Experiencing a distinct sense of deja vu, we were unhappy to read that other beaches around the world are fighting to save their beaches just like we had to!! Holkham Bay is on the north coast of Norfolk, a large official beach that has won awards in years gone by. But the beach appears to be under threat at the moment, apparently due to very similar issues we faced on our beaches here!

In a Metro UK article, the article started strongly:

A number of visitors have reported lewd activity at the dedicated naturist beach at Holkham Bay, Norfolk, with one campaigner posting: ‘My last three visits to the beach have seen me propositioned twice. I’ve witnessed gay sex in the sand dunes and men walking around ‘playing’.

What’s new in this particular beach battle is that the fight has moved online. According to an article in the Yorkshire Evening Post:

A campaign has been launched on a social networking site calling for the closure of a nudist beach after claims it has become a “haven for swingers and perverts”.
The group on Facebook was set up after reports that people had witnessed gay sex in sand dunes in the upmarket resort of Holkham Bay, Norfolk.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this one, and will be keen to see a resolution that allows the nudists to retain access to the beach, and the undesirable element removed!! You have our support, Holkham Bay!

Update: It would seem police are following up the inappropriate behaviour being reported at Holkham Bay. According to the article on EADT24:

Andrew Welch, of British Naturism, stressed the incidents did not involve “genuine naturists’’.

“This type of thing is rare but we are aware of these reports,’’ he said.

Sounds familiar, no?

How cool is this – posted 6 months ago on Vimeo, and actually filmed sometime during or before 2005, some of you may have already seen the French Naturism advertising spot that was shorlisted for Cannes!

We’re big fans of promoting the lifestyle and the community, particularly to the mainstream – but it would be nice to have the kind of cash required to make simple ads like this, that communicate the message really well!!

Check it out, it’s worth the 30 seconds!!

TVC – France-espace-naturiste- directed by Jerome PY- shortlist Cannes fest 2005 from Jerome PY – Director on Vimeo.

Update: Got another one – ClothesFree.com run a TV channel, it’s good to see more efforts to get the lifestyle into the mainstream by the larger international organisations. Australia is not yet this far advanced, but one day perhaps…

ClothesFree TV – Wholesome nudist fun from ClothesFree.com

We here at FBANAVic are always on the lookout for interesting and worthwhile news to pass on to our 3 readers – to do this, we subscribe to a bunch of news feeds (RSS mostly) as well as use a few keyword-based Google alerts so we’re right on top of anything exciting as it happens!!

Lately, we’ve noticed a heap of “news” traffic from sites purporting to be nudist and naturist sites, but they have some “interesting” content on offer – now, we’re sure this has been going on for a while, but with the ever-increasing popularity of nudism (particularly for holiday travellers), it would appear the spammers and v1agr4c1alis peddlers are hanging onto the coat-tails of a good thing!!

But this one stood out from the rest – My Nudist Friend appeared in our news feed, with this leading bit of text:

‘Nudist’ – now there’s a expression that brings some pretty images to mind! All joking aside, as alluring as the expression sounds, nudism is actually not really about making love at all but alternatively a natural method of living. Sure, nudists like to stroll around nude and yes, these people do so irregardless of the sex of individuals around them, but unless you definitely realize naturism then you’re likely going to have particular myths about it to state the least.

Sounds reasonable, no? We thought we had a winner amongst all the spam noise, a site with some REAL content!! But alas, we were very wrong. Warning – the link at the end of this sentence has a screen shot on it, which uses some colourful language and has very little to do with nudism (NSFW, but not extremely so, in case you were wondering) – NSFW Screenshot!!

Interestingly, the article on the front page does actually contain some content worth reading through, and there’s a Youtube video as well – it’s just all the porn and other advertising bombarding the rest of the site, as well as the highly questionable comments and other article links that ruin it.

Is this the new future, where we get our nudism information as snippets amongst the porn advertising? Never fear though, loyal readership, there’ll be no porn advertising here!! *

* – we actually have a webring link at the bottom of the page, which we do as a link share and do not make any money out of, but we also don’t control the content. We were assured it was always going to have pure nudist links, but would appreciate you letting us know if you notice any changes!!

Update: We had this one pointed out to us as well, PureNudism – perhaps this is just our opinion, but headlines like “Jr Miss Pageant Videos” and “Jr Teen Beauty Pageant” on a nudist site??? WTF??? Seriously, it might be legal according to their legal page, but we believe sites like this actually harm the nudist community and damage wider acceptance into mainstream lifestyles. AANR and other reputable organisations are certainly not dumping their informative content in favour of massive image galleries!!

Anyone know what is going on with Skinbook?? According to this article, it looks like a new Ning policy could affect their continued operation – at least, as long as they want to continue with Ning as their authentication service.

Here’s the paragraph that gives Skinbook a bit of a kicking (taken from the Ning Updated T&C’s

No more nudity: We will no longer permit nudity of any kind on the Ning platform. A little over a year and a half ago, we prohibited the upload of adult content and pornography to the Ning platform. At the time, we said that nudity that wasn’t adult in nature would still be allowed. Unfortunately, many of the issues that caused us to stop supporting adult content in the first place are still arising on networks that post content with nudity. We believe that the implementation of this policy will further reduce abuse on the Ning platform and will create a clean, well-lit environment for Network Creators as well as the advertisers and partners you choose to work with. Network Creators and members will have thirty days (until August 20th) to remove any nudity they may have uploaded to the Ning Platform prior to today or to transition their networks off of the platform.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this one – Skinbook apparently has over 9,000 members, and a much larger pool of genuine nudists who were refused membership for reasons unknown to them!! We’re also included in the excluded group – we were refused membership both as a site and as individuals, no reason or explanation ever given. And we haven’t been bothered by that refusal in the slightest!!

Discovered this on the news feed – we’ve not visited the whole site, but it does look like an entertaining nudist comic strip!!

Check it out – The Bare Pit