Not important enough for "breaking news," but very entertaining. I'm just sorry they didn't put the photo up on the web site. This is from the Brattleboro (Vermont) Daily Reformer, our across-the-river local paper; the Harmony Lot mentioned is a parking area in the center of town surrounded by small businesses amd restaurants:
Traffic on Elliot Street was a sign that work was out for the weekend. The Harmony Lot was filling up with folks in town to have dinner and enjoy their Friday night.
The sun was still blazing when five young men, in one corner of the lot, stripped their clothes off, from head to toe. And once disrobed, they sat down by the back door of Everyone's Books, naked as the day they were born.
The UPS man walked by them with a package and didn't seem to notice. Passersby looked perplexed, if they looked at all. One woman paused at the scene and took a picture with her camera-phone.
"That's cool," her male companion said.
A Brattleboro police officer drove by, slowed his cruiser and yelled out the window, "Hey guys, how's it hanging?"
The young men were hosting a "nude sit-in" to protest the Selectboard.
At a meeting this week, the board asked the town attorney to explore options for passing an anti-nudity ordinance. The board was prompted by complaints from residents about recent bouts of young people, nude and congregating, downtown.
"There's no real valid way to justify the banning of nakedness," said Adhi Palar, who was freestyling Friday, while nude, on his clarinet. "Nakedness does not violate any human rights whatsoever."
In Vermont, it doesn't violate any laws, either.
If a person wanted to sunbathe on the Town Common, skateboard on Main Street or hang out in a parking lot without any clothes on, they're perfectly entitled to do so. There is no law banning public nudity.
It's possibly the most liberal state policy on nudity in the country, and there's a whole history of skinny dipping, nude bicycle races and topless women on parade to demonstrate that.
But local governments can adopt their own anti-nudity ordinances, as a few in Vermont have, with varying degrees of success.
If the Selectboard moves forward with an anti-nudity ordinance, that police officer on Friday who drove by the protesting young men would've had to get out of his cruiser, issue each of them a ticket and ask them all to put their clothes back on.
Why they do it
When the young people have appeared nude in the Harmony Lot or other spots downtown, they say they're doing it, mostly, because it's summer. But also, because they can.
"It's too hot to wear clothes," said Patrick "the Bunny" Schneeweis.
Human beings are animals, they say, and the body should not be seen as an offensive thing.
That reasoning doesn't matter to resident Theresa Toney.
On a recent Sunday evening, Toney walked from her downtown apartment to the Riverview Cafe to meet a friend for dinner. She took a short cut through the Harmony Lot and there, in an orange twilight, she saw a group of 10 young men and women, stark naked and congregating.
They looked to be having, she said, "a pretty good time."
A few weeks earlier, on a daytime walk, Toney passed through the Harmony Lot again, and saw a young woman, sitting on the sidewalk and completely disrobed from the waist up. It was disquieting to Toney, to say the least.
"A parking lot is not a strip club. It's a parking lot," she told the Selectboard this week, lobbying them to pass a local ordinance prohibiting such undress.
"This is a problem. What about children seeing this?"
It's been banned before
Brattleboro wouldn't be the first town to try adopting an anti-nudity ordinance.
As Town Attorney Robert Fisher explained to the Selectboard, several communities, including Montpelier, have enacted a policy -- often in response to complaints about nude beaches or strip clubs. The ordinances place a fine on the violators, and they're enforced by local police.
But just as often as town officials have tried to embargo nudity, a citizens group has challenged the measure. Often successfully.
In 2002, the Wilmington Selectboard passed an anti-nudity ordinance, arousing an intense debate in the town. For years, residents there had lobbied the board to prohibit skinny dipping at "the ledges," a spot on the Harriman Reservoir.
But after it was passed, another group residents petitioned to have the measure put to a townwide vote.
Initially, it was upheld by only seven votes and police began ticketing nude swimmers. But the public outcry continued and political action groups formed on both sides, leading aggressive campaigns.
In November, five months after the Selectboard passed the ordinance, residents got another chance to weigh in. They overturned the measure by 17 votes.
Police presence
During a Friday night gallery walk in May, a group of young people gathered in the Harmony Lot for an event they billed as "Bratt Fest," that promoted, among other things, nudity.
The Brattleboro Police Department had officers on bicycle patrol that night. Chief John Martin said they saw a few young people hula hooping without any clothes on, and some streaking across the lot, but there were no arrests made for those activities.
And the evening a few weeks back when Theresa Toney saw a group of young people naked in the Harmony Lot, there were cruisers parked there, and officers watching. Again, no arrests were made.
"What's the harm?" Martin asked. "It's a problem to the extent that it bothers people, but we've always had it here."
There was the "Breast Fest" in the early 1990s, where a group of women marched along Main Street, topless, and made national news.
"There were also the streakers of the 70s," Martin said.
"We get calls and we check out what's going on. Even though there's often no criminal violation, we want to be sure there isn't a confrontation. Or that someone is not emotionally disturbed."
But sometimes there is a criminal violation. The law prohibits nudity with any sexual connotation -- "gratification or the intent of arousing oneself or another," Martin said.
That's lewd and lascivious behavior, a felony charge.
"I wouldn't say it happens every day," Martin said. "But it happens regularly. ... Recently, there was kind of a rash of it. Must have been something in the water."
This isn't the first time complaints about activities in the Harmony Lot have come before the Selectboard. Most of the time, Town Manager Jerry Remillard said, the young people aren't doing anything wrong and the solution is to just talk with them, which some town officials have started doing recently.
But some of the time, he said, there is an issue that needs to be formally addressed.
"There are a lot of things we'll put up with, but it seems like they just want to push it too far," he said.
After about 30 minutes of Friday's nude sit-in, a few young women joined their male friends, and took their tops off in protest. And a group of clothed friends joined the demonstration, cheering them on.
A few people driving by in cars with out-of-state plates looked aghast. A man sitting on the other side of the Harmony Lot called the protesters "freaks."
"Our freedoms are slowly being eroded in this town," Adhi Palar said, lowering his clarinet to speak.
"Yeah," said Schneeweis. "I just say, 'freak power!'"
http://www.reformer.com/headlines/ci_4207655
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