PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. - Desert Shadows Resort and Spa, the luxury nudist club that made many headlines for naturism sank under its debt load. Linsu, the company that owns the resort, filed for bankruptcy in Riverside, CA, last Friday. Desert Shadows was a media sensation with such innovations as a bridge across a major thoroughfare, which its patrons could use without getting dressed. Several other clubs are still operating in Palm Springs, a city considered a nudist mecca. Tom Mulhall, owner of the Terra Cotta Inn, reports that his clothing optional club has been receiving many more calls and emails than usual since Friday.

There was a time when every nudist web site you came across offered the same things: a list of clubs and beaches, tips for newbies, links to other naturist sites, and a photo gallery. With the explosion of web content providers, standing out in the crowd meant finding niches, and this is no less true in the nudist realm.
Thus this site specializes in nudist news, while others have narrowed it down to a single activity done whilst nude. For example: NudeRuns.com lists only upcoming nude foot races. NudistVolleyball.com, on the other hand, is all about nude volleyball, of course! NakedMunros.com is about a Scottish couple’s attempt to climb every munro (a mountain of a certain height) in the nude, regardless of the weather [the link is to an interview we had with them]. Nudehiker.blogspot.com is a blog about nude hiking. MotorcycleNudes.org is for those who like to ride without the leathers.
Then there’s the slew of “naked days”, which call upon the world to do this or that whilst nude on a given date. WGND.com is the site for World Naked Gardening Day. Several other groups use nudity as a form of protest, such as the World Naked Bike Ride, which protests against motor vehicle pollution. Running of the Nudes seeks to put a stop to the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, by holding a parallel event where people run sans clothes and sans bulls!
We couldn’t possibly cover the gamut of niches on the nudist web, but with a bit of surfing you’ll turn-up some gems!

Try as we may to let the world know that “nudist” is all about a healthy family-oriented lifestyle, there are scores of misguided, if not unscrupulous, individuals that have indelibly tied the word to “sex”. Recently this author came across an article that spoke of a “nudist” suing such and such, written by a major computer technology blogger. What he really meant to say was “porn star”, but to him “nudist” was synonymous. In the Internet age, this isn’t so surprising.
Try googling the word “nudist” and right in the first page of ten results, already we find 3 sites that are just disguised attempts to peddle racy pictures and videos. The “nudists” portrayed on these sites go from women with legs wide open, through couples having sex on a beach. In that bunch you’ll also encounter a Russian site that sells movies featuring under aged nudist girls engaged in various day to day activities. The creeps who produce this trash use domains containing the word “nudist” and of course use every keyword related to nudism in order to rank highly in search results. Smart people will surely understand that these aren’t real nudists…or will they?
The problem is that a number of people who consider themselves nudists also are other things, and unfortunately don’t separate this and that on their web sites. Thus, one popular blogger suddenly decided to sell sex toys on his site (but later had enough sense to remove it), while a young female’s personal “nudist” site features provocative photos of herself and links to porn sites. On another web site, this one proffering nudist holidays in Portugal, you’ll be treated to scores of sexually charged photos of a past-her-prime British ex-pat, who informs you she’ll strike poses of a similar nature for your camera if you stay at her bed and breakfast. Then there’s the scores of sites that rank other “nudist” sites, most of the candidates being soft or hard core porn venues. Need we mention FemJoy or Donai, profitable photo archives of beautiful young women in mildly erotic poses, which countless “nudist” sites link to and even feature their photos. We shouldn’t forget the “peeping Tom” sites like Coccozella which have thousands of “nudist” photos, the majority of which were shot by perverts stalking nudist beaches. Unbelievably, we’ve found an assortment of other “nudist” sites also linking to the latter.
We could go on for pages with other examples, but most of you already know that anywhere nudism is present, sexual themes aren’t far away. True, everyone is free to express themselves in any way they see fit, and no one is forced to visit these sites, but many nudists themselves are acting irresponsibly in blurring the line between their sex life and their chosen lifestyle. They may like their kinky sex, or their sex kinky, and that’s fine and dandy, but if they also love knitting, must they make a site about knitting while having sex? For that matter, would they go to a nudist club and pull out a vibrator at poolside and give a show? Is the Internet really the “anything goes” medium?
The web is today’s principal source of information about nudism. You can’t expect the uninitiated to discern between good and bad in a social group that is still eons from being mainstream, and if one takes as a whole what is labeled “nudist” on the web right now, one could easily get the wrong idea. The vast majority of nudists separate their sexual life from their nudist life and don’t take too kindly to a few bad apples strutting their stuff out there. Perhaps it’s time for the rest of us to start boycotting these sites…or is a “Nudist Approved” seal system not too far off, since it’s unlikely many of the perpetrators will voluntarily stop labeling their vulgar sites as “nudist”. Only then will the quotes start to come off “nudist”.

