Scout Willis has done something very simple and unremarkable: walked around New York topless on a warm summer day, as is every woman’s right and every man’s. But because she posted photos of herself doing it online on services like Instagram and Twitter, she got in trouble for it. That is insane.

The good news is that she is strong and confident and proud and not backing down. Which is why we love her.

(And yes, to respond to every person who has made the suggestion, we have indeed let her know she’s welcome at any of our get-togethers. We bet she’s someone who’d appreciate a good piece of pulp fiction.)

Who us? No, we’re not calling ourselves square…just sharing some more photos of our Memorial Day adventure down in Washington Square Park. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place, and it felt wonderful to lie out in the sun and splash in the fountain with nothing on above the waist, regardless of what configuration we might have been born with below the waist. Chests is chests.

Some decades ago, a male nipple exposed in public would’ve scandalized the neighbors. Today, no one bats an eye. Some decades ago, a female ankle or knee or elbow would’ve done the same. Those restrictions were irrational and look ridiculous to us now. Someday soon we’ll look back on the fear and shame some people feel toward female breasts today and see that it’s just as irrational and ridiculous. We’ll get there one beautiful, warm day at a time, and one brave woman at a time.

ETA: Why this last photo? It’s all about the reflection…

Yesterday, ten of us met at noon on the sun-dappled lawn of Madison Square Park, sandwiched between the Empire State Building to the north and the Flatiron Building to the south…and, for a time, between two school groups, one of young’uns who couldn’t care less about boobs being bared nearby (what’s more appropriate at lunchtime than boobs, in the eyes of nursing-age tots?) and one of slightly older ‘uns who were more intrigued but perfectly polite about it.

Afterwards, a friend of ours who couldn’t make it this time spotted the following on Facebook: “Today we had a great field trip to the Museum of Mathematics and Madison Square Park. However, if you ask my students, the best part was when several Nudists decided to sunbathe right next to us during lunch.”

Nudists? Not really; just a group of friends, women and men, who all enjoyed being shirtless and comfortable under the sun in 87-degree weather. Unless you’re prepared to call all the other shirtless men wandering about the park “Nudists” for doing so, the term’s a bit much for us.

Not to say none of us were tempted to lose our bottoms as well. But we’re saving that for the weekend, and a slightly more private outdoor spot.

Some of us live in Bushwick, some in Greenpoint, some in Ridgewood (NY, not NJ); a few live in Manhattan, but generally not in tony Upper West Side digs. A conversation at our last event involved one member exulting over having recently gotten 28 books for $23 at The Strand.

But a love of personal freedom, and of wearing less clothing when it’s 90 degrees outside, knows no socioeconomic bounds, and this past Saturday one of our members invited us to her penthouse apartment, complete with 3,000 square foot sundeck.  (Sundeck? At 3,000 square feet, let’s call it what it is, a whole second apartment.)

And it was a perfect day for it: clear and bright and sunny, but with clouds scudding across the sun just often enough to keep you from feeling achingly hot. We had close to two dozen people show up, including some old-timers, some first-timers, and everything in between. We had a barbecue grill turning out mouth-watering morsels (thank you, Fresh Direct), and we had a blow-up wading pool big enough to hold eight or nine of us at once. We had copies of Aristotle and The Master and Margarita, Carl Hiaasen and Agatha Christie, Nicholas Sparks and Dan Brown. Plus comics — one of Eric Shanower’s Oz adaptations and, thanks to Craig Yoe, the gorgeous hardcover collection Jack Cole’s Deadly Horror.

But most of all we had the sublime pleasure of lounging around under the sun in as little or as much clothing as we felt like (which for most of us meant nothing at all). And why not? Who did it hurt? We know there are some people who would wag a finger at us and talk sternly about morality, but aren’t they the same people who think things were better back in the Garden of Eden?

Well, postlapsarian we might be, but this Saturday we made ourselves a little Eden. How do you like them apples?

For the past four years, anytime we wanted to take a break from the great outdoors (whether it was too cold or too hot or too wet or whatever), we’ve retreated to Athena Spa, a two-story refuge in midtown near Madison, where they let us take over one of the floors and roam free. We’d hang out reading in the Hwangto dome sauna or inhaling the burning, herbaceous steam in the wet room or sipping drinks and nibbling tasties in the lounge or getting the kinks worked out of our backs and shoulders and butts and calves by their talented masseuses. All naked, of course. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen six or eight or a dozen New Yorkers, many of whom have never met before, walk in off the street, take off every stitch they’re wearing, and luxuriate in the combined bliss of pampering for the body and sparkling conversation for the soul.

