http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-12-01/news/nudists-public-nudity-castro-san-francisco
By Lauren Smiley
Dec 1 2010
In Chinatown, it may be the Year of the Tiger, but in the Castro,
it's almost always the Year of the Cock. Judging from a walk down
Castro Street, cocks are the unofficial mascot. You've got the
Sausage Factory (an Italian restaurant named with a wink), Hot Cookie
(a bakery that sells chocolate-covered cookie cocks), and Rock Hard
(a porn shop full of gigantic, X-rated cocks). To cap it off, the
Castro just elected a supervisor named Scott Wiener.
But this year, the neighborhood found out that the male anatomy can
still cause a stir when the real-life cocks arrived. In broad
daylight. At the plaza on the corner of Market Street, right by the
F-line trolley stop. Sometimes flapping down Castro Street. Or
hanging out in line for coffee at Starbucks.
These cocks were not metaphorical or ironic in the least bit. They
were sometimes more than 60 years old. Or dangling amid red pubic
hair. Or cinched with rings, or pierced with metal, or hanging free
with nothing on at all. They felt entitled for a reason: The law in
San Francisco is more or less on their side. At least, they know it's
extremely unlikely they'd ever be prosecuted for walking around in
public naked.
The exact genesis of this movement is hazy, but most agree it had
something to do with the city opening a high-visibility plaza at
Castro and Market last year. Among the lunchers, retirees, and
shoppers, naked men showed up, too: A construction supervisor named
Barry appeared in his fedora and flip-flops and nothing else. An
unemployed retail manager named Eric finally summoned the guts
("Getting out of the car is the scariest thing") and started reading
a book on sunny days. A strapping Brit named CJ Russell with a giant
Japanese symbol for "nudity" tattooed on his groin started strolling
around in a brimmed cap and running shoes. Woody Miller yep, real
name started whipping off his kilt in the plaza after his waiter
shift at Orphan Andy's and hiking home in the buff. Mickey Smith
joined in coyly, draping a string of leaves over his package like an
urban Tarzan. Some of the nudists didn't want their full names
published so they could, of all things, maintain a degree of privacy.
There's a consistent cast of about 12 nude guys coming and going.
Toward the end of summer, George Davis, the "Naked Yoga Guy,"
suggested they establish the plaza as the city's official
clothing-optional space.
The Castro is, of course, no stranger to exhibitionism. Back in the
heady '70s and '80s when gay men claimed the neighborhood formerly
known as Eureka Valley as their own, guys stood with shirts off and
tight Levis sanded at the crotch on "Hibernia Beach," the sidewalk
outside the old Hibernia Bank at 18th and Castro streets.
But in 2010, those guys have grown up, settled down, and had babies.
Locals have noticed more lesbians and straight couples have moved
into the neighborhood with babies of their own. The Castro has gone
from edgy to twee and touristy. Strollers have rolled in like an invading army.
One day this summer, Glenn Castro, a gym teacher from the nearby
Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy (one of two elementary schools
within two blocks of the plaza), approached the trolley stop with 30
day campers. Suddenly, a field trip to Pier 39 seemed a lot less
interesting to the schoolkids than a group of naked grownups in the plaza.
One of the campers was the 7-year-old daughter of Terry Bennett, who
runs Cliff's Variety hardware shop on Castro, opened by her
great-great-grandfather more than 70 years ago. Later that day,
Bennett called the city's service line to report the naked men
walking down the sidewalk.
"I don't know why they're doing it shock value or what?" she says
from behind her counter at Cliff's recently. "The Castro's a place
that's supposed to be for everybody, and if you're excluding the
kids, that's not being accepting of everyone."
The Castro, as well as the gay community for whom it is both the
literal and symbolic home, is changing. Whereas the fight used to be
to come out, today's battles are to fit in to join the military,
get married, and win benefits for your partner in short, to make
the gay community just as normal as the straight folks down the
street. So when men start dangling out the bits on a Tuesday
afternoon in what is essentially the Castro's front yard, well, the
neighbors start to talk.
