the xlog : x-rated weblog

Just a week after a naked, elderly tourist freely strolled down Brattleboro’s main street, Vermont’s infamous naked town is under orders to keep its pants on.

On Tuesday, by a margin of just 3 votes to 2, town officials passed an emergency rule which bans nudity on the main roads and within 250 feet of any school or place of worship, among other places. The ordinance defines nudity as the showing of genitalia, buttocks or female breasts; a provision allows breast-feeding in public. Naked violators will be fined face a $100.

Tiny Brattleboro has long been a live-and-let-live kind of place where skinny dipping was a rite of summer. Last summer, though, it began flirting with a nudity ban after a group of teens took to hanging around a downtown parking lot in the buff. Officials decided then to let winter take care of the problem and never voted.

It took an elderly man wearing only a fanny pack and wandering through the center of town last week for the Select Board to decide it had seen enough. The nudists and their fans still get a say in the matter: Next month, Brattleboro will hold a public hearing on whether the ordinance should be made permanent.