OUR PROPOSAL GAINS LOCAL SUPPORT
Bates needs people if we are to drive away the drug dealers. Despite years of upgrades to the beach and promotions by the County people still do not come to Bates Beach except to run their dogs. Bringing back the nudists is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to do so. Our 6-point proposal has been in the works for about five years and won the support of the local business community, members of law enforcement, and politicians. Below are the details of our efforts:
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1. In the Beginning...
What triggered the movement, was an article in Carpinteria's Coastal View newspaper about the deterioration of North Rincon (Bates) Beach in July 2006. Seeing Bates beach was becoming a crime-ridden, vastly under-used public resource.
We met and decided to organize under the umbrella of he Southern California Naturist Association (SCNA), a non-profit 501c7 state corporation, who wished to subsidize the effort. In 2010, the Santa Barbara griup renamed itself Friends of Bates Beach, as it broadened its mission to include other community goals, and it became a financially independent division of SCNA.
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2. Gathering Local Business Support
During the Spring and Summer of 2007, we walked the Linden Avenue and Carpinteria Blvd business districts and asked the local merchants one-on-one their views about Bates Beach. We told them what had happened there during the past 10 years, and we asked their opinion about the clothing-optional beach. We were surpised how many remembered the beach and quite a few confessed they used to visit there when the nude area was open. Carpinteria was very open to our proposal!
That summer, we launched our $2 Bill Campaign, where Friend of Bates Beach and their supporters made a special effort to buy meals and merchandise in Carpinteria. And we paid for everything using $2 bills. SInce this currency is not often used, it singled us out and as the bills started being passed around town, it demonstrated the purchasing power of those in support of bringing the beach back as it was. Both we and the merchants agreed Bates was good for business.
The following year, we went door-to-door through the business district asking if we could distribute coupons for their stores with our literature to Bates beachgoers. Many gave us special discounts so they could track how many customers actually came in off the beach. We did this free of charge to the merchants: we printed the coupons and distributed them ourselves. By the end of 2008, the feedback we got was that the merchants were very pleased with the added business.
We had proved that getting people to Bates beach was going to help boost the local economy.
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Having secured the support of most of the merchants, Friends of Bates Baach joined the Carpinteria Chamber of Commerce in 2008. This gave us a chance to meet with many other local business owners and community politicians, to hear their thoughts about our proposal to re-populate Bates Beach To our surprise, almost all agreed our proposal was a great way to bring more tourist dollars to the region. There were suggestions to extend the community bus lines an extra mile south to accommodate ferrying tourists from Carpinteria's hotels and restaurants back and forth to Bates Beach. Those talks remain on-going and are reflected in the web site sections about
transit and how to improve it,
beach cleanup, and the Beach Watch volunteers.
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3. Favorable New Stories
Our efforts were started to draw the attention of the media.
In June, 2007, a lengthy article was published on the front page of the Ventura County Star about our efforts, complete with several photographs. The largest photo on page one was near 5x7 inches in size. Click on image at left to read the story.
A few days later, a reporter from the Santa Barbara News Press showed up at the beach. He took a couple of pictures of us playing volleyball, and that photo and caption was published June 10.
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On July 10, 2008, the VC Reporter published an editorial, “Get Naked, Be Happy,” supporting our campaign to restore the nude section of Bates Beach.
Click Here to read the July 3 story.
Click Here to read the July 10 editorial.
Next, we launched a web site and on-line petition to measure how many people would return to the beach if the nude section was reopened. Between June and September 2008, the site netted 1500 signatures (60% from Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties) from people who agree it should be reopened and who say they will visit the beach if that decision is made.
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Those news articles and the petition prompted the requests for radio time from CNN reporter Maria Sanchez. We did two interviews for her local talk show a year apart, in July, 2008 and again in August, 2009.
Download 20-min radio interview here. (MP3 format).
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04/30/2010 KEYT-TV INTERVIEW
4-minute story about our efforts to re-establish a nude beach in Santa Barbara, includes interviews by reporter Ryan Carmel with SCNA President and other locals in support and opposed to the proposal. Story was re-broadcast 5/8/10.
Download interview here.
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4. Favorable Local Polls
Following the first radio interview, we were contacted by a reporter for the Santa Barbara Independent. Their article appeared on-line June 26. They included a poll for readers to take on whether they approved of the idea of a special section of Bates Beach set aside for nude use. The results of the poll surprised everybody, even us.
JUNE 2008 BATES BEACH POLL CONDUCTED BY SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT
Do You Support the Idea of a Section of Bates Beach in Santa Barbara County Being Set aside for Nude Use?
| Yes, Absolutely | 81% |
| Yes, With Signage | 17% |
| Definitely Not | Less than 1% |
To show this poll is not a fluke but consistent with other polls on the same subject, we offer the following evidence:
A similar polls run in 2008 about Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo county and San Onofre beach in San Diego County. The results of these polls is consistent with the numbers shown above. 95% of San Luis Obispo respondents said Pirate's Cove remain a nude beach. 76% of the Oceanside residents agreed San Onofre should remain clothing optional with proper signage.
