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Total nudity meantime has become a mass phenomenon. So many Frenchmen want to spend their vacations au naturel that the government has turned over to them most of Cap d'Agde, one of seven resort centers being developed along the "new Riviera" between Marseille and the Spanish border. The Fountainebleau of the bare set is Port Ambonne, a year-old, $4,000,000 complex on the Cap d'Agde, which has its own yacht basin and supermarket for nudists. Families have paid up to $26,000 for two-or three-room condominiums in an amphitheater-shaped apartment tower that curves around a nude-swimming pool. So far this year, some 25,000 nudists, about half of them foreigners, have visited the complex for a few carefree days of freedom from the world of those whom they refer to with mild contempt as "les textiles."
Hard Labor. Even Communist Yugoslavia now has a string of nudist camps along the Adriatic Coast for the benefit of foreign tourists. Earlier this month it also played host to the 13th World Congress of Naturalists, though not without a bit of embarrassment. The Croatian Minister for Tourism angrily canceled an appearance at the congress when informed that he was expected to show up in the buff.
For the more or less clothed, one beach in particular belongs to all of Europe, and all of Europe seems to descend upon it in August. That is the 25 miles of broad sandy coast on either side of Rimini, part of Italy's Adriatic Riviera. The cost can be modest—$10 a day buys a room and meals—for those willing to holiday amid beach umbrellas ten to 30 rows deep. Some Italians who are compelled to take their vacations in the August crush have characterized them as holidays at hard labor. After the vacationer has fought the battle of the traffic, train or plane, staked out a place on the beach, paid for each umbrella and chair, made a scene to get the rooms he booked months ago and then been kept awake by the roar of motorcycles and rock groups, he might well consider himself more oppressed than he was in the city.
Then why does the custom of August vacations persist? Partly it is sheer habit, but partly also the crush begins with the large industries, whose managers claim that only by shutting down altogether can major maintenance be done and everyone be given a holiday without an unacceptable slowdown of the assembly lines. After the factories close, a whole chain of related businesses follows suit. Then the food, clothing and other industries schedule their vacations for the "dead" period. Even so, Europeans seem in no hurry to change. When Italian workers were recently polled on their vacation preferences, almost 80% said that they would choose August.