Well…nothing lasts forever, alas, and after more than a decade of chasing winter chills and unlocking clenched trapeziuses, Athena is closing its doors at the end of July. It’s the classic Manhattan story: they lost their lease. The owners are directing customers to another spa further uptown, but…it’s not the same. Not even close.

So we returned this week for a farewell bash. Toasted the old place with champagne and SkinnyGirl…brought some Amy Tan, some Stephen King, some Hard Case Crime, some PREACHER…brought together members originally from the UK and Poland, from L.A. and Atlanta and Ozone Park, an NYU frosh and an MIT grad, a downtown artist and an upper west side novelist, and enjoyed four hours or so of unmitigated pleasure.

Goodbye, Athena. You were special, and will sorely be missed. (And we mean “sorely” literally.)

Some of you have noticed the sudden appearance of graphic novels in our reading stacks this year. Yes, it’s true: some of us are aficionados of the four-color page. One or two of us even work in the field. And we’ve always had the occasional copy of this or that hiding in the periphery of our photos. But the particular books that have caught people’s eye recently are the mammoth hardcover tomes you see here, sent to us kindly and generously by the editor and artist and graphic designer Craig Yoe. We have no connection to Mr. Yoe; we’ve never met him; we don’t get a commission from him if someone buys one of these things, or from the doctor who gets the business if you develop a hernia from carrying one of them around. We just like them. Enough to make an exception to the “Don’t accept any more free books from anyone” rule we adopted at the start of the year when we saw how many we already had to read and recalled how oh-so-brief summer is. But these gorgeous things…yes, an exception was made.

If you’re into gorgeous things too, don’t deny yourself the pleasure.

We usually meet in the middle of the day, but with sunset not arriving until after 8pm this time of year we have the opportunity to do the occasional after-work event for the convenience of those of us who toil at 9-to-5 jobs. This Friday we met downtown in the vicinity of Battery Park and watched the sun take its leisurely plunge toward the Hudson. Frisbee players and little kids with water guns and sundry other New Yorkers bade the week goodbye as we read Borges and Zadie Smith and Life of Pi and Gypsy Rose Lee’s The G-String Murders. (Isn’t only one of those properly pulp fiction? Well, yes. But it’s fun to branch out from time to time. And we also had a choice selection of morsels from Hard Case Crime, including advance copies of Brainquake and Easy Death, to give us our RDA of pulp in our diet.)

We didn’t quite make it to sundown (it got a bit chilly, forcing us back into our shirts), but it was a lovely afternoon and evening, out by the water, taking the air, our brazen shirtlessness not bothering anyone.  It felt so…civilized. And at the same time, so natural.

Want to join us next time? We welcome open-minded women of all backgrounds, ages, comfort levels, and literary tastes. Just drop an email to toplesspulpfiction[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll add you to our super-secret invite list…

The Fourth of July is always a birthday celebration, but this year it was doubly so for us, since one of our members was celebrating her birthday over the same weekend. We took over the roof deck at our favorite Chelsea hotel, blew up the inflatable pool, brought some red, white, and blue mini-cupcakes from Baked By Melissa, and held a joyful double celebration that wound up being our best attended ever. A few timid first-timers asked not to have their photos blogged, so you won’t see them here, but rest assured that everyone was blissfully and un-self-consciously bared beneath the sun. (Yes, our birthday girl celebrated in her birthday suit, and isn’t that the way it should always be?)

As a reminder, if you’d like to join us for one of our events sometime and you’re an open-minded, free-thinking, body-positive woman whose favorite things include reading books and being naked, just drop us a note at toplesspulpfiction[AT]gmail[DOT]com. We’ll be very glad to hear from you.

Sometimes you just need to have faith.

The weather forecast promised — threatened — rain for three days running, and specifically said it would rain today. Well, we’d planned an outing to Bryant Park and didn’t mean to be dissuaded. So out we went, hoping against hope that the rain would hold off one afternoon longer.

