I was going to include this picture in today’s Tuesday Ink, but I immediately recognized where it had been taken and instead it took me back to some very fond memories of the first couple years I lived in San Francisco.

Track back to June 1986, two months before I actually moved to The City. Still fresh-faced and innocent, I was visiting San Francisco and exploring the area around the Golden Gate. As I walked under the bridge, I gazed off to the west and spotted a rocky beach at the bottom of a treacherous trail.

Making my way down the trail, I was soon at the surf line and reveling in the crashing waves just a few feet away. It was a beautiful spot; the boulders dotting the beach providing a sense of seclusion that belied the fact that the Golden Gate bridge and its constant drone of traffic was only about a quarter mile away.

After relocating to The City that August, I started returning to this particular spot almost every weekend. I was more than a little surprised, however, that even on the hottest days this beach was always deserted. I found that kind of odd, considering the incredible view of the bridge and how the rocks offered such good shelter from the often chilly wind coming in off the Pacific.

One particular weekend, I was laying out on my towel soaking up the rays when I noticed several very attractive men pass by, heading south. Some time later I took a short walk down the beach and to my surprise they were nowhere to be seen. That same pattern repeated for the next hour or so, until finally my curiosity got the better of me and I packed up my stuff and followed to see where everyone was going.

Rounding an outcrop of rock that jutted into the sea, I came upon that infamous sliver of golden sand that I later learned was called a variety of names: North Baker, Golden Gate, No Name, and lastly (for reasons that were immediately apparent) Boy Beach.

I was no stranger to clothing-optional outdoor locations, my ex having freed me of that inhibition at Reddington Pass when we lived in Tucson, but I was nevertheless amazed at the sea of flesh that spread out before me. Thus began my obsession a weekly pilgrimage that lasted for the next several years.

I soon learned there was much easier way to get to “No Name” than the route I had taken that first day. A dirt lot at the end of Langdon Court, right off Lincoln Boulevard, provided parking and a more direct—if equally steep and treacherous—trail to the beach. (Google Earth shows it—and the trail—quite clearly.) It was a nasty hike that invariably left me winded the first few weeks I went, but I soon got the hang of it and could finally make it up or down those cliffs without so much as breaking a sweat. And the added benefit of all this good exercise was that after just a single a season of hiking those trails, I had calves to die for.

Something else I also learned was to arrive early, so I could grab one of the natural rock “condos” that were found there. One condo in particular held a commanding view of almost the entire beach, including a direct—and private—view into the two adjacent shelters, something that proved quite—entertaining—at times.


(Click to enlarge.)


(Click to enlarge.)

With all the pent up sexual energy of dozens of young, good-looking bare-assed gay men assiduously applying SPF30 to their bits and pieces percolating over the length of that beach, you know it really came as no big surprise when I discovered—early on, and quite by accident while trying to see if there was an different, easier route back to the parking lot—that the men walking down the beach and up that other trail leading into the woods were not going back to their cars.

And it wasn’t long after learning that, when I discovered the “joys” of poison oak. (Interestingly, I had been brushing up against the stuff for months before someone pointed out, “That’s poison oak, you know.” Immediately thereafter I started breaking out. Go figger.)

Ah yes, good ol’ “No Name.” So many fond memories: Earl, Tom, Curtis, the hot guy from the U.K. who introduced me to the nude beach just beyond the Wohler Road Bridge at the Russian River…

…and that hairy little hunk from Brazil—whose name I’ve long forgotten—who’d whisper sweet little filthy things into my ear in Portuguese while we did the nasty. And on the opposite side of the spectrum there was the guy in his late 60s who used to strip down to nothing more than an enormous chrome cock ring and strut up and down the beach with his junk purple and swollen to inhuman proportions, causing me and my newfound beach buddies to say, “In thirty years if you ever see any of us doing that, just shoot. Don’t ask questions.”

Well, it’s been twenty years since those wonderful summers, and thankfully I still have no desire to go parading up and down a beach in such a state, but I am wondering whatever happened to all those guys I used to hang out with.

UPDATE: I just ran across this unfortunate posting on a certain cruising site:

This place is officially all done. The new path down the hill has brought park police down to the beach. A guy in the spot next to me got a ticket for indecent exposure. He was alone and sheltered by rocks, but the officer could see him from above. I saw a couple get a ticket for having sex a year ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen a guy get a ticket for being alone on the beach in a sheltered area. The police are being friendly, etc., but this is no longer a place welcome for cruising or even just hanging nude by yourself.

Sad. Very sad. R.I.P. No Name Beach.

Fuckin’ Sex Police.