Daily Archives: April 9, 2015

Mocha’s Nude Cafe

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Here’s a wonderful idea!

Mocha Edenflower has opened a delightful cafe called….Mocha’s Nude Cafe! 🙂

She also matches SLN’s editorial policy -no pose balls- perfectly. As she says, it’s ‘a nude friendly/Nudist hangout for conversation and chat. (I’m hoping that visitors can) discuss philosophy, politics, social issues, art, music, etc. (I want people to) get naked, but leave the sex/pickup lines at home.’

Sound good?

I was over there on Thursday afternoon in the company of SLN photographer Hugh, and my friend Jan, to explore the place and get a feel for it.

mocha1

‘So what shall we photograph first?’

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Tea and buns at the outdoor cafe area was the first item of our agenda

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…before Hugh decided he was hungry at grabbed a sandwich from a sandwich van in the cafe’s grounds

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…before moving indoors to have a lengthy discussion on naturist politics…

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By which time I was exhausted by all the waiting around for our photographer to stop eating.

 

I’m pleased to say that I spoke to Mocha on Thursday evenings, and she set out her vision for the cafe.

Mocha: My hope is to just be a place where people can stop in and hang out. I’ve been very careful about the whole adult poseball thing also, because that attracts the wrong crowd.

Pookes: That fits right in with SL Naturist’s policy. We’ve long gone for lending our support to places where nudity does not equate to sex, so I’m pleased to hear you say that.

Mocha: I’ve still got some changes I need to make to the art. The location may be on Zindra, but its not meant to be a sex-place I went for Zindra mostly because this was the nicest double prim spot I found, and being here means I can have nudity in the open without anyone feeling ‘put out’ by the place.

Pookes: I liked the open aspect of it, Mocha. As a RL naturist I would often vacation in places that aren’t ‘behind closed doors’. We’ll arrive at our destination, just drive down the street past naked people walking, and park up at our apartment. So to see you’d built in that open aspect was something quite refreshing and new!

Mocha: My upcoming project, that I am also very interested in finding help for, is to build some “discussion primer” notecards. On topics like “intro to world philosophy” and “intro to political science” and maybe one on music, arts, and “SL hobbies” (like sailing, vehicles, SL fishing, or… whatever.) – Notecards people could grab for whatever reason… 🙂

Pookes: What I find with SL naturism is that you tend to get a wide range of people with diverse interests, and exceptionally well read. In the main, naturists are smart enough to separate nudity from sex, and treat it as part of a fuller way of life. I’d be surprised if some of our readers couldn’t help you with the notecards, or point you at websites where you can grab the basis of a ‘primer’. That would be an exceptionally interesting project, Mocha, and one that takes me back to the early days of my SL, when many businesses and universities had an in world presence. There was a very ready capacity to be able to learn, to educate yourself, while ‘playing’ SL. That sort of withered when SL lost ground a bit, but I detect that there are now people whose vision of the world runs contrary to what governments or NGOs tell us…it’s easy to find info on world religions in SL, for example, or people building sims dedicated to, for example, vegetarianism, and us the sim to work on behalf of vegetarianism, with notecards, placards on the sim and so on. I really hope you can bring this to fruition. Mocha, thanks for speaking to SL Naturist, and we wish you every success with the sim.

Pookes

Alex B : Mature model and marvellous

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While chasing links earlier, I was drawn to an image that eventually led to a link on a site called The real does not efface itself.

The article was about the idea of beauty and masculinity in classical Greece and focussed on two bronze statues discovered in 1972 off the coast of Italy. Now known as the Riace Bronzes, after the place they were found, I was intrigued by both the manner in which the writer, Alex B, described them and because they also had some resonance to nudity (particularly the male form) and to Second Life nudity.

20. Warriors from Riace, c.460-50 BC, slightly over lifesize.preview

 

Throughout classical Art, the male form has always been portrayed realistically. And this is where the SL perspective comes in! Guys, these realistically sculpted bronzes do not have penises hanging to their knees! You don’t have to have them either!

Caravaggio, Michelangelo…all depicted realistically. You can too! In fact, I suspect we’d respect you all the more for it, rather than sporting some ridiculously sized (and badly coloured to your skin) appendage.

Even without being someone who looks for nude photos on the internet, I discovered that Alex B is the mature model in a photograph that manages to turn up regularly on ‘naturist’ websites. As it’s subject to copyright we, as usual, won’t republish a gorgeous photograph called The Discomfort of Intimacy, but allow you to follow the link. Alex B also has a web presence in various locations and has her own website. I suspect some readers will recognise her when they see her. Apologies for not putting up any images of the lady herself here, but we do try to ensure we don’t infringe copyright, and as Alex is a model, earning a living from her photos, it would be grossly unfair to re-publish any images of her.

The Discomfort of Intimacy depicts an older nude woman with sliver/grey hair (Alex B) alongside a younger male (called Cidy) and is a phenomenally powerful image, one that Alex B herself said stirred up some odious racist commentary when first published.