And did it ever. What began as a grey, grim, cloudy day turned into one of the loveliest of the summer. When it became apparent that it would, the staff at Bryant Park took down the ropes keeping people off the grass, and we were the first to lie down on the lawn, inaugurating it with our nakedness.

Some interesting encounters with passers-by, as is always the case in Bryant Park (bigger parks offer more spots for relative privacy; Bryant is basically one rectangular lawn, so everyone can see everything). This fellow stopped by to say how brave and courageous we were, and kept saying it until we finally (bravely and courageously) wished him godspeed and sent him off to meet his wife at Grand Central.

This fellow stood painting us, and the result placed us on a lawn by the sea.

And this little piggie…well, you can read his employer’s name on the side of his microphone, so you know he wasn’t likely to be our favorite person of the day.

But…those encounters all fall into the category of sideshow. The main attraction was the chance to be out in the sun, to roll in the grass, to catch up with old friends and make new ones, to eat Tom Colicchio’s unspeakably scrumptious cinnamon buns, to read Anais Nin and Donald E. Westlake and Samuel Fuller and Beautiful Creatures, and to do all this without the encumbrance of a bra or bikini top.

We even attracted a convert to the cause, as a recent NYU grad, seeing us relish our liberty, came over and asked if she could join us. Of course, we said. And then there were eight. (Or sixteen, depending on how you’re counting.)

The lesson being, never trust a weather forecast.

Though we hope we can trust the one for this coming Friday, since it’s projecting sun…

Two of our members told us about a spot in the city we’d never gone to before: Pier 64, part of the rebuilding in recent years along the Hudson River waterfront. What used to be a frightening no-man’s-land has been reconceived as an urban greensward, complete with abstract sculpture, sloping lawns, and views all the way down to the Statue of Liberty and the new Freedom Tower. (Is that name growing on anyone yet? Should we just call it One World Trade Center?)

So,we visited. And it was every bit as beautiful as we’d been led to believe. Fortified with handmade mini-eclairs from the Eclair Bakery on East 53rd and books ranging from our current go-to bit of pulp fiction (Samuel Fuller’s last novel, BRAINQUAKE) to a cool library find (Alexandre Dumas’ GEORGES) to a work of evolutionary biology (SEX AT DAWN by Christopher Ryan), we enjoyed our own variety of afternoon delight.

Was the event spoiled when a scrofulous spectator opted to unzip and pleasure himself a few yards away? Not hardly, thanks to the eagle-eyed member who spotted the infraction and loudly called him out on it, sending him scurrying in search of a rock to crawl under. Otherwise our hours passed blissfully, companionably, peacefully, and altogether too quickly. Day’s end came too soon! And summer’s end looms just past the horizon, with August only days away. How many shopping days left until Christmas? We don’t want to think about it.

Let us bask in the sun, let us while away the eager hours, let us fill ourselves with stories and cream-filled pastry and dreams of warm tomorrows.

Today, thanks to Andy Golub, was New York City Bodypainting Day, a celebration of art and the  naked body. While normally only toplessness is legal on the streets of Manhattan, full nudity is legal if it’s in the service of an artistic production, and there’s no question that this gathering of a few dozen of the nation’s finest body painters was an artistic production. Working with a common color palette and a mandate to incorporate eyes into their designs, the painters attacked the problem with relish, producing human canvases that were imaginative and beautiful.

And it was wonderful to see so many people boldly and proudly naked in the sun, on the street at the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park. Spectators watched, remarkably politely, and the moral fabric of the city was not rent asunder despite the presence of dozens of bared penises, unclothed vaginas, and breasts of every shape, size, age and gender. (Not to mention the handling of same, in full view of onlookers of every shape, size, age and gender.)

Which begs the question, of course, why it’s okay for people to see this once a year when paint is involved but the other 364 it’s grounds for arrest. But one step at a time.

When we chose the location for this weekend’s get-together — the far west end of 55th Street, where a tree-shaded, grassy lawn slopes down to the edge of the Hudson River — we had no idea that we would be next door to the world’s largest convention of sneaker enthusiasts, “Sneaker Con.” But when we arrived, laden with books and towels and tasty things to eat, we found a line of people carrying cardboard shoeboxes and wearing the most striking footwear. What was at first a short queue soon snaked around the entire perimeter of the lawn, encircling us to the tune of at least two hundred eager souls – most of whom, for lack of anything better to do while waiting to be let in, seemed to be watching us and speculating on the question of who we were and why we had no shirts on.

