TOPANGA : Nudity at Parade Remains a Mystery

Who were those semi-nude people cavorting through Topanga Canyon on Memorial Day, wearing body paint, huge grins and little else?

The whole town wants to know.

“It’s driving everybody crazy!” said Linda Cochrane, manager of Topanga Video. “They were fun. Everybody wants to know who they were.”

The bare-skinned enigmas--two men and three women wearing brown paint, loincloths and leaves--rode atop a float entry called the “Topanga Tribal Village” in the annual free-for-all known as the Topanga Memorial Day parade, occasionally leaping from their float in paroxysms of primitive lust for life.

The show of flesh drew a mild reproach from the canyon’s established nudists from Elysium Fields, who themselves wore discreet towels during the parade.

“They certainly were not part of our group,” exclaimed Elysium registrar Diane Dennis. “We wouldn’t do that! We are a club here, and we know our perimeters.”

The scorn of such boundaries by two topless women raised few eyebrows among parade-goers already reveling in an event that was part water battle and part Dionysian frenzy. With red wine and squirt-gun ammunition flowing freely, who was going to notice a little skin?

But when the post-parade revelry cleared, people began to quiz each other about the origin of the brazen “cave people.”

“It’s become a topic of conversation in the canyon,” said Capt. Mike Johnson of the Topanga fire station. “Nobody seems to know who they are, which is strange in this small town.”

Perhaps they are recent additions to the small, interwoven Topanga community, or outsiders come to enjoy its anything-goes atmosphere. And maybe the mystery is better left unsolved.

“It’s just one of those mad and crazy things that makes the Topanga parade the absolute absurdity and nonsense that it is,” said Colin Penno, editor of the enclave’s weekly newspaper, the Topanga Messenger. “It’s the indescribable foolishness that doesn’t fit in with the straight lines of Los Angeles.”