From Staff Reports 

The annual Go Topless rally will be held at 1 p.m. Aug. 27 in downtown Asheville’s Pritchard Park.

The Asheville rally is one of a series of rallies across the nation, organized by the Go Topless organization. The rallies are held on the Sunday closest to Women’s Equality Day.

“The new-infamous rallies have drawn the ire of local lawmakers for the last four years, drawing anywhere from a dozen to 30 or more topless demonstrators, and hundreds of on-lookers,” Casey Blake wrote in her Answer Woman column in the July 18 edition of the Asheville Citizen-Times.

“Despite the fact that it is and has always been legal to go topless in public in Asheville, rally organizers say it’s important to exercise the right. State lawmakers over the last few years have attempted to pass legislation banning the events to no vail,” Blake noted.

Attendance has been dwindling in recent years, as Blake wrote, to the point where “about a dozen to 30 or more topless women” wearing cutoffs” pose for photos by “600 middle-age men in fanny packs.”

The rally originally were held around the Vance Monument, but was moved last year to Pritchard Park to give the event more visibility.