I was so taken by the photo that I asked Hugh if he might fancy trying to re-create it in an SL context. As usual, perfect recreations are difficult as the poses can never be fully matched, but…

the intimacy of fear

Original shots and credits, along with some background by Hugh, is on our flickr page, in a new album entitled ‘The Intimacy of Fear’

Ella

 

 

Port and cigars: a (naturist?) wardrobe accessory

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OK…it’s pushing it to itemise this as a naturist accessory 🙂 but Howie assures me that he’s a dab hand in the kitchen, and his & his partner’s naturist holidays often involve a few people gathered around a table on the terrace while he does the cooking.

‘I discovered I liked cooking when I was about ten years old’, he says, ‘and I still like to bake bread, do simple meals with a bit of my own twist to them, invite a few friends around to our apartment (Costa Natura, Spain), throw on some music and then enjoy the company of good friends. Nothing fancy, just top quality seafood bought directly from local fishermen, whipped up into a paella, with still warm, freshly baked bread.’ While my eyes glaze over, Howie explains that ‘paella is from the Valencia area, so we will often grab a train and go for the day to Valencia and maybe stay overnight just to have paella in its natural homeland. The Valencians do it best!’

Yes, the gents do then manage to light up a cigar and enjoy a glass of port on the terrace, he assures me, while the ladies present like often throw on a sarong and take a walk in the warm evening air.

Luckily, WE at Home are offering a free group gift of port and cigars, on a tray, along with cigars and port glasses that can be worn.

hoowie cigars_001b

 

Above, Howie and Pierre replicate the scene at ‘Casa Howie’ in the summer months. I still think we’re pushing it to offer it as a naturist accessory, Howie! 🙂 but it certainly does give some representation of the manner in which naturists like to live la buena vida, the good life.

 

Pookes

 

 

Swaziland’s Reed Dance, and one of the photographs of the year

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The Guardian recently printed the photograph (below) of young women at the 2014 Reed Dance in Swaziland, a topic we’ve covered before.

reed dance

It has been nominated as one of the Guardian’s Photographs of the Year, and photographer Marco Longari says “There were between 7,000 and 10,000 ‘maidens’ at this Zulu reed dance – screaming, laughing, chatting, all under the watchful eyes of older women. This was a lucky shot, but I was looking for it. There are a lot of problems for albinos in Africa, so I thought if I could find an albino ‘maiden’ dancing, it would tell a positive story. These girls were lining up to get food in the early morning light, and I raced over. Normally as a photographer you get cross if your subjects pose, because it’s not natural. But this girl put up a face so proud and dignified that it was a gift to me.”

A striking photo, indeed.

 

Ella

Summer is coming : be careful out there.

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One of the great things about Great Britain is its NHS -its National Health Service. This offers a free medical service for anyone requiring medical attention, whether that’s a visit to their family doctor or to an Accident & Emergency department. Should your doctor diagnose your with gallstones, a detached retina or cancer, the NHS pays for your treatment. Well, strictly speaking we pay for our treatment, via taxation, but it means that there’s a service for everyone, not dependent on your ability to pay, unlike other locations around the globe.

I know no other way, so I take it for granted. Of course, there are critics of the NHS, that it’s a bottomless pit into which we throw our cash, and in some respects that’s right. There is an enormous amount of waste in the NHS on trivia that could be better spent on front-line services. An example from real life is that, due to the way in which the NHS sources materials, my aunt, a nursing sister, got her own office. She decided she needed in/out/pending trays, so bought a set of three for the princely sum of £2.99 (about $4.50) in a local home furnishings store. ‘You can’t use that’, she was told, ‘you must buy from the approved catalogue’. The cost? £49, or $73. Ludicrous.

Today’s print edition of the Daily Mail leads with news that £13m ($19m) was spent on on sun cream by the NHS last year.

Let’s examine that in a little more depth, though. The cost of treating skin cancer in the UK, in 2008, was around £110m. That is estimated to rise to around £180m by 2020.

Many people will look at the Daily Mail’s hysteria headline and say ‘that is outrageous!’ Is it?

Many of the country’s construction workers -and other people- will be outside all day (and we know that it doesn’t need bright, full sunshine to cause damage). If this protects them…if it reduces the number of melanomas being treated annually, isn’t it likely that it’s a positive cost to bear? Of course, we could suggest that sunblock is something employers should be issuing as part of their employees’ personal protection equipment, or factoring the provision of sunblock into their estimates. Until legislation determines this is how to proceed, I would argue that in many cases providing preventative measures, as many doctors appear to be doing, makes sense.

As naturists, we all need to be aware of the dangers (as well as the benefits) caused by the sun. Indeed, non-naturists equally need to be aware of the dangers of exposure to the sun.

sunsmart-bus-shelter

Poster on an Australian bus shelter

The weather has begun to warm up where I am -heady temperatures in the hight teens? It’s almost a heatwave! 🙂 – and I’ve noticed people in T shirts and shorts already. A bit premature for me, I think, to think of that as cycling/shopping wear, but I’ll guarantee that most of those I saw this morning in their summer wear, or driving their convertibles with the roof down, haven’t given one moment’s though to the effects of the sun.

I hope we all get a great summer, but equally I hope everyone has the common sense to look after themselves in the great outdoors. Remember to slap on the sunblock!

Ella