But — and this is why we love New York so — the speculation was good natured and polite, and aside from a very few nervous visits from inquisitive teenage boys, nominally asking us this or that but actually just angling for a close-up view, we were left to read in peace. (One of our number did comment at one point, “I think we’ve jump-started puberty for several people on line.” She wasn’t necessarily referring to the chronologically young, either.)

Our attendees this time included two representatives of the Feminist Press, who came bearing gifts, samples of their line of female-authored pulp fiction, and a French journalist working on a magazine article about America’s top-freedom movement; all three cast inhibition aside and joined us in bare-breasted relaxation. Other attendees hailed from as far away as Australia, Israel, and Barcelona and as near as the Upper West Side. One of us had to leave halfway through for a dog-walking gig; one arrived late after a long evening bartending. We also had not one but two physicists and a brief discussion of molecular dynamics. Alongside our customary stash of pulp fiction (including, hot off the presses, a new paperback edition of Lawrence Block’s amazing A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, basis for the forthcoming Liam Neeson movie), we read Sartre and BULLFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY. We ate chili-laced popcorn and coconut chips, fresh lychees and blueberries, petits fours from Maison Kayser, and some utterly delectable homemade tollhouse cookies. (One of our members brought her boyfriend, and her boyfriend brought the cookies. Good boyfriend.)

At one point, one of us, demonstrating considerable dexterity and upper-body strength, clambered up the nearest tree and deposited herself in the crook of two branches and proceeded to read Truman Capote from her perch.

At another point, we found ourselves discussing nipple piercings (one of us had just gotten hers done the day before).

At yet another, we communed with the gaggle of geese that frequent the lawn.

Was the afternoon perfect? Almost. It did drizzle at one point, and more substantial rain threatened. But we defied the threat and, improbably, the skies cleared. Neither we nor the geese were forced to fly, and our feathers remained blissfully unruffled.

Two of the international travelers in our group — one hailing from Australia, one commencing a research project in Saudi Arabia — are heading off next week. They’ll be back…New York has a siren song that calls its daughters home (especially ones who like to get naked in public and are spending an extended period in Saudi Arabia)…but not before this summer is a memory, so to celebrate their departure and see them off in style we gathered on our favorite rooftop sundeck and got naked in the fading rays of the late afternoon. Eight women and two men, a selection of scones and muffins, copies of Heidegger and Under the Dome, two classic film cameras and some cell phones for selfie-snapping…it was as fine an impromptu to-do as we’ve ever had, half Irish wake, half lazy cats lying contentedly in a patch of sun.

Apologies to the two pairs of strangers who wandered onto the roof while we were there — an adorable couple of boys we peeked at through the shrubbery and then startled by saying hello; a mother and daughter who may not have been expecting the full-frontal view they got. But everyone was well behaved and took the sights in stride, confirming us in our suspicion that NYC is in some ways the most civilized spot in the world.

Our thanks to the good souls at the Colonial House Inn for letting us indulge our inner nudists (and outer too, we suppose). Especially with a week of rain forecast and our numbers reduced by the departures, we are grateful for every moment in the sun.

One of our regulars moved to Los Angeles last year; we still miss her every time we meet.

When she left, she took with her a roll of film she shot on our favorite rooftop sundeck, and with one thing and another, she never got around to developing the film. Until last week, that is. And she shared the photos with us, a tender and artistic look back at a summer of the past. We share them with you. A reminder, if you will, that the present summer will be a summer of the past not too long from now; that every day is yesterday soon than you might wish.

We’ve got plenty to look forward to, including a singularly exciting adventure coming up this Friday.

But for once, let’s look back.

Our friend Cheyenne took a European journey for several weeks this summer — yachting in Sardinia, and so forth — but has finally returned to New York City. And like all things she does, she’s done it in style.

Welcome home, girl. We’ll so glad to have you back.

Last time we went to Bryant Park, it looked like it might rain. Pour, in fact. And when we thought we might get rained out, we quickly called around to some restaurants in the area to see if any of them would be willing to take in a wet and bedraggled topless book club for lunch. A decent enough fallback, we thought.

Well, in the end it didn’t rain, and if you scroll down far enough you can see how much fun we had outdoors in the park that day. (Even the arrival of a Fox News reporter wasn’t enough to ruin the afternoon.) But one of the restaurants that enthusiastically said they’d have welcomed us was Ayza Wine Bar.

