Seattle's naked heaven

Years before the internationally famous World Naked Bike Ride movement captured attention with their global naked rides, a handful of brave naked souls mounted their bicycles and crashed the annual Solstice parade in Fremont, a neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, in the US. Beginning in the early 1990s, the bare few streaked by on their bikes, sometimes chased down and arrested by police.

Over the years, the number of naked cyclists grew, some of them sporting body paint. Gradually the community began to look forward to them and even began booing the police for their heavy-handed tactics. People started to see that the police response was causing more problems than it solved.

Today, riding a bike naked is the accepted traditional, if unofficial way the the Fremont Solstice parade starts. Administered by the Fremont Arts Council, the parade is intended as an arts event and most cyclists contribute their own artistry with creative body paint and occasional props.

Because it was moved to the afternoon on an exceptionally warm day, the 2013 parade may have seen more naked cyclists than ever. Although I have ridden naked in the parade myself a couple of times before, this year I also dropped in on the (huge!) outdoor body painting party and joined over 400 of my naked fellow citizens riding through the Ballard neighborhood and stopping for a photo opp at Ross park before joining still more naked cyclists at the parade's start. The number of naked people riding through town in broad daylight was simply staggering.

But the naked frolicking didn't end there. Again following tradition, the naked bikers conclude their ride at Seattle's Gasworks Park, where few seemed in any hurry to put on clothes. People wandered around the park stark naked for some time after the parade, enjoying the weather, one another's company, and the one day of the year where such a thing was possible.

So before summertime becomes a memory, Nakedism stops to celebrate the men and women who bared it all in the name of fun and art and public exposure with our largest photo gallery ever. Although it's but a sample of the beautifully bare people I and photographer Andrew Adam Caldwell saw that day, it may give you a sense of the naked paradise that Seattle's Solstice has become.

Even in this setting, of course, there are degrees of nakedness. Some people are so covered with dark or saturated colors of paint that they don't really look naked at all. So I couldn't help wondering what it might look like if I converted a few photos to black and white, in effect stripping off the colors of some riders. Check out those experiments below. Then head on over to our photos department for Body and Solstice, for a more realistic look at one of the country's largest displays of people going naked in public.