On a warm November afternoon, an F-line trolley groaned through the
plaza as it turned onto Market Street, temporarily eclipsing the sun
pouring onto a gathering of naked men. The day's nudist lineup
included George Davis (gaunt frame, trimmed bush), Barry (tall,
baseball cap, cock ring), Mickey (leaves strung over his twig and
berries), and Eric (barrel-chested, hair gelled into a fauxhawk).
They are, respectively, a straight yoga guru, a straight construction
guy, a straight house painter, and a gay retail manager. It's a safe
bet that they would not be sitting at the same table if they were clothed.
The nude guys are a bit of a Rorschach test for the constant stream
of people walking through the plaza. One young guy throws his arms in
the air to cheer, "Yay! Naked people!" A man in a business suit says
into his cellphone, "There's naked people sitting here in San
Francisco." An Argentine tourist stops to get his picture taken: "We
don't have this in my country!" A cute lesbian also stops for a
photo, saying, "I'm allergic to penises!" A salty guy named Fred who
has long been annoyed by them shakes Mardi Gras beads: "Do you guys
want some pearls to string around your nuts or something?"
Next to the plaza sits the iconic Twin Peaks, the first gay bar in
the Castro with gigantic windows so passersby could see the patrons
when it opened in 1973. Now, people call it the "Glass Coffin" given
its largely white-haired clientele, and these days the real
exhibitionists are the naked guys visible on the other side. "It just
doesn't faze me anymore," said bartender Dale Thompson, serving
drinks to a corporate lawyer and residential architect on a recent
night. "I'm not going to throw a blanket over them."
But there are many who wish someone would. Before long, a young
police officer with a crew cut approaches the table of naked men. "I
got a complaint, uh, about the nudity," he says in as neutral a tone
as possible. "So she wanted me to come and advise you guys first. She
doesn't want to sign a complaint right now, but she said if you guys
continue it, she'd like to. So, just advising you guys of the possibility."
The nudists don't seem too worried. Before long, Eric walks up in the
buff to join them. Soon, another man with a badge lumbers across the
plaza. "There goes our favorite person," Eric says. It was John
Fitzinger, a patrol special officer whose beat includes the Castro.
Patrol specials mostly look after stores, checking on their security
systems or detaining shoplifters until the bona fide cops show up.
From his regular perch on a planter on the side of the plaza,
Fitzinger would have a clear view of the nudists if he would turn
around. That evening, he kept his back turned.
"They act like it's their absolute right to be walking around naked,"
he says. "If they want to look at each other's dicks, they should go
home and do it. ... The Castro isn't the gay ghetto it used to be."
He says one time this summer, a little boy spotted a naked man in
front of Starbucks on 18th Street with a Prince Albert cock piercing
and started crying: "He wanted to know why his peepee was broken."
Fitzinger says he distracted the kid with a coloring book. There's
little more he can do: The only places it's illegal to be fully naked
in San Francisco are in venues that serve alcohol (because of the
liquor code) and in city parks. According to law enforcement's
current interpretation of the penal code, the rest of the city is fair game.
George Davis served as a test case when he was arrested in 2004 on a
misdemeanor public nuisance complaint while promoting his Naked Yoga
book in the nude on Fisherman's Wharf. District Attorney Kamala
Harris' office threw out the charges and announced it would not
prosecute mere nudity, absent any lewd conduct or obstruction of
traffic. Davis says police have cited him 22 times for public
nuisance or indecent exposure, all of which have been thrown out by
the district attorney.
"It's just a harassment mechanism," he says. "They just want to get
you off the street."
Still, the fact that a group of guys are able to disrobe at the plaza
with few problems seems to be an "only in San Francisco" phenomenon.
In New York, being naked in public is illegal no ifs or ands, and
definitely no butts. Many California cities have passed antinudity
laws, or at least hew to a stricter interpretation of state indecent
exposure laws. In Los Angeles, they'd be arrested, said the L.A.
sheriff's department spokeswoman Aura Sierra: "No, that's not cool;
it's not the thing to do."