Well, not being ones to pass up a good thing, we kept in touch, and this past week we took them up on it, gathering first in nearby Washington Square Park (photos from that part of the day to follow) and then walking the six blocks south to Ayza’s downtown location.

And it was spectacular. Better than we could ever have expected. First of all, the staff was all welcoming and friendly and supportive and warm, and totally game to accommodate what had to be, for them, a rather unusual event. Second of all (though it hardly deserves to come anywhere but first on any list of good things), the food was absolutely delicious — spicy glazed chicken “lollipops,” savory dumplings, pizza spiked with black truffle, artichoke…and then the desserts started emerging, including chocolate truffles hand-delivered by charming waiters and chocolate fondue with all the trimmings.

Third of all (and it hardly deserves to come third), we had the benefits of a private setting (such as the freedom to get fully naked if we wanted, and a couple of us did) while the giant plate-glass windows enabled us to see the sun, and the world going by on the street outside. Could people see us too? Judging by the occasional startled facial expressions, some of them did, though when we sent ambassadors outside to try looking in, we mostly saw reflections. You had to be angled just right to get an eyeful. But some passers-by happened to look at the right moment, and the variety of reactions (confusion, delight, more confusion, stern tugging away of boyfriends by the sleeve) was fun to behold.

To give just one example, this older woman came to the door to find out what was going on. “We’re the Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society,” our emissary explained. “Well, I certainly appreciate it,” the visitor said with a big smile.

The afternoon doubled as a birthday celebration for one of our two photographers, and one of the waiters (who got into the spirit of things by going shirtless himself) delivered some fireworks to her table.

Did we get any reading in? Not a ton. But we did have several anthologies on hand from Rachel Kramer Bussel, and the editor herself there, joining in on the fun. Copies of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Hard Case Crime books also made an appearance.

But this time was really about the food and the company and the venue and hoping not to cause any traffic accidents as drivers spied something like 20 women (and a guy or two) in rather less clothing than you normally see in a restaurant.

Happily, we can report there were no six-car pileups.

And Ayza was tremendous. We’re going to return for sure, maybe when it’s freezing out. Imagine people passing by outside in down parkas, when snow is coming down, and glancing in the windows and seeing this…

As promised, here we are on the grass in Washington Square Park before our recent adventure at Ayza Wine Bar; it was gorgeous and glorious. And we have more gatherings like it planned! Not just for later in August, either. We plan to keep meeting in September and beyond, as long as the weather holds up. Last year we were out on Halloween, and the year before that we even met once in December, it was so warm out.

If you’re a body-positive, book-loving New York woman who’d enjoy hanging out with other such, drop us an email at toplesspulpfiction[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll get you onto our super-secret invite list. Don’t let the season pass you by without feeling the sun and the breeze on your bare breasts! It’s your right and your privilege, and you’ll kick yourself when down-parka weather returns…

Who says summer is packed and on its way to the Departures gate? Not us, not after spending an afternoon under the 90-degree sun in Central Park this past Wednesday. It was like an outdoor sauna, and just what we needed as a prophylactic against the end-of-summer blues.

We hit two spots in the park that we’d never been to before (and isn’t it wonderful that after four summers Central Park still has spots we haven’t been to?): the luxurious, edenic East Green…

…and the blessedly private “Dene,” a little grassy nook up a flight of stone steps from the main body of the park, tucked away between giant boulders. Thank you, Olmsted and Vaux!

There were 15 of us in all, though people came and went as the afternoon wore on. Reading material ranged from Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler to a Preacher graphic novel

to an advance copy of Naomi Novik’s amazing amazing amazing new fantasy novel, Uprooted.

We had two documentary filmmakers with us, and two screenwriters, and one person just back from the Cannes Film Festival…so it was sort of a Hollywood-themed event, accidentally. But other luminaries from other fields included a professional dogwalker and a food-stylist in training. We contain multitudes. :)

And there’s still more to come. As always, if you’re interested in participating and are a body-positive New York woman (or planning a visit to NYC from somewhere else), drop us a note at toplesspulpfiction@gmail.com — we’d love to hear from you.

