The City has released the “disgusting” photos of Denny Blaine Park that millionaire philanthropist Stuart Sloan sent to Mayor Bruce Harrell in March 2023 ahead of pledging $1 million to construct a children’s playground on the nude beach frequented by Seattle’s gay and trans residents.

While both the City and the neighbors group, Denny Blaine Park for All, have told The Stranger that they were concerned with trash, illegal parking, alleged incidents of public sex, public masturbation, and otherwise unlawful activity on the beach, these photos from Sloan only appear to show people enjoying a legally protected right to nudity at the beach.

Sophie Amity Debs of Friends of Denny Blaine, a park stewardship group affiliated with the Seattle Parks Foundation, called the photos “thoroughly unscandalizing.”

“The beachgoers photographed are not doing anything explicit—they are casually using the beach without clothes on,” she said in a text message. “There is no sex, no drug use, no lewd activity; none of the things that they *purported* were the reasons for trying to crack down on this beach. I think it was already clear from the texts, but this really drives home: Sloan and the mayor's real ‘grievance’ was just people being nude there at all.”

Sloan sent the photos to Harrell’s private cell phone and to Seattle Parks and Recreation Superintendent AP Diaz on March 18, 2023, along with a series of texts that the City released publicly last week. 

In a March 2023 text, Sloan told Harrell he’d taken the liberty to censor the genitals in his photos. We’ve asked the City if Sloan also censored their faces, or if the public records department did that, and we’ll update when we hear back. 

“This is disgusting and as you’ve said, we’re on the right side of this issue,” Sloan wrote in an accompanying message. “I hope you agree that we need to get ahead of this or it will be more difficult once the good weather returns … Thanks for taking the time to read this message. I’m not complaining about Parks, I’m just seriously concerned that we just cannot let another year go by, it’s just DISGUSTING!”

Mayor Harrell maintains that he did not know Sloan was the donor behind the project, a claim that the activists who rallied against the City’s plans to construct the playground reject.

In a March message to Parks Superintendent Diaz, Harrell said he appreciated Sloan’s “philanthropic position,” which the mayor’s communications office said was a general reference to Sloan’s well-documented philanthropy, and not an allusion to a donation to fund the playground.

In a June 2023 text to Sloan, Harrell wrote that he was aware of the problems of nudity and hazardous waste at Denny Blaine that had become “totally totally unacceptable at the beach” and assured him that Deputy Mayor Adiam Emery would be working with him directly to address the issue. 

“If you are disgusted I share your disgust,” Harrell wrote.

Last week, the mayor’s office said nudity was a protected right of expression and that the mayor respected people’s ability to “exercise that freedom at Denny Blaine.”