Mooning the Amtrak: Local Culture post # 1 in a series of 1

Orange County, CA is, or at least was, a very conservative area. When we first moved here we had never seen more BMWs, Volvos, Corvettes, or Italian sports cars in our entire lives. It's odd then, that the cultural highlight of life in Orange County is "Moon the Amtrak Day", held on the second Saturday in July each year.

It has a website, http://www.moonamtrak.org/, which has instructions on how moon safely and constructively. According to the Sunday July 11, 1999 edition of The Orange County Register, the article "Full moon over Amtrak keeps Laguna Niguel tradition alive", the tradition started as follows: "Twenty years ago (1979), at The Mugs Away Saloon, a K.T.Smith told his buddies he'd buy a drink for all who would run outside to the rail road tracks and "moon" the next train, which many did. The mooning tradition has prevailed, but there is no longer a volunteer to buy free drinks for thousands of "Mooners"."

People have shown up to moon ever since. I went once, when I first came here, and it's been on my calendar to go ever since, although without fail I have managed not to get there. The inability to attend extended to this year, which is lucky, because this year the mooning crowd got its ass busted. So to speak.

According to an LA Times article, Police halt 'mooning' of trains in Laguna Niguel after a crowd of 8,000 gathers, "Police were called out to break up the annual "mooning" of Amtrak trains in Laguna Niguel on Saturday when the crowd grew to 8,000 and many began baring more than just their behinds."We had some mooners and some female flashers and some people who were nude altogether," said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. "There was also lots of drinking. We felt that it was in the public's interest to shut it down.""