Events - Part 20

 Sydney Fringe Festival Nude Surfing

The Sydney Fringe Festival is a festival of art, theater and cultural events in Sydney, Australia.  From 1995 to 1999 the festival sponsored an event at Bondi Beach called Nude Night Surfing.  I don't know what "Night" referred to, since it was held in the daytime.

Here's a video from the first nude surfing event in 1995.  As the narrator says, "The crowd showed lots of enthusiasm for the event and proved, once again, that the idea that people are offended by nudity is out-of-date nonsense."

Each year the event drew larger crowds.  Here are some clips that I extracted from a much longer video from 1998.  Check out what competitor #7 does at the end of the video as he wades ashore, as the announcer says, "Just checking to see if you're paying attention."  Yes, we're paying attention.

Here's a competitor in 1999.  There were 40 male and 4 female participants and 8000 spectators.  The event was so popular that the local McDonalds ran out of hamburgers.  Competition was strictly amateur, but prizes were awarded, including a resort vacation at a nudist camp.

After 1999, the local council banned the event.  The council claimed that the event drew too much traffic, with drunkenness and broken glass on the beach.  Festival organizers said there had never been any major problems or arrests, and that the ban was a conservative backlash against nudity.  Technically, however, nudity is illegal on Bondi Beach, and police said they might have to start enforcing the law.

So the Sydney nude surfing event is no more.  That's a shame.  Even competitors who didn't win enjoyed it.  As one said, "What's better than being naked and surfing? They are two of the best things in the world."