Beach Bums - Part 45

 Druridge Bay, England

Druridge Bay is a beach in Northumbria, England.  It's one of the northernmost English beaches, near the Scottish border.

The beach has a long stretch of sand, backed by dunes.

Nude beach-goers often head into the dunes.  My English friend John sent me this photo of himself there.  Thanks, John!

The dunes offer more privacy than the beach for other activities, too ...

like these guys in the dunes at Druridge.  In the review of this beach by Pinkuk.com, they recommend: "take water, sandwiches, and condoms."

Druridge Bay is also the site of England's annual North East Skinny Dip, which we saw in a previous post.  At dawn on the Autumnal Equinox, over a thousand people run into the cold water, naked.

I love this photo from the 2017 North East Skinny Dip.  Two naked guys holding each other, the shape of their bodies against the rising sun forming a heart.

College Streaking - Part 52

 Aarhus University, Denmark, 2022

Today we show another annual nøgenløb (naked race), the opening event of the Kapsejlads spring festival at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark.  The runners, mostly male but with a few females, run a course that goes around the side of a pond. Then they jump into the pond and swim across. The first one to make it to the other side of the pond wins.

Today's photos are from the 2022 event.  Above, the naked contestants gather before the race begins.

And they're off!

Racing around the side of the pond.

More runners.

Swimming across the pond.

And the first one across is the winner.

More racers make it across the pond.

The winner is Jonathan Kaas, above.

And that's Kaas with the tattoo on his chest.

Win or lose, they're having a good time.

That calls for some beer!  This event is basically a beer fest.

And what goes in must come out.  (This photo is from the 2012 event.)

We end with a short video of the race.

Calendars - Part 47

 Red Hot 2021

British fashion photographer Thomas Knights is a redhead, known in Britain as a ginger.  For some reason that's incomprehensible to Americans, in Britain, gingers are laughed at, bullied, and discriminated against.  Knights decided to fight back by producing "Red Hot" calendars presenting redheads as handsome alpha males.

If you don't like the typical British nude charity calendars that coyly hide frontal views, you'll like this calendar.  There's nothing shy about these guys.

The cover above features model Sam.

Shaun is Mr. January.

Euan is Mr. February.

Ben is Mr. March.

Arran is Mr. April.

Devon is Mr. May.

Andrew is Mr. July

Daniel is Mr. August.

Josh is Mr. September.

Myke is Mr. October.

Gavin is Mr. November.

And Casey is Mr. December.

You might have noticed that June is missing.  It was missing from my source for these photos, but from a teaser promotion, it was clear that Mr. June is Sam, who is also the cover boy.  Here's a bonus photo of Sam.

And as an extra bonus, it turns out that Sam is a gay porn star under the name Sean Weiss.  The photo above is from a video called Taking Care of Business in which Craig Marks, in back, takes care of business with Sean.

Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 42

Angels 

You may be surprised to learn that, despite all the pictures of female angels you've seen, there are no female angels in the Bible.  None.  They're all male.  Three angels are named in the Bible, the angel Michael (above, by Mendarkson) ...

the angel Gabriel (above, Archangel Gabriel by Hugh Irvine (1783-1829), said to be a self-portrait of the artist) ...

and the angel Raphael (above, The Archangel Raphael and Mephistopheles by Jean-Paul Laurens, 1885).

Other angels are mentioned in the Bible, but not by name.  For example, two angels visited Lot in Sodom, where the local men wanted to have gay sex with them (so clearly these angels were male) shortly before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  Above, Two Angels at Lot's House in Sodom by Harold Stevenson, 1986.

Another Biblical incident was Jacob wrestling with an angel, depicted in the rather homoerotic sculpture above by Hendrik Christian Andersen, 1909-1911.

Except the Bible doesn't say that Jacob wrestled with an angel.  It says that he wrestled with a man all night, and in the morning the man told him that from now on Jacob's name was Israel.  Then Jacob said he had seen God, so perhaps he was wrestling with God, not an angel.

In any case, how could Jacob have wrestled all night?  Nobody can wrestle all night.  Above is a 1940 sculpture Jacob and the Angel by Jacob Epstein, and if you lay the sculpture down horizontally, it might show what Jacob and the man, who I suggest was no angel, were really doing all night.  Then Jacob's orgasm was so good that he said he had seen God.  Hey, if homophobic fundamentalists can interpret the Bible, I can interpret the Bible, too.

Other artists have their own ideas of angels.  This is the 1950 sculpture The Angel of the Citadel by Marino Marini at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

This 1974 sculpture of an angel on a tricycle has had a checkered history.  It was made by 25-year-old artist Mark Jacobsen on commission for the Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines, Iowa.  The angel is naked and definitely male.

Not surprisingly, some people in Iowa objected to the naked angel.  In 1990, after 16 years, the statue was removed from the mall and put in storage (apparently these things take time in Iowa).  In 2001 it was purchased by collector Jerri Scott, who put it in her yard.  Above is a closeup of the statue in Scott's yard, including its dangling penis.

But the statue had a few surprises.  From another angle, the angel's penis has a face (above).

In 2021, Scott donated the sculpture to the city of Johnston, Iowa, where it now resides beside a bike trail near City Hall.

A 1995 statue by Wim Delvoye atop a fountain in Knokke, Belgium is called Rose des Vents (Compass Rose), but it is popularly known as the pissing angel.

We end with another kind of angel – a short video of a guy making a snow angel.

Ads - Part 47

AIDS Ads, Part 2 

We continue our survey of safe-sex ads responding to the AIDS epidemic.  Some ads showed nothing more than butts, like this 1990s ad for an AIDS helpline for Maori gay and bisexual men ...

and this 1990s ad urging men to keep their dildos "dishwasher safe."

Some ads showed frontal views, though some were more direct than others.  This 1990 ad by the Swiss organization AIDS Hilfe Schweitz only shows a dim silhouette of a penis.

And the frontal view is cartoonish in this 1992 ad by the AIDS Council of New South Wales, Australia.

This 1995 ad for a symposium called Schwule Gesundheit '95 (Gay Health '95) in Hannover, Germany, looks like a chorus line for a musical, not an event about a disease.

But in this 1990s ad by the CORE program promoting safer sex, the men have erections, so it's clear what it's about.

And this 1989 ad by the Comité SIDA AIDE Montréal, promoted "the pleasure of latex" on a very visible erection.

Finally, a few more ads actually showing sex.  There's a hand on a cock in this 1991 ad promoting condoms by the Gay Men's Health Crisis and AIDS ACTION Committee of Massachusetts.

And the guys in this 1990 ad from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation are, as the text says, "Ready for action ... with condom."

We end with this bizarre but memorable ad showing a man fucking a scorpion.  The text explains itself.

We'll see more AIDS ads and posters next time.