Will Clothed Minds Prevail? : Some People Predict a Cover-Up for Nudists at Black’s Beach as County Population Grows and Sand Runs Out

When Donna Lawrence arrived in San Diego a couple of weeks back, she didn’t bother marching off to the zoo, Sea World or any of the other local tourist haunts. No way. Lawrence wanted something more elemental, more quintessentially Californian.

So she headed for Black’s Beach.

The 21-year-old North Carolina native has not been disappointed. Lawrence said she feels right at home whiling away sunny summer days at the legendary nude sunbathing spot tucked beneath the towering coastal cliffs north of La Jolla.

“I’ve been in town two weeks, and this is my third time here,” the tall, athletic-looking blonde said before skipping off into the surf. “I like swimming without a top because you don’t have to worry about it falling off when a wave hits. . . . Besides, you can buy fewer bathing suits.”

Still Something of a Shrine

Ah, Black’s. Long a beacon for purists willing to bare all in search of the perfect tan, the renowned strip of sand is still a local institution on the order of Shamu and the rest.

Despite a vote outlawing nude sunbathing at the beach a decade ago, despite the lawsuits and police crackdowns of yesteryear, despite the sheer physical difficulty of climbing down the treacherous bluffs that guard the place, Black’s remains something of a shrine for iconoclastic sun worshipers from around the world, drawing tens of thousands of visitors each year.

These days, the mood at Black’s is decidedly mellow. Visits by police are rare. Some regulars say they often don’t even bother to cover up when an officer strolls by.

The professional oglers still line the cliffs, dozens at a stretch, peering through binoculars or firing off cameras equipped with telephoto lenses, but no one really seems to mind.

Even the notorious, 300-foot bluffs have been tamed to a degree. Zealots of Black’s Beach have done extensive midnight grading along a major trail leading down to the sand from the Torrey Pines Glider Port, building wooden stairs in some spots and pouring concrete steps in others.

Love it or hate it, Black’s has become a fixture. But some San Diego officials suggest its days as a nude beach may be numbered.

With the county’s population mushrooming and crowds at beaches up and down the coast elbowing for room, it may be only a matter of time before the municipal planners turn their attention to Black’s. Some speculate that the isolated beach, near the UC San Diego campus, might become downright G-rated if the pathways and parking lots are improved so that mom, pop, granny and junior can easily reach the sand.

“I couldn’t tell you if it’s a year away or 10 years or 20 years,” said George Loveland, San Diego parks and recreation director. “As there becomes more demand and more crowded conditions at other public beaches, the pressure may be on to provide better access to Black’s and, ultimately, to prohibit nudity. It seems unlikely it can go on that way forever.”

No one is quite sure when nudity first became the norm at the beach. Some regulars say they have talked to couples in their 50s and 60s who claim to have frequented the spot since shortly after World War II.

(The beach was named years ago after a late real estate magnate, and the nudity issue became a modern-day embarrassment for the Black family. In 1980, the family successfully lobbied the city to change the name, but the area is seldom referred to by its official title, Torrey Pines City Beach.)

It became a prominent gathering ground for nudists during the counterculture days of the 1960s and ‘70s. The reputation blossomed when, in 1974, San Diego declared Black’s a “swimsuit optional zone,” making it the only legal municipal nude beach in America.

That status lasted for only three summers. In November, 1977, the San Diego electorate approved a law making swimsuits mandatory at the beach. Black’s devotees immediately fought back, forming the Nude Beach Committee and, later, Friends of Alternative Recreation to push for a new vote, but never managed to make it to the ballot.

In the meantime, several beach patrons were issued citations by police for being in the buff at Black’s. A handful of them battled the $25 tickets in court, arguing that their constitutional rights were violated, but they were unable to prevail.

At the beach, it didn’t seem to matter much. Visitors continued to fling off their suits and skirt the law. It became common practice in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s for nude sun worshipers to carry plastic whistles to the sand, sounding the alarm whenever a police officer appeared on the horizon.

No Conflict Between Users

“It’s become pretty much of a non-issue,” said parks director Loveland. “There really isn’t a conflict of users right now. The ones who make the effort to go down there are the ones who sunbathe nude. We don’t get complaints, quite frankly.”

Indeed, as the ‘80s wound on, the unstable cliffs towering above the beach became a far more pressing issue than the sartorial status of the patrons.

Police and lifeguards often had to pluck beach-goers from the sheer sandstone precipices. Some people slipped and fell to their deaths. In 1982, a massive slide destroyed one major trail and buried a sizable swath of the beach.

Matters weren’t helped when, in 1983, both the city and state discontinued lifeguard service along the 2-mile strip.

Within a few months, the city lifeguards returned with orders to keep bathers off the 400-yard stretch of sand owned by the city because of concerns about the crumbling cliffs. But the lifeguards soon found themselves not only shooing sunbathers off the city’s beach, but also making rescues on the 1 1/2-mile state-owned section that was still open to visitors.

In recent years, the lifeguards have continued to patrol the state beach, and San Diego officials have submitted bills to the California Department of Parks and Recreation, to no avail.

