Was nude swimming ever required in SF schools

05/22/23 - posted by Holt Macon

I get a lot of interesting information from my San Francisco old-timer friends, one friend of which I met today while watching the Bay to Breakers when we spoke about the nude runners.

He told me an interesting story that for many years at least until the 1960s throughout the country and from where he came from in Texas, most high schools and the YMCA and other pools and even boy scout summer camps required nudity for men when swimming. And that this continued in San Francisco until about the 1990s at the distinguished Press Club swimming pool in San Francisco where he was a member.

Well, I was kind of shocked because I never heard of such a thing so I wondered if anything like that ever happened in San Francisco though I guess the high schools here don't have swimming pools and there was no YMCA in the outside lands then.

Perhaps it is just too cold here to want to do that in San Francisco. I have never even gone swimming here because I am always too cold to ever consider getting in a pool and getting even colder.