If Nudefest To Last, It Needs Serious Buffing

I have returned from Sunday’s dreary Nudefest 2000 at Spokane Raceway Park with some important insights to share:

1. Grown-ups look ridiculous riding tricycles.

2. Especially when they’re naked.

3. The same goes for Hula Hoop demonstrations, water-balloon tossing and, oh yes, running. Gravity plays some particularly heinous tricks on the nekkid runner.

So listen up you full-frontal participants of this sad cellulite circus:

FOR THE LUVVA GAWD, AT LEAST PUT ON SOME DOCKERS!

“This is one show where the tires look better than the bodies,” sighed Duane Murphy.

Murphy is a member of Fords Unlimited, one of the car clubs that graciously brought their fancy automobiles to display during Nudefest.

It was apparent that more than a few of these car clubbers didn’t know what they were getting into until they arrived. “I don’t even like looking in the mirror in the morning after I take a shower,” said fellow Ford man Steve Luke.

The local Naturals Club that sponsored this event somehow failed at putting the “fest” in Nudefest.

For a six-buck admission, people got to gawk at 20 of the aforementioned classic cars and a dozen or so die-hard nudists, most of them men.

Except for the cars, you can get the same thing by joining the Y.

Nudefest was foodless. A naked guy with “security” written on his hat told me the person who was supposed to open a concession stand didn’t show up.

There was a professional disc jockey on hand. But he said he couldn’t play any “music of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s,” as advertised.

The liquor board supposedly has some rule against nudity and music even though there wasn’t any booze being sold. Too bad. Alcohol would have made this a lot easier to take.

“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever done,” said Randy Lee, a DJ with Sound Wave Entertainment. “When I first came in here, I had to call my wife. She kept saying, `Stop laughing. Stop laughing.”’

You’ve gotta hand it to the nudists, though.

It must be quite a challenge to race tricycles and play all the other silly games on an oil-stained drag strip when it’s such a goosebumpy day.

“It’s too cold to go nude,” said nudist Cindy, who decided to keep her clothes on.

Cindy wouldn’t give her last name. She works for the federal government and “someday might want to get a promotion.”

For people who supposedly have nothing to hide, there was a lot of this first-name-only business.

“My wife will divorce me if she sees my last name in the newspaper,” said Cliff, 70, who was wandering about Nudefest in his aged altogether. “She’s just a non-nudist all the way.”

Cliff, however, has been a nature boy as long as he can remember. “I used to farm and drive around the fields naked,” he adds.

Probably explains why crops failed.

Nudefest got its start a couple of years ago as a KZZU-FM radio station stunt. Looking for private property on which to stage his free “Naked Guy” run for charity, Mike Ellis, the station’s promotions maestro, contacted Orville Moe, president of the raceway.

Moe agreed. When Ellis left last year to take a job in Florida, the Naturals nudist club decided to expand the event and charge admission.

On Sunday, Moe and I gazed out his office window overlooking the drag strip. I asked him if he ever dreamed that the track that hosts the National Hot Rod Association drag finals would have naked people tossing water balloons at each other.

“Not in my wildest imagination,” muttered Moe, shaking his head.

Based on the way this thing flopped, I’m betting Nudefest will never return.

That’s a good thing. Spokane Raceway Park should be a place to see skid marks, not stretch marks.