State officials say they cannot reimburse the city for the cost of the lifeguards because of laws prohibiting California agencies from contracting out for such services. Nonetheless, the state parks department is attempting to win funding so state lifeguards can return to Black’s, according to Kirk M. Wallace, the agency’s deputy regional director.

Offered City Control

Wallace said the state has offered to turn control of the beach over to the city on at least two occasions, most recently about 18 months ago, but so far San Diego officials have balked at the offer.

City officials have talked in recent years about building an access trail and stairway down a canyon that opens onto the state section of the beach, but the $1-million project has never gotten past the discussion stage, officials say.

Back at the beach, the bronzed sunbathers pay little heed to such matters. For them, a solid afternoon marine layer that blots out the sun is more cause for concern that a bureaucratic turf battle.

“People mostly come down here to get away from all the hassle,” said Kelly Johnston, a 20-year-old Oceanside resident who has frequented Black’s for three years. “I met everyone the first day I was down here, and I haven’t had a problem yet. I have a lot more problems down at the Boardwalk in Pacific Beach.”

Johnston, a petite woman with straw-colored hair, said she was not entirely comfortable with the nudity at the beach at first.

“It took me two years to take my bottoms off,” she said. “I was scared, just like when you get a perm and are afraid everyone’s going to comment. When I finally did last fall, half the people didn’t even notice.”

They’re Either Gawkers or Shy

Despite their state of undress, the regular crowd at Black’s usually does not dabble in casual romances, Johnston said.

“To me, it doesn’t work,” she said. “Meeting guys down here is kind of hard. They’re either gawkers and are in your face, or they’re shy. . . . Most of the friendships don’t go off the beach that much.”

Cliff Meine, a bearded artist and gem cutter outfitted only in a visor, agreed that the beach has increasingly become a platonic gathering place.

“Three or four years ago, I used to see people having sex, sometimes in the height of the crowd,” said Meine, a Black’s regular for about four years. “Now, with AIDS and just the general sexual conservatism of the ‘80s, that isn’t the case.”

These days, Meine said, public sex acts seem to take place only on the far northern end of the beach, the stomping grounds for homosexual men.

Men make up at least three-quarters of the crowd at Black’s, regulars say. When a woman arrives at the beach, she can sometimes find herself surrounded by more than 2 dozen admirers, a situation that scares off many newcomers.

‘We Look Out for Them’

“We try to look out for them,” said Frenchie, a wiry La Mesan who arrives at the beach most days with his parrot, Rosebud. “Even if it’s a lady we don’t know, we try to help out when too many guys start pressing in.”

Police never seem to pose a problem, he said. Often they drive by and the nude sunbathers simply wave hello, Frenchie said.

Capt. Dave Crow, commanding officer of the San Diego Police Department’s northern division, said patrols along Black’s are “pretty much a low priority.” By the time officers arrive, visitors have usually thrown something on.

The nudity provisions “are still on the municipal code” but prove “very difficult to really strictly enforce,” Crow said. Moreover, there simply have not been big problems at the beach, he said.

“From my knowledge, we have not received a complaint about any problems out there in over a year,” Crow said.

Like many beaches, Black’s is divided into well-defined cliques. Gays control the beach’s northern area, couples tend to congregate just south of there.

Uneventful Place to Work

Farther down the coast, a more free-flowing crowd of single men and women mingle, while UCSD students and surfers tend to flock to a section owned by the university on the extreme southern edge of Black’s.

Tim Cicchetto, the chief lifeguard at Black’s, said the beach is a relatively uneventful place to work.

The area gets its share of “perverts and wackos,” he said, but lifeguards call police if things get out of hand. Occasionally, police also have to warn beach-goers armed with coolers about selling beer on the beach.

Sea rescues are rare. So far this summer, there have been fewer than 10, Cicchetto said. Even the nudity eventually becomes commonplace.

“Maybe I’m numb to it,” Cicchetto said. “It doesn’t faze me. Sure, we may occasionally see a good-looking girl, but that’s a rare occasion--it’s mostly guys down here. Besides, that’s not why we’re down here.”

But the lifeguard has seen his share of characters, like the guy who would sit and carve intricate canes out of raw sticks of wood, or a man who would paint the bodies of the nude beach-goers with a rainbow of colors.

He’s There ‘8 Days a Week’

Then there’s someone like Horseshoe Jerry. Each day, the 50-year-old San Diego resident tromps down to the beach, about noon on weekdays, earlier on weekends to beat parking problems. He sets up a few beach umbrellas he stashes in a secret hiding spot, then hammers two iron bars into the sand to create a horseshoe pit.

Along with friends like Frenchie and Meine, he tosses the horseshoes back and forth, back and forth, his deeply tanned face furrowed in concentration behind oval glasses. This is a gathering point for the regular gang, who play with Frenchie’s parrot and share the latest news.

“I’ve been to beaches all over and this is the best,” Jerry said, pausing from his game long enough to sip a beer. “Once you see it, that’s it. This is paradise. . . . I come here eight days a week. It’s just peaceful.”