Projo Offbeat Blog

A great northern New England tradition has ended now that patrons of the Black Frog Restaurant in Greenville, Maine, can no longer skinny dip for a free lunch.

We first explored this quirky practice a year ago in a blog entry that questioned whether Seinfeld's George Costanza would shrink from the skinny dip challenge in chilly Moosehead Lake.

Now we'll never know.

Town fathers foiled restaurant owner Leigh Turner and his patrons by refusing to renew the restaurant's liquor license unless Turner stopped the promotion, which entitled the naked swimmers to a free Skinny Dip sandwich.

Turner says he's pulling the promotion. That makes sense. After all, restaurants can make a lot of money selling liquor. More importantly, nobody in the entire history of skinny dipping has ever gone skinny dipping without warming up first with a couple of drinks.

Sadly these hungry people from Maine will have to find another place to drop their L.L. Bean corduroys and express themselves, which brings us to the report of a man who was apprehended after swimming naked in the moat around Emporer Akihito's Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

The man splashed and threw rocks at police officers in a rowboat who chased him with a long stick.

The man's name was not given, but he was described as a westerner.

It might be a stretch to speculate that this swimmer was visiting the Land of the Rising Sun from the great state of Maine, but I'm willing to bet some saki was involved in his pre-swim warmup.

 Tags  George Costanza Moosehead Lake skinny dipping

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