one will ever know how many hundreds were turned away by a police barricade of the only road into the parking lot. No one will ever know how many thousands turned away with a shrug as their car radios informed them that the roads were clogged into the beach, that the rally was unreachable. At 3:30 p.m. the police said that they had turned away 8,000 and that the traffic was extended 9 miles south and 12 miles north of the single road leading into the beach parking lot.

BFUSA tried to put the best face it could on the Zuma Beach 76 bicentennial rally, but it had to be judged a failure even though the event generated enormous local and even national publicity. It was sabotaged, first of all by timidity on the part of a majority of the Board of Directors, who voted to tell the police beforehand no attempt would be made to encourage a nude-in -apparently hoping that one might take place spontaneously. But surrounded by a small army of armed uniformed men disciplined in riot control. 1,200 nudists were not enough to achieve critical mass. And the other thousands never made it; they were shut off; the choice of the site was, militarily speaking, a disaster. Nevertheless, BFUSA's leaders learned some lessons in that defeat. In fact, one of the great positive values of the early Beachfront battles was that in suffering a defeat they learned a great deal about what not to do next time.

Well, let us not say “demise”. Beachfront U.S.A. lay dormant for seven years. During the mid-1980's the Western Sunbathing Public Relations Team decided that the ultimate breakthrough in nudist growth would depend upon the freebeaches, factories capable of constantly generating new nudists as the public was finally able to interface with real nudists practicing real nudism. And in October 1986 the Team decided that its attack strategy would be better served if it was separate from the WSA and thus free to recruit beachers who were prejudiced against the formal movement. Since its goals were essentially the same as Beachfront's, the new group chose to take on that name once again and revive the struggle to take back the 1974 freebeach at Venice, the central beach for the city of Los Angeles.

The formal beginning of what is now the Callen-Davis Memorial Fund was on the afternoon of 9 Mar 86 at the Olive Dell Nudist Ranch high up on a hillside in Reche Canyon, Colton, California. At a meeting of the Western Sunbathing Association Public Relations Team, an impatient Robin Bruno handed Cec Cinder a $10. bill, stating that he wanted to get the Fund started with his contribution. Creation of the Fund had been outlined in Cinder's white paper, FB Venice 88, and already much discussed as part of a larger strategy, but it had not yet been formalized.

Cinder invited Bruno and seven distinguished American nudists to join him as Directors in the formation of The Eugene Callen Memorial Fund, named for the by now deceased founder of Beachfront U.S.A. Cinder then made a second contribution, opened a bank account and asked then WSA Secretary/Treasurer David Cheek to serve as the Fund's Treasurer.

The other seven Directors were Lee Baxandall of Wisconcin, President of The Naturist Society, Inc; Ed Lange, founder and Director of Elysium, Inc.; Beverly Price of Phoenix, Arizona, founder and President of the Arizona Wildflowers nudist travel club; Hap Hathaway, former American Sunbathing Association President; William “Dave” Davis, California nude-beach activist and founder of the Nudist Information Center; and Ricc Bieber, another prominent Southern California nude beach activist.

All of the nudist leaders still serve the fund as Directors except Dave Davis, who died of cancer in 1987. Dave was replaced on vote of the Board by his widow Suzy Davis and the Fund's name was changed to the Callen-Davis Memorial Fund in honor of Dave's courageous contributions to the freebeach struggle in Southern California.

From the beginning the Fund was operated differently from any previous nudist legal fund (in fact the proliferation of these is a subsequent phenomenon). The Fund was dedicated, its books were wide open for anyone to see and donor lists were published regularly in the nudist press.

Money came in steadily (it still does). By the end of 1986, donations were up to $3,077. The Fund continued to grow. By the middle of 1992 the amount collected totaled $30,915.97. About 2/3 of the money collected came through direct donations by the WSA.

While technically independent, the Fund was through interlocking directorates, “affiliated” with Beachfront U.S.A. It also received, as noted strong support from the WSA, as did Beachfront itself. We might say that BFUSA was the WSA's military arm and that the Fund was Beachfront's financial arm (Beachfront has its own small separate treasure and budget).

The Fund never pressured anybody to contribute. All donations were, and remain, strictly voluntary. They are made by people from all across the United States and even from some foreigners, who appreciated and wanted to support Beachfront's aggressive approach to nudist rights. In the past, nudists waited until they were attacked, then put up their legal defense. Offensive operations were unheard of. Beachfront put an end to that kind of conservatism, insisting that nudist rights were already present in the Constitution, particularly in the First and Ninth Amendments, and that a constant offensive battle needed to be waged for their acknowledgement.

In 1991 Beachfront U.S.A. hired attorney Stanley Raskin of Torrance, California, and asked for an injunction against the City of Los Angeles's 1974 anti-nudity ordinance, this time in the Federal District Court and went to the Ninth Circuit Appelate Court. This court also turned BFUSA back, citing a previous decision by the United States courts. The injunction was denied by the Supreme Court (Barnes vs. Glen Theater), which held that “public nudity was the evil the state seeks to prevent” and that the state has a right to do so by requiring dancing girls in bars to wear pasties and a g-string. Barnes is fatal to your case, the Ninth Circuit told Beachfront.

Protesting that nudists are a far cry from barroom dancing girls, Beachfront asked the high court to overrule the Ninth Circuit. But once again, in early 1993, the attempt at an injunction was turned back by the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear BFUSA's petition.

Accordingly, frustrated at the highest level but with money still in the bank and the organization still intact, Beachfront U.S.A. is seeking a new path —possibly now turning its attention to the California Department of Parks and Recreation, which controls numerous beaches along the coast.

Cec Cinder