CANADA’S DEBAUCHERY BEACH
by D. Hume
Judy Williams, I feel your pain.
I don’t know you, but I’ve been reading about you in that book that came out 2 years ago, “Wreck Beach” by Carellin Brooks. So I know what you must be thinking.
After so many years—decades—of controversy over the fate of a meandering strip of rock and sand along Vancouver’s most westerly fringe (a series of beaches, really, collectively known as “Wreck Beach”), and after fending off waves of developers & road engineers & parks officials & prudish politicians & amateur pornographers & the usual horny gawkers all in your long-standing struggle to preserve it as a place where nudists can congregate openly and do their thing without having to drive long distances from their homes in the city, now comes along this cheap little upstart blogzine from Seattle blurting out provocative phrases like “debauchery beach” which feed prurient stereotypes and tarnish the bland and innocuous image you’ve been trying to promote and deem so vital to maintaining your precarious and ever-waning record of success.
“Precarious”? Surely you’d agree with that. But “waning”? I use that word with dreary conviction. Because I’ve seen the new towers—poking their topmost floors above the tree-lined ridge which formerly screened Wreck Beach from the prying assault of telescopic lenses. Thanks to your efforts as a founding member and leader of the Wreck Beach Preservation Society, the towers didn’t rise even higher. But the compromise height at which they were capped still allows voyeuristic residents to get an eyeful during low tide, and the so-called “Secret Beach” near the far end of the jetty has lost all pretense to privacy.
More towers are planned; the University of British Columbia (UBC) has a burgeoning student population in need of housing. And pressure to open up Wreck Beach to a wider public—presently held at bay through lack of road access—keeps building along with Vancouver’s populace.
The book amply treats the history of these conflicts over the fate of Wreck Beach; and you emerge, Judy, as its tireless champion and savior. The book’s mere 92 pages contain much else besides, including a detailed map showing trail routes and outhouse locations and even a glossary of Wreck Beach jargon to enable us ‘textiles’ to understand what you and your cohorts are talking about. (“Textiles: what nudists call clothed people.”)
Actually, since first going to Wreck Beach in the mid-Nineties and making return summer visits over the years that followed, I’ve managed to at least partially shed my dyed-in-the-shorts ‘textile’ status and advance to what might be called ‘permanent bucktail.’ (“Bucktail: First-time nudist, so called because of the white flash of their never-seen-sun bottom.”) How I achieve this dermatological feat is through the miracle of Panama hats, Hawaiian shirts, beach umbrellas, and plenty of sunscreen. Why I care to remain in this limbo status on one of the world’s great clothing-optional shorelines derives from my membership in that red-haired, fair-skinned tribe which sunburns so easily. But, as Wreck Beach has revealed to some of us perennial palefaces, there is more to life than goth clubs.
Author Brooks reports that when the regional parks authority, after acquiring Wreck Beach from the neighboring university in 1989, officially declared the area ‘clothing optional,’ there was a degree of consternation among nudist Wreck Beach regulars. Perhaps you and your friends would have preferred the beach to be officially declared off-limits to textiles instead, Judy. But then folks like myself, without prior firsthand exposure (so to speak) to public nudism, would remain stupidly ignorant and susceptible to arguments claiming that public lands should not be reserved for such elite and exotic activities. As it is, a lot of textiles who dare to show
their faces on today’s Wreck Beach may well show their bucktails there tomorrow.
As you know so well, the variously clothed and unclothed visitors who make up the Wreck Beach ‘scene,’ especially on warm and sunny weekends, are a lively, fun-loving crowd. They really know how to enjoy the many amenities this idyllic wonderland has to offer—the sand, the surf, the forest trails, the mountainous vistas, the lingering sunsets, the acoustic guitars, the drum circles, the jazz jams, the yoga exercises, the exhibitionist frisbee sessions, the volleyball in the raw, the skimboarding, the pizza slices, the Peruvian sandwiches, the savory sweets, the Jello shooters… Ah, the Jello shooters: those multilayered liqueur bombs for the tongue. On top of the cocktails I used to buy from other roving vendors (before starting the sensible habit of bringing my own supply), and in between tokes of BC bud mixed with shavings of Moroccan black hash, courtesy of the local corps of naked pharmacists, the shooters would lend an extra little nudge to my headlong free fall into Paradise.
Try as you might, Judy, but any attempt to depict this decadent carnival as a strict repository of ‘family values’ is bound to invite hoots of derision. True, families go there and build elaborate sandcastles with the kids. But my favorite example of Wreck Beach ‘family values’ occurred this past summer when an enterprising beer vendor, in hopes of attracting some extra business from the breeder types, laced his sales pitch with the tempting offer “Children under 7 drink for free!” Now that’s the kind of free market ‘family values’ I can appreciate!
Author Brooks provides a more realistic view of the Wreck Beach experience, even to the extent of hyper-realism. In her first couple chapters, she takes the reader on an almost too-literal guided tour, describing in vivid detail the walk down the stair-trail, the first sights encountered on the ‘main beach’ proper, the feelings aroused at the sight of various objects and strangers, etc. I can imagine some newbies carrying the book down with them and attempting to fulfill the author’s impressionistic prophecies. They could follow her along to the ‘gay side’ and watch for fuzzy guys to pop up out of the reeds, jack-in-the-box style, like the book describes. If they continue on to the later chapters, they could cover the history section by viewing the floating log boom whose protection accidentally brought about the formation and shaping of Wreck Beach during the last century (Let’s hear it for the logging industry!); they could accompany the author on a visit to the so-called ‘condos,’ year-round sanctuaries built from logs and rocks and maintained by proprietary regulars; they could join her in surveying the eroding cliffs which have figured in a lot of Wreck Beach plans and controversies; they might even come across some of the cops specifically named in the book—who patrol the beach from time to time and cause the liquor vendors and drug dealers to temporarily go underground—and warily salute them; and in the course of their excursion Judy Williams herself might turn up, who perhaps could provide updates on the latest news and perceived threats from the textiles.
Personally, I could never take such a literary walking tour of Wreck Beach. It’s not so much that I require my own experiences to be ‘original,’ ‘firsthand,’ or ‘unfiltered.’ Even more to the point, I simply find it impossible to read anything when I go there. Try as I might, I can never seem to get beyond the first couple sentences by dint of all the dazzling distractions all around me. But I’ve seen others on Wreck Beach burying their noses in books and periodicals. Does that mean they’re really reading?
If you, Dear Reader, deem yourself capable of such feats and decide to bring reading material (your laptop?) on a trek down to Wreck Beach when the day is warm and the sky is blue, and if you should happen to meet a blanch-blonde grandma wearing nothing but a pair of sunglasses and some car keys dangling from her earlobes, please don’t show her this article. Because the next time I go visit that sandy secular Paradise on the far west side of Vancouver, I don’t want her to kick my bucktail.