The new privacy fencing installed at the city’s gay nude beach, Denny Blaine Park, is Exhibit A of Seattle’s favorite civic pastime: do-nothing, performative solutions.
As of yesterday, a chain link fence with green plastic lining divides the park—the product of an injunction from King County Superior Court requiring the city to come up with a ’batin “abatement” plan to dissuade lewd acts and “nudity as constituted” at the park.
Denny Blaine Park is naturally divided into three levels, divided by two sets of stairs that descend to the beach. The retaining wall adjacent to the first staircase already obscures most angles from street level and the lawn. The fence, which extends about four feet on top of the retaining wall, effectively blocks off the east area. The fence is the dividing line. Nudity is okay on the beach side east of the fence, but not okay on the street side west of it.
A spokesperson for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation wrote in an email that two of these zones will be clothing optional, and that the department will post the park’s hours and code of conduct on the fence.
The fence has only been in place for a day, but Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reports someone has already tried to tear it down (the Seattle Police Department did not respond to a request for comment).
And besides looking like shit, advocates for the park say the fence doesn’t prevent the acts of public masturbation, sex, and harassment that do happen in the park.
“It does diddly jack shit,” says Colleen Kimseylove, a co-lead of Friends of Denny Blaine Park (FDBP), the park stewardship advocating for the park’s use as a nude beach. “I think there’s an argument to be made that it makes the situation worse.”
For the nearly two years that the fight over this beach has stretched on, beachgoers have repeatedly told The Stranger that creeps exist, and masturbation happens, but not anywhere near as often as neighbors say it does. Decreasing visibility could change that.
For anyone engaging in lewd or dangerous behavior, Kimseylove says, “if you put up a fence, it really is like, ‘Oh, hi. Here’s a nice extended feature that makes it harder for anybody to see what I’m doing.’”
Nudity is legal in Seattle. Instead of installing a fence, said Sophie Amity Debs, another FDBP co-lead, the city should be making stronger arguments in support of residents’ First Amendment rights.
“The neighbors have asserted that nudity is illicit, against the code of conduct, and that it is actively contributing to criminal activity,” she said via text. “The city, so far, has effectively ceded these concerns, and simply said that they are choosing not to enforce and they have the right to do that.”
King County Superior Court Judge Samuel S. Chung did find, in his injunction, that “nudity as constituted” represented a nuisance to nearby property owners. Instead of pushing back on that, the city opted to try to shunt beachgoers out of sight. But that won’t work, Amity Debs argued.
“The zones and this bizarre fence were not in any way necessary or required by the injunctive order,” she said. “[E]ven the judge sounded extremely skeptical of them being useful in any fashion.”
Dividing the park into clothed and nude zones has never been a hit with beachgoers, who shut down the idea at a public meeting last year. Not even the irate neighbors like this fence. In a July 28 statement to KIRO 7 news, Denny Blaine Park for All, the group behind the lawsuit that led to the injunction that led to the abatement plan, said the plan failed to address “ongoing illegal activity.” Denny Blaine Park for All did not respond to a request for comment.
The city settled on a solution both sides openly hate. Why?
Callie Craighead, press secretary for Mayor Bruce Harrell, wrote in an email that, “the fencing and visual barrier were put up in accordance with a court-ordered plan submitted by the City related to nuisance behavior at Denny Blaine Park.”
A spokesperson for Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR), Rachel Schulkin, sent almost the exact same sentence.
Asked to elaborate on how the fence would combat the nuisance behaviors described in the injunction, Schulkin stated, “The fence obscures views into the park.”
Schulkin did not offer any comment on how the fence would prevent indecent activity on the beach itself.
Rather than being a solution that will satisfy the injunction, Kimseylove fears that the fence itself will become a nuisance, attracting conflict and vandalism, and land the city right back in court.
“It feels like we’re being set up to have issues happen with this fence and have neighbors come back to the courts and say, ‘Oh, they can’t even respect a fence,’” they said. “[It’s] almost like a deliberate provocation to gather more evidence that Denny Blaine is Sodom and Gomorrah on the shores of Lake Washington.”
What’s up with the City selectively permitting “nuisance behavior” and how rich does an aggrieved party need to be in order for the harm to matter? I’m specifically talking about the upcoming 8/30 “Revive in 25” – to be held in the heart of CapHill.
Denny Blaine, non-sexual nudity is getting quarantined behind a fence because a few wealthy neighbors complained/paid for a fancy lawyer to sue the City for negligence. Nothing like penalizing the victims that are also being blamed for the cause of other people’s free will.
NOW-
The City’s Special Permits office is meant to take into consideration venue suitability when deciding to issue use permits. HOW IS THE 8/30 EVENT STILL MOVING FORWARD!? Countless outcries to not host the event at Cal Anderson from the very community (and beyond) the park exists in and is used by daily. The harm done is not just psychological and emotional – Google “Seattle Police Department Mayday 2025” to see glimpses of the physical harm done to Seattle residents.
Why is the City cowing to a group’s demands THAT ISN’T EVEN SEATTLE-BASED?
Why is the City more concerned about not infringing on their 1A rights than the harm they bring to our community?
Proof is in the pudding: 2x in 1 week, the City took a massive dookie in LGBTQ+ heritage spaces.
