Only in Seattle: ‘Perv Park’ protest pushes public nudity to a new low

Picture this: it’s Labor Day at infamous Denny Blaine Park (aka “Perv Park”), and instead of a peaceful afternoon picnic, a group of nude protestors are angry about enforcement against lewd conduct. They staged a stripped-down sit-in, clustered together on the upper grassy expanse entirely without clothes, as city officials and fed-up neighbors watched the spectacle unfold.

Nearly three weeks ago, Seattle installed fencing to divide the park between “clothing-required” and “clothing-optional” zones. Yet this Labor Day demonstration wasn’t content with those boundaries. Dozens chose to congregate—nude, yes—on the grassy area, clearly hoping to prove a silly point. KOMO News reported the event as a “nude sit-in protest” where participants “picnicked and hung out” topless.

This wasn’t a strategic civil-rights march. It was an open-air, topless lunch meant to make people uncomfortable. But it also made Mayor Bruce Harrell’s response to the lewd act more transparently feckless.

Protest shows you the joke Bruce Harrell has become

Neighbors sued the city over public sex acts, not nudity. Rather than address that issue, Harrell put up a fence as if the concerns were about nudity. But the neighbors maintained they were never complaining about simple nudity.

The fence, supposedly the city’s compromise to placate everyone, now looks about as professional as a garage-sale lawn sign. Its green mesh and flimsy construction make it more susceptible to graffiti and vandalism than actual enforcement. And you can literally see right through it up close. All it did was give slightly more privacy to perverts to have sex in public.

Meanwhile, Judge Samuel Chung’s July ruling declaring that nudity “as constituted” at Denny Blaine Park qualifies as a public nuisance is still reverberating—though not hindering these “nudist protesters” one bit. Now here we stand, watching a fully nude picnic unfold like some fringe carnival attraction.

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