At the end of August, San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón issued
a bulletin to the entire department that attempted to clear up the
enforcement strategy for nudity. He cited the state penal code,
explaining that public nudity is illegal only if it is "lewd,"
defined as intended for sexual gratification, and if people are
"offended or annoyed." The courts have ruled that cops cannot be
"offended," so a civilian must sign a citizen's arrest card.
If there is no indication of lewd conduct, the memo suggest officers
"consider" making arrests for a public nuisance instead, defined in
the penal code as "indecent, or offensive to the senses ... so as to
interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property by an
entire community or neighborhood." Still, that charge is no easier to
enforce, given that a person must sign an arrest card for that, too.
George Davis says cops had citizen's arrest cards only about 50
percent of the time when they arrested him in the past. Since the
chief's bulletin, he says the police have left him alone. As
Fitzinger knows, in the Castro, many call in to complain, but few
want to go on the record as a prude. It's gotten to the point where
Capt. Greg Corrales of Mission Station, which covers the Castro,
advises dispatchers that a cop won't respond if the caller isn't
willing to sign a card, because it makes the police look like fools.
"People look at the cops expecting them to take some kind of action,
and there's no action they can take," he says. "I got much more
serious issues to deal with, and if the DA isn't going to prosecute
and a citizen's not going to sign a citizen's arrest card, it's not
my concern."
That doesn't stop the constant game of cat-and-mouse all over the
Castro. Barry, who declines to give his last name to "remain
incognito," is one of the straight men of the nude pack. On Halloween
weekend, he was approached by some flirtatious women in front of
Pottery Barn. "I got a little excited," he recalls anatomically
speaking. Just then, he spotted Sgt. Chuck Limbert, Mission Station's
liaison to the gay community, so he squatted to hide the evidence. He
says Limbert demanded he stand up. Barry wouldn't. "He said, 'Put
something on! Cover it up!'" Barry recalls. "He gave me that dirty
look he gives us."
Limbert says he was responding to a complaint. "That, to me, means
lewd. If your cock is erect and engorged with blood, you got a
problem. That's not a Halloween costume."
One time, Lloyd Fishback a brooding, lanky building security man by
day refused an officer's order to put on the G-string he was
holding, instead plunking it into his hat and plopping it on his
head. He claims the officer then wrenched his forearm behind his back
as if he were going to cuff him. Fishback lodged a complaint with the
Office of Citizen's Complaints about the whole ordeal, but now offers
less resistance, such as when Fitzinger demanded he get in his patrol
car. "He pretended he was trying to arrest me, so I just played
along," Fishback says. There were no charges to press, and he was
soon on his way.
Eric was stopped by an officer on Castro Street who asked a passing
straight couple: "Don't you think this is inappropriate?" When the
couple vacillated, the cop pressed further. "But what if there were
children around?" Still, no citizen's arrest there.
Despite facing some resistance, the nudists seem to have no plans to
leave their Castro oasis. If anything, they're settling in. The nude
guys have now renamed the plaza after themselves.
The park was officially christened Jane Warner Plaza last month,
after the late patrol special officer who covered the Castro beat.
When Warner would pass Rusty Mills, the man who first started walking
in the Castro nude in 2005, he says she'd say something to the effect
of "I wish you'd keep more space between you and me." So the nudists
decided to give the plaza a nickname, voting on names such as Bare
Square, Nude Crossing, and Freedom Plaza. The Buff Stop won.
"Horrible! Next they'll want a statue of an erect penis there!"
Limbert says. "Jane Warner is turning over in her grave."
She doesn't know the half of it. On a recent evening, Mills stood up
against one of the planters in the plaza when a man half his age came
up and started flirting. At 68, Mills is arguably the fittest of the
nudists; he was the NCAA pommel horse champion from Yale in the '60s,
and still works out six days a week at Gold's Gym to maintain an
Olympian's figure.
"Is it okay if I touch it?" the man asked, referring to Mills' penis.
"Yeah, do; it's fine, as long as we're not under observation from the
men in blue," Mills replied, giving a wary 360-degree scan of the plaza.