If you believe certain major sites providing services to webmasters, Nudist Day is an adult site. Adult equals porn. Yes, our site has a few photos of naked people, a few of which are of attractive people, but none of which could be construed as being remotely erotic. Neither do we touch human sexuality as a subject, except to say it’s got nothing to do with nudism! We will not knowingly link to, and certainly not publicize any site that has sexual content. We take great pains to stress that this is a family-oriented naturist news site, but try to convince the likes of Google!
Google has rejected Nudist Day as a news source, classifying us as being an adult site, of course! They again rejected us, for the same reason, for their Google Ads, thus depriving us of the opportunity of generating a tiny bit of income.
It doesn’t end there! We also submitted our candidacy to a half dozen press release distribution sites, including the top one, PR.com. You guessed it! We were roundly rejected as being purveyors of adult content! Additionally, sites that publish third party articles have also turned us away on the same grounds.
The curious thing is that some of our competition, including some that DO have sexual overtones, has managed to get by the sentinels of the above mentioned sites. This indicates to us that either we were victims of random judgment calls or their original policy was more reasonable pertaining to nudist sites. Whatever it is, we intend to fight it.
What all of this means in tangible terms is that Nudist Day has potentially lost tens of thousands of new visitors per month. We achieve good numbers just from the brotherhood of nudist sites as well as our regular readers, but if we’re to continue growing and for this to ever become a viable enterprise, we need to achieve wider visibility. As a free site with no income whatsoever, we simply don’t have the budget for expensive ads in nudist magazines or other venues.

Today we look at and compare two veteran nudist portals on the Internet: Clothes Free and NetNude. Neither has ever granted us an interview, although NetNude did at first give its assent.
Both Clothes Free and NetNude purport to espouse strict naturist standards, eschewing anything imbued with sexuality. This we don’t argue, however, both also sell extra features, namely photos and/or video clips and dvds. Clothes Free refers to purchasing the extra content as buying membership in its ad hoc nudist group, the INA (International Naturist Association), while NetNude likes to call it a “donation”.
While most nudists like to look at photos related to their lifestyles, not many would actually pay to see things they see regularly anyway. Nudist Day can’t help but suspect that the vast majority of those who actually buy into this are non-nudist men, many of whom are looking for a cup of titillation, thus the income generated by these two portals may be seen as “nudist prostitution” by some. Sad but true, despite the abundance of readily available pornography on the web, many men still think nudism is sexually stimulating. Of course, they’ve never visited a nudist club or their fantasy world would already be shattered!
Clothes Free produces weekly video segments with the latest “naturist news”. While the production is slick, and president Corey Mangold does an excellent job as a presenter, the same cannot be said about many of the other “nudecasters”, the term they coined for their interviewers. Clothes Free seems content on handing a microphone to whoever is naked and willing. The newscasts also suffer from a bit too much of the “weeee, we’re naked!” syndrome. California-based Clothes Free’s team doesn’t travel much beyond the continental US and the Caribbean, but still reports on foreign events and venues.
Clothes Free’s photo galleries are of good quality and generally in good taste. A number of them were submitted by members and are obviously selectively included in the collection. In NetNude’s case, the photos are submitted by the members themselves and there’s maybe a tad too many single guys posing on rocks for their own digicams!
The general look and feel of Clothes Free’s site is more contemporary, albeit a tad messy, with a few too many annoying animated gifs, pop-ups and “follow you around” menus. NetNude, on the other hand, really needs to hire a graphic artist: Their site is a pink-green-peach eyesore, with a homemade look, circa 1994. The owners, based in Canada, had told us last year that they were updating their look (the reason why they didn’t have time for an interview), but they obviously didn’t learn.
In terms of free content, both portals do a pretty good job of listing all the nudist venues and events in the world and both offer forums, but NetNude does win over Clothes Free in terms of original content, as the latter often just links into other sites content, but then again, it’s focus is on selling its core product, which is the “nudecasts”.
In conclusion, we can say that both sites perform an important role of informing both nudists and prospective nudists, but both could use a more manicured look, lest we be thought of as an unkempt bunch of naked people!

Related Links:

• Net Nude
• Clothes Free