The message is loud and clear: in this City under Harrell/Davidson/Nelson leadership – harm only matters when the complaint is from rich landowners. Nor does it seem to matter how many people vocalize being harmed by an event.
A slippery slope to fascism when a City selectively protects 1A rights.
At the very least, that permit should require a noiseproof opaque fence so on 8/30, the people of CapHill can be shielded from harm.
J/k, we all know those fences won’t stop the jag*ffs from harming the community at large.
Tobias, Your writing is juvenile. You are a wanker in every sense of the word. Please go away.
2: As if there’s something wrong with wanking.
The issue is the public masturbation caught on tape (as evidence for the prudes lawsuit) – the issue is not nudity.
And of course compromise leaves both sides unhappy when the extremes are close the park vs status quo (and again, unfortunately status quo lost in the courtroom). Parks made the best of a bad situation (which is isolating the wankers to an area where the community claims they can regulate the “bad” behavior.
Time will tell but guessing the city is in line for additional court loses.
im just happy to see Tobias back!
but also: a deep and hearty fuck you to the city
Ye Gods, the Stranger must have a humiliation fetish with Denny Blaine Park on the order of Trump’s with Putin. For the entire time this kerfuffle has whimpered, the Stranger has contradicted its own previous reporting about the sorry state of the park. (From 2019: “…voyeurs and pervs seem to have colonized Denny Blaine, so wear shoes if you don’t want to get sperm between your toes.”) The Stranger has accepted, repeated, and amplified all the false statements made by the status quo advocates about the park: that there was almost no illegal activity, that the park’s neighbors were wealthy straight bluenosed busybodies who just hated seeing openly nude (queer) bodies, and that the park’s status quo advocates would themselves informally police any illegal behaviors right out of existence.
All of those claims went to court, where they all completely lost. The court ruled illegal activity was rampant, that it interfered with other persons’ legitimate uses of the park, and the situation was not improving. What does the Stranger do in response? It continues to support and platform the very persons who’ve blatantly lied all along. The learning is not strong in this one.
Had the park’s status-quo advocates and the Stranger just admitted the obvious all along, then the two parks groups and the city could have worked together on a common solution. But no, this story appeared to press all of the Stranger’s hot buttons: wealthy vs. The People, queer vs. straight, anti-social behavior vs. police. So, here we are, with an ugly blue fence nobody likes marring the beauty of the park. Congratulations; the Stranger should take a bow in front of that tacky plastic curtain.
Finally, by repeating the lie conflating legal LGBTQ+ nudity with anti-social lawbreaking, the Stranger witlessly tries to return us to the worst of the pre-Stonewall period. Back then, merely being LGBTQ+ was sign of mental illness, and trying to live out and proud was defined as anti-social activity, worthy of punishment. By conflating illegal and offensive acts with protected queer expression, the Stranger tries to undo decades of queer advocacy. Great work, guys. With you ‘protecting’ LGBTQ+ rights, Capitol Hill needs no visiting bigot revival shows.
Friends of Denny Blaine and the writer of this piece are pretty dense:
“Schulkin did not offer any comment on how the fence would prevent indecent activity on the beach itself.”
To escape financial liability under a civil suit, the City doesn’t have to stop the indecent activity on the beach itself.
This was a civil suit. Civil suits are about damage to Plaintiffs from Respondent’s use, or negligence to police, Respondent’s property. Business Law 101, or just a reading of the plain English of the State’s Nuisance Statute: https://law.onecle.com/washington/special-proceedings-and-actions/ch7.48.html
If Plaintiffs aren’t having their use and enjoyment of their property diminished by what is occurring on respondents property, because they can’t see, smell, or see it, they aren’t damaged.
If the nearby property owners can’t see the “evil”, then the “evil” never occurred. They aren’t impacted by it. If they cross onto City property to see the evil, it isn’t impacting the use, value, and enjoyment of Plaintiff’s property.
Good fences make good neighbors. This is not a good fence; it’s ugly.
Must one be gay to enter the eastern section of the park? How is this to be enforced?
10: Na, you just have to prove you’re not a transphobe
@7 “All of those claims went to court, where they all completely lost.”
Not at all. The court only issued a preliminary injunction, the trial is currently set for next April. It’s wild how you manage to be so strident yet also so ignorant.
@12: Have we any indication the findings of fact will change? If not, then your point is moot.
“… so strident yet also so ignorant.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA — gasp, woo! — HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….
This, coming from the guy who cited not one, but two “from the river to the sea” web sites and FOX NEWS to claim the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Gaza was wrong.
Thank you. Please continue to bring the laughs.
That green tarp is about to look like an all white Jackson Pollock painting.
14: gang thug taggers aren’t that creative
I haven’t been following this story very closely but this is basically an open air sex club now? I suppose it addresses the city’s legal responsibilities but I don’t think anyone will be happy about it except for the people cruising at the beach.
There was a MAD Magazine comic (about 12,000 years ago) which always comes to mind with the Denny-Blaine imbroglio, it depicted an enraged apartment tenant complaining to a cop about someone often appearing scantily clad in some other window. When the cop declared he couldn’t see anything the complainer declared “Well of course not! You’ve got to stand on your tip-toes and use these binoculars!”
@15 I was talking about all of the people jacking off onto it.