The younger man stroked Mills' six-pack, too. "Hard stomach," he said.
"I work at it," Mills replied. "They don't respond as nice as I wish
they did. ... I have to work like hell to get anything. They used to
call me Daddy Long Legs."
"More like Daddy Long Dick."
Barry walked up during this episode and said to a reporter rather
apologetically: "This doesn't usually happen."
Mills is the first to admit that "there's an undercurrent of
sexuality" when going nude in public. In the mid-'90s, he used to go
out in the wee hours of the morning when no one was around, but then
made his public debut at the cruising spot on Collingwood a few
months later, not to get picked up but to let the cars shine their
headlights on him. He started to walk nude through the Castro at
night five years ago, with Fishback joining him as a regular
companion in 2008. Fishback used to pop a Viagra to keep an erection
while walking: "When you got a hard-on in public, it really draws a
crowd picture seekers, women are really digging it when you got a
hard-on." But he said he stopped becuase it wasn't working anymore
"I'm not excited" plus it draws unwanted attention from the cops.
In the last year, other Castro nudists have started emerging during
the day. While Mills and Lloyd enjoy sexually charged attention,
other nudists say this movement isn't about being sexual at all.
Instead, they're out to prove the opposite: that there's nothing
shameful or scandalous about the human body, and they theorize about
creating a free body culture. (Cops say they'd better accept that
argument if some of them weren't using cock rings or chain belts with
baubles hanging by their balls: "If it were for the intention of
being a pure nudist, they wouldn't be wearing jewelry to draw
attention to themselves," Limbert says.) Davis says he does it to
meet people, or to simply make his life more interesting: "I'm really
an absurdist at heart." One man describes going out naked in public
as a second "coming out."
Though several of the guys are straight, no one is opposed to getting
the occasional catcall from men in the neighborhood. "You go to
someone else's house, you abide by their rules," Mickey explains.
But who, exactly, defines the Castro's rules is changing.
Gay men first started snatching up the neighborhood's affordable
Victorian houses after World War II as the former working-class
family owners migrated to the suburbs, converting the traditional
symbol of the nuclear family into a mostly childless community. In
2000, the Census showed the neighborhood was still whiter, richer,
more male, and with fewer kids than the city average. But many
believe the 2010 Census results, due to be released over the next
three years, will show a Castro with many more families with children.
"In the LGBT world, we do have kids now," says Steve Adams, the
president of Merchants of Upper Market and Castro. "I'm open-minded,
I'm liberal, but we have kids in the neighborhood. You want to make
sure your kids are growing up right and not shocked at certain
things, like naked people in a plaza."
Limbert says he no longer considers the Castro predominantly gay.
"We've gone through a transition period and are a mixed-use and
business district," he says. "We have families, businesses, and
tourists that don't appreciate you trying to bring attention to
nudity. ... We're already very tolerant in the Castro, and now we're
being pushed in another area." With the changing demographics, the
Castro is negotiating what it means to be probably the most
sex-positive place in the country to raise children.
One night last month, young men plunged a giant inflatable penis out
of the window of a Victorian on 18th Street for the amusement of
passersby, grabbing it back inside when they spotted a woman with a
toddler approaching. Controversy erupted in 2005, when parents
complained about a teakwood statue of an Adonis-like man with a
gigantic, erect cock in the window of Phantom SF antique store on 18th Street.
Owner Robert Hedric draped a cloth over the offending penis to
placate the complainers. Yet, sitting among the chandeliers and nude
paintings in his shop on a recent weekday, even he didn't defend the
nudists. "I wouldn't consider something like that to be in my
showcase window, let's put it that way," he says. His assistant,
Carlos, disagrees: "It's to open people's minds. We're so
close-minded about nudity in America."
"Even in the middle of the city?" Hedric asks.
That's what troubles Terry Bennett, whose store is just two blocks
down the street: "Parents should be able to decide what to expose
their children to at what age." She says her daughter will tell her,
"Mom, that is so inappropriate. Why don't they have clothes on?"
