Public nudity does not make the pages of The Star as much as it used to. Times have changed. With surveillance cameras everywhere, it would take an odd duck indeed to strip and run along any of our streets, as once was a thing.
Life was slower here in the 1970s. A highlight of the last week of March 1974 (March!) was when police apprehended six young people on a Friday night in Montauk after they were seen running in the nude on Main Street.
As with most things, timing is everything in streaking. A little after 10 that night two East Hampton Town patrolmen were right there when five male miscreants bolted from the Shagwong Tavern in the buff. Officers reported “an unclothed female” was already outside, some 1,700 feet away at the corner of South Etna Avenue and Main Street. Police said that the streakers hopped into a car but were stopped as they drove away.
The getaway driver faced the most-serious charges: driving while intoxicated, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest (yikes!). Unable to make the $500 bail set by Town Justice Sheppard Frood, he was ordered to the county jail. The others were each fined $100 and turned loose.
As happens with many events here, a week after the news broke, a letter to the editor appeared in The Star lamenting that Justice Frood had stretched the charge of disorderly conduct to “include that innocent, high-spirited activity of the young called ‘streaking.’ ”
“We desperately needed something to relieve the unbroken doom of winter headlines,” the writer went on. “Where is Justice Frood’s spirit of fun?”
Streaking was in the air that winter. It was probably unrelated that The Star ran an editorial the day before the Montauk six jogged into infamy titled, “Insight Into Our Mores.” Contrasting streakers with raincoated flashers, The Star concluded that the act was “not the end of the world,” and streaking, at least, provided “a certain amount of exercise” — for reporters and letter writers, too.