| I travel to the keys quite often but have yet to find any "official"
clothing optional beaches. My wife and I have found that typically you
have to make your own. Bahia Honda offers quite a long beach and is
usually occupied by persons in various states of dress. Top free is
quite normal. We've *never* been hassled or told to cover up. You use
your own judgement. Many other keys have little beaches that you can
use in a similar fashion, but once again you have to use your own
judgement. There's also a state park on Key West near the old naval
base where you can typically bathe with a thong or g-string. The
shoreline is NOT sandy (as is the case with most of the keys) but you
can usually find a place where the "rocks" (broken coral pieces) aren't
too large or sharp to lay a towel and relax. I've nuded there a number
of times as well. The park costs a few dollars to enter but you can
come and go as you like for the entire day. Key West has a LOT of
guest houses and hotels with their own beaches and/or pools. Topfree
is allowed at most of them and thongs and g-strings are very typical.
Usually you don't have to be staying at the the hotel/guest house to make
use of the facilities. Some charge a dollar or two to rent a lounge
chair. There aren't many real "beaches" in Key West - in fact there
are *NO* natural beaches. South Beach has sand they bring over in huge
barges from Jamaica and other islands. What you wear on the public
beach seems to be determined by what everyone else is wearing at any
particular time. Sometimes everyone is covered up with bathing suits
and other times all you see is thongs and g-strings. We've never seen
anyone get in any trouble with the law nor have we had any trouble
ourselves.
One word of caution: Why are you going in September?!? I definitely
do NOT recommend that time of year - simply because it's right in the
middle of hurricane season. You will probably never see anything
resembling a hurricane, but the same can be said about the sun. You
are very likely to be covered by clouds from late August into early
November.
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| MIAMI (AP) -- No clothes, no tan lines, no obstacles: Dade
County's only nude public beach has installed a wheelchair ramp
that has handicapped sunbathers tickled pink all over.
``I'm really pleased that it's here, obviously,'' Fred Shotz,
who has a joint disorder, said as he soaked up the sun in the buff.
``It's a real benefit to people who are disabled who want to use
this beach.''
The county paid $18,500 for the 150-foot ramp, which stretches
over the dunes to the half-mile ``clothing-optional'' strip of
Haulover Beach.
The county also expects to spend up to $30,000 more on closer
parking for disabled nudists.
Before the ramp was completed last month, Shotz had to call
ahead to have a park employee wheel him over to the nude zone.
Sometimes, several nudists would help out.
``People would come over the stairway and carry your stuff,''
Shotz said Thursday. ``They even carried people in wheelchairs up
the steps and down across the beach.''
Haulover is Florida's only nude public beach with a ramp that
makes it accessible to the disabled, said Shirley Mason, former
president of South Florida Free Beaches, a nudist organization.
Activists demanded the ramp after Congress in 1990 passed the
Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires that public
accommodations be accessible to the handicapped.
``It's two different issues. Whether or not to have the beach is
one. The other is, once having had it, providing access to it is
pretty much a given,'' said Diana Richardson, chief of the county's
Office of ADA Coordination. ``It's something that you must do under
ADA.''
Haulover also has two $850 beach wheelchairs, which look like
long lawn chairs with huge tires for use on sand.
Four regulatory agencies had to oversee the ramp project because
of Haulover Beach's delicate plant life and dunes.
``It took a lot of permits and it took a lot of time,'' said
Marcus Breece, Haulover's beach safety manager.
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