Our Story

NUDE BEACH ORIGINAL

In 1974, something quietly radical happened on a stretch of sand below the cliffs of La Jolla, California. The city of San Diego looked at Black's Beach, a place you could only reach by a steep dirt trail, and made it official: the first sanctioned nude beach in the United States.

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Think about what that means. Somewhere, a government employee filed the paperwork. Somewhere, a sign got made. An official seal, stamped onto a piece of metal, declaring that past this point, you were free.

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That's the part nobody talks about. Freedom didn't arrive at Black's Beach in 1974; surfers and sunbathers had been living it there for a decade. What arrived was the seal: the moment the establishment looked at bare humanity on a beach and said approved.

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It never really happened again. The seals stopped. The signs stopped. But the beaches didn't.

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So the legend goes: the signs started appearing on their own, wherever freedom wants to be, bolted to a post some morning, looking entirely official, seal and all. One appeared on a Chicago beach not long ago, and for one glorious Labor Day weekend, the city of Chicago had a nude beach, because a sign said so. Chicago, it should be noted, nearly had a real one: in 1932, a Rogers Park alderman formally proposed it. The city's been thinking about it for ninety years. The sign just got tired of waiting.

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That's what Nude Beach is. We make the seal for every beach that's earned one, whether the paperwork ever got filed or not: Black's Beach, Haulover, Hippie Hollow, Little Beach, and wherever your own sign belongs. Same three palms, same 1974.

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Consider this your sign. Beach Freely.

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NUDE BEACH ORIGINAL, 1974

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Nude Beach® is a beach apparel and destination souvenir brand: tees, hats, bags, towels and swim made for sun, sand and days worth remembering.

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Questions? hello@nudebeachco.com

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