Keys Beaches About to Bare it All
Key West hopes nude beaches can solve its money problems
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Key West officials are hoping nude beaches can do what Al Roker couldn't: Bring bucks and butts to the cash-strapped city.
At a meeting today, the city commission is expected to introduce an ordinance that would lift a nudity ban on Key West beaches and allow for a part of the city-owned sand to be used as a nude beach.
If the nudity for cash thing can work for strip clubs and pimps, why not a struggling city?
''No one visiting us [from other countries] understands why we are such prudes,'' Commissioner Sylvia Murphy told the Miami Herald earlier this summer.
Well if you want to attract European bums to your beach, we guess you have to go from prudes to nudes. Public nudity was outlawed in Key West 26 years ago and is punishable by 60 days in jail and a stiff fine.
But a nude beach seems to have support among business owners and locals, who are desperate for anything that will get a rise out of their economic situation.
The measure would have to be voted on via referendum later this year.
Posted Tuesday, Oct 6, 2009 - 1:43 PM EST
