Nudist irritates Stuart residents

If your neighbor’s loud music, uncut grass or barking dog bothers you, take heart. You could be Melissa Ny or Charlie Estes. Their neighbor down in Stuart does yard work in the nude.

“I came out Sunday night to put the trash out, and I look and he is bent over, winding up his hose,” Ny told WPBF.

The nudist, whom the station didn’t identify, lives at the end of the street. It seems most of the residents aren’t too keen on the peep show, but there’s not much they can do about it. They have called the authorities more than once, but deputies say that they cannot arrest the man for being naked while working around his house.

Florida Statute 800.03 allows people to be nude on their own property as long as they are not engaging in “vulgar, indecent, lewd, or lascivious” behavior.

Trimming hedges and washing a car are not considered any of those.

“He works on his car, and he does it naked and everyone has called the police,” Ny said. “He is just out there doing his yard work, whatever he needs to do outside, naked.”

Not everyone in the neighborhood is bothered.

“I am not one of those people who have concerns because it is their way of life,” Molly Merritt said. “And it is on their property, and I know it is legal.”

Legal, yes. But is it proper? That is in the naked eye of the beholder.

“Have some respect for the neighborhood kids,” Estes said. “Kids catch the bus here. It’s wrong.”

The man declined an interview with the TV reporter because “he and his family are private people.”

He sure has an odd way of showing it.