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ROPER POLL SHOWS AMERICA'S SUPPORT
In October 2006, a national Roper poll commissioned by the Naturist Education Foundation found that 74% of Americans approve of nude sunbathing on beaches without interference from local officials, as long as they do so in areas set aside for that purpose. These results verify and are consistent with the highly favorable results of the polls conducts by the local newspapers cited earlier.
Click Here to view the details about this national poll.
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Click image to read complete poll (PDF)
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2009 ZOGBY POLL SHOWS CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SUPPORT
A public opinion poll tested the responses of Californians to these questions. The independent survey of 889 California adults was conducted by the prestigious Zogby International polling firm from 11/6/09 to 11/9/09. The margin of error for the entire sample is +/- 3.4 percentage points.
QUESTION 1: Do you agree or disagree that people should be able to enjoy nude sunbathing on a beach or other location that is designated for that purpose?
| Agree | 79% |
Disagree | 16% |
Not Sure | 6% |
Summary: Agreement with Question 1 was high throughout the geographical areas of the state, with a notable peak of 92% in the Sacramento area. In Santa Barbara County, 78% agreed.
QUESTION 2: Do you agree or disagree that areas should be set aside for people who enjoy clothing-optional recreation such as nude sunbathing and swimming?
| Agree | 70% |
Disagree | 25% |
Not Sure | 5% |
In the Santa Barbara area 73% of poll respondents agreed wih the question.
Summary: Local polls show that public approval for the idea has clearly been building over the years, but governmental agencies have been slow to respond to the emerging demand. The majority of all identified racial and ethnic groups favor designation, but support is highest among African-Americans (78.4%) and Hispanics (72.4%).
CONCLUSION: The Santa Barbara 1977 law presumes that nudity is offensive to everyone. Obviously from this poll and others, it is not.
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2010: RINCON POINT RESIDENTS SUPPORT OUR PROPOSAL
Next, knowing how sensitive the residents at Rincon Point were to the clothong-optional area in 1999, we conducted interviews with as many of those people as we could using the same questions as in the Zogby Poll above. This gated community is located at Rincon Point, about three-quarters of a mile to the south of the proposed site. The county line runs right down the middle of the housing tract.
To our surprise we received a very supportive reception from about 55% of the residents, a neutral “don’t care one way or the other” from about 35%, and only a vocal negative reaction from about 10% (principally three people who had spearheaded the effort ten years ago, who pretty much said they “didn’t like ANYONE on THEIR beach,” not even the surfers!)
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5. Meetings With Local Officials: "Yes" But Don't Ask Us in Public
During the past couple of years, once we knew we had the public's support and also the support of the local business community, we began contacting local officials seeking a meeting to discuss our proposal.
To our surprise, we were able to make appointments with almost everyone we wanted to see, from city officials in Carpinteria, to candidates for office, to law enforcement officials. We spoke to the staffs of three of the five County Supervisors and recived encouragement and suggestions for who to contact next. Even the head of the County Tourist Board found our ideas interesting. But what all these people said in common was, "Although I have no problem personally with your goals, please don't ask us to vote on this in public." We found that very curious, but we accepted their ground rules.
Our members also enthusiatically put up yard signs, made financial donations, and stuffed envelopes for a few of them when election time came around. They were very happy to accept it just as long as we didnt tell anyone what group we represented. Interesting profession, politics.
Still, the key to success seems to be getting law enforcement and the District Attorney's office to make enforcement of the county nudity ordinance an absolute last priority at Bates Beach, except for lewd activity. That way, the politicians dont have to say anything publicly about our proposal.
In March 2011 we met with Lt Kelly Moore, recently appointed in charge of the south end of the county including the city of Carpinteria and Bates Beach. He was very cordial but said he had to enforce the existing law unless directed to do otherwise by his superior. We then contacted the office of District Attorney Joyce Dudley seeking a meeting to discuss our ideas. In July 2011 we received a letter rejecting a meeting as her office would not discuss "hypothetical cases" but only actual tickets received at the beach. Meetings with other officials are planned.
WHERE WE ARE TODAY
So, do we have to go down to Bates and get ticketed en masse to get their attention? We are still discussing the next step. It seems incredulous law enforcement would prefer gangs, grafitti, and drug dealers to a group willing and eager to work with them to bring the beach back to prosperity.
Meanwhile our teams continue to patrol the beach, handing out cleanup bags, literature, and monitoring for the occasional deputies. We'll keep posting here as the saga continues. We vow this issue is not going to go away. We are here until we win.
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Friends of Bates Beach is a division of the Southern California Naturist Association (SCNA)
A Non-Profit California Corporation
23679 Calabasas Rd #940 Calabasas CA 91302 (818) 225-2273