Black's Beach

This guide to Black's Beach in San Diego opens with a contradiction: nobody sunbathing nude here today is actually within the law, though the beach's reputation says otherwise. It traces back to 1974, when the city council voted to legalize nudity here and posted signs making it the country's first legal nude beach, and follows the backlash from La Jolla Farms Road homeowners that built through the mid-1970s over crowds, noise and trash on the cliff trail. You'll hear how that experiment reached a citywide ballot question. Full moon drum circles still gather here, a faint echo of that earlier scene.