July 1, 2011

Last Night We Got Busted For....

Being in a park after closed hours, consuming alcohol in a park, and being naked in a city park. 

It's hot as hell right now in Minneapolis, yesterday was 90's with ultra sticky humidity.  It sucked. The remedy of course was a grill out and late night swim, and where else would I go but Minneapolis' infamous Bare Ass Beach. 

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view from the beach

Bare Ass is on Twin Lake right by the Theo Wirth mountain bike trails and I try to swim there as often as possible, because finishing a ride with a swim is unbeatable, and most of the beaches and lakes in the city are gross with overcrowded beaches. 

Where as Twin Lake is clear, spring fed and relatively quiet.  Up until recently with the gentrification of Hidden Beach, which pushed the hipster/hippy crowd out further from the city to Bare Ass, the beach was mostly known as a famous cruising locale where while riding the mtb trails you might come up on all manner of adult activities.  With the increased population of users has come dumb kids littering, fighting, yelling and generally blowing up the spot.  And since the houses on the lake are richie rich, this has predictably lead to a heavy police presence.

So last night we found ourselves there at midnight, myself and three others, skinny dipping, playing with the dogs (not a euphemism, we drove down so we could let the pups have a swim), and enjoying a beverage (though not me, because I was driving and I don't cross streams).   After about 30 minutes the police showed up with a humorous "Everyone out of the pool!" and under their flashlight beams we emerged from the water and put our clothes back on.  

They took our ID's and lead us out of the woods to their cars where they gave us a lecture and let us know that because we were respectful of them they wouldn't be writing us the hundreds of dollars in tickets we were eligible for, but instead would be giving the other three "after hours in a park" ticket and that since my car got a big parking fine, I was going to get away with only that.  They even packed all of us into the back of their cars and dropped us back off at ours. 

No worries though, we'll take our lumps and be back out there.  The late night ride and swim is the best part of summer, and you can bet that this won't be the last time we make a clandestine mission to our favorite swimming hole.
lifestyle


post was written for the AC Blog

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah the new million dollar houses across the lake have been wanting this beach closed for years.