We had a notion that some hotel in New York City — where after all it is legal for women to go topless anywhere a man can, and has been legal for more than 20 years — might be willing to let us use their rooftop swimming pool sometime, side by side with all their topless male guests. We offered to rent hotel rooms so we’d be guests too. But no: they were all terrified to allow bare-chested women on the same roof as bare-chested men.

“This group seems incredible – and very fun!” wrote a representative of the Empire Hotel. But: “Because this is a private space (with food and families) – we require our guests to wear tops. So I am not sure that we would be the best fit for you. Thank you for understanding.” Yes, of course we understand: food, after all. Our bare breasts (unlike men’s bare breasts) will tend to cause milk to sour and meat to spoil and other food to go bad in other mysterious ways. And families! Individual, separate men, women and children can bear exposure to female mammary tissue, but a family, no, a family will explode like popcorn on a hot stove if you wave a nipple in its direction. A woman’s nipple, that is. A man’s nipple, no problem. (True, he wrote “we require our guests to wear tops,” not distinguishing between women and men — but we have a feeling he meant they require this of their female guests. If they required it of their male guests as well it would be a rare swimming pool indeed.)

Jenny Morales of the Gansevoort Hotel wrote, “You’re more than welcome to join us as hotel guests and access the pool, however being that this is family friendly hotel, going topless would not be an option.” Oh, don’t we know it! We have tried and tried to train our breasts not to be so unfriendly to families, but they’re just incorrigible.

Nicolas Oliveira of the Hotel Americano wrote, “We are supporters when it comes to topless sunbathing and as you said, our Hotel does have international flavor. We choose to be neutral at our pool since at the end of the day we are a Hotel and we need to cater to Hotel Guests first. We do not believe that it will have a negative reaction when it comes to our Hotel Guests, but we also do not want to risk anything because we are a Hotel and our guests are our biggest supporters.” We are still trying to untangle that one. But it sounds like “We choose to be neutral at our pool” means “Please, please, please don’t come.”

Well, Nicolas and Jenny and Unnamed Representative — so be it. Your pools, your rules. But it’s a pity that none of you are willing to stand up to mindless conservatism, to fear and shame. Because what terrible thing are we really talking about here? A dozen happy women enjoying the sun with a little less rather than a little more fabric on. Relaxing, reading, tanning — nothing more, nothing worse. Unless you’re all secretly in the fabric industry and afraid your swimsuit concessions will plunge in value, we really can’t comprehend the danger we represent. Just take a look at these photos and tell us — would this really have hurt you so badly? So badly that you were willing to turn away hundreds of dollars in revenue — maybe hundreds per person — just to keep it from happening…?

And to the enlightened folk at the Colonial Park Inn (where all these photos were taken, after we gave up on our search for a real pool we could use) we say: thank you. We always feel welcome with you. Your pool may be small, and it may be inflatable, and it may not allow us to swim laps or practice the back float, but at least we can ditch the swimsuits. Which is the best way to enjoy a pool.

And get this, you’re not only comfortable with breasts, you’re even okay with vaginas! And penises!

God bless you, Colonial House. God bless you.

So, a dip in a rooftop pool is one of the great ways to cool down on a hot late-summer day…but it’s not the only way, as one of our members who works as a bartender downtown demonstrated with great proficiency the other day.

We brought the ingredients for margaritas, mojitos, mimosas and cosmos, while she brought the tools of the trade: shaker; strainer; muddler that could double as a fierce butt plug. Corks were popped, screwtops screwed, limes halved, jalapenos quartered, ice smashed against the wooden floor. Drinks were sampled and spilled, spills were licked up. Fresh mint leaves got muddled, and so, by god, did we.

Did we get any reading done? We did, until the pages started to blur.

After that it was all conversation, some of it about the waning of the season and what we would do to keep the group together over the colder months to come. We have Ideas. Some big ones, some small ones, but no shortage of plans; now it’s just a matter of figuring out which and when and how and who.

But first we plan to drink summer to the lees, much the same as we drank our delicious selection of what Alex Trebek would call Potent Potables. In the altogether because, naked cocktails. Just as lovely as naked reading. And it’s another thing you can’t do in the middle of Central Park. Yet.

Oh — and just to wrap up the rooftop report, here are a few pics we’d planned to include last time but didn’t find room for. Say hello to two of our newest members and one of our oldest, back again after more than a year away. And two of our most steadfast, too, just because, well, we love them. :)