The nudists know the protect-the-children argument well. It's invoked
by law enforcement and leaders of both the Merchants of Upper Market
and the Castro and Castro Community Benefit District. Davis once told
a social worker in an interview for becoming a foster parent that his
home was "clothing optional"; the interview ended soon after. The
nudists argue kids aren't harmed by nudity, and mostly read their
parents' response: laid-back parents have laid-back kids, and parents
who cover their eyes have sensitive ones.
"Kids don't know about sex," said Eric, sitting in the plaza as
strollers rolled by. "It's the parents that equate it with something
naughty. To [the kids], it's just you don't have any clothes on."
The nudists, even the straight ones, know the Castro is the
neighborhood where they'll find the most acceptance, or at least
indifference. They keep a mental map of which businesses or even
specific employees and bartenders will allow them to enter in the
buff. If the manager of one pizza place refuses to serve them when
they have only a bandanna covering their loins, they'll just go down
to the pizzeria down the street that will.
On Halloween night, a group of the guys entered Bisou French Bistro,
a new restaurant near the plaza with pounding pop music and a curved
red velvet wall, to take up the French chef on his offer to give them
a discount if they'd come in the nude. (Most restaurants and bars
usually have the men slip on a G-string, per the liquor code.) As
they exited, some patrons gave the nude gang blank stares; others
gave them a round of applause.
At times, it seems the neighborhood has come to absorb them as part
of the scenery, with the naysayers left to gripe among themselves or
make feckless calls to the police. That is, until a Sunday night last
month, when a cop car driving down Castro spotted Mills in the buff
and made a U-turn.
The lieutenant, new to the precinct, said Mills was under arrest for
a public nuisance. Mills argued that the charges wouldn't stick, and
two more squad cars soon pulled up. So did John Fitzinger "standing
in the street with a smug expression on his face," Mills says.
The police officer cuffed Mills and put him in the car; Mills
persuaded the cop to drive to Hartford Street and retrieve his shorts
and garage door opener from a planter. Once at Mission Station, Mills
was handcuffed to a metal bench. Twenty minutes passed until a
lieutenant told Mills he could leave without a citation if he'd
promise to go home. Mills agreed he would just for that night and
the police even gave him a ride home.
"They're just trying to intimidate me," Mills says. Some nudists are
worried that the Castro nudists will draw unwanted scrutiny to nudity
in San Francisco, even at events where it's welcomed like Bay to
Breakers, Folsom Street Fair, and the World Naked Bike ride.
"I don't want the guys in the plaza to push the [city] into thinking
they have to pass an anti-naked ordinance to get rid of them," says
Rich Pasco, the founder of the Bay Area Naturists, who usually stick
to nude beaches.
Case in point: Berkeley. People's Park had long been a nude-friendly
space where a nude theater group named the Xplicit Players put on
shows without much complaint. Then Andrew Martinez showed up on UC
Berkeley's campus naked in the early '90s, and both the university
and the city banned public nudity. For that reason, Mills says he
doesn't want to "push things too fast or too hard. The social goal is
to disarm the prudish people," not give them more fuel. To better
their public image, he's even suggested the nudists start a weekly
trash cleanup.
City officials don't seem overly worried about them. At least
outgoing Supervisor Bevan Dufty doesn't. Dufty, who has represented
the Castro for the past eight years, also happens to be raising his
4-year-old daughter in the neighborhood. The nudists have been out
when he regularly sits in the plaza with her to people-watch.
"She's fascinated with penises, so she kind of pointed out there are
penises and I said, 'Yep, they are right there,'" he says. "I said
they like to have people pay attention to them and are very
comfortable being naked." A politician who grooves on a Pride parade
float with his daughter on his hip, he says it's a false choice
between a family-friendly Castro and a sex-positive one. "It's much
more difficult to explain racism, violence, and war," says Dufty, who
plans to run for mayor next year. "Explaining to her what a sex toy
is will be a walk in the park."
For now, the nudists seem to be moving into the Castro for good. Yet
there's always the possibility that it will be just a fad, fading
away as the novelty wears off. "I would really like to be married and
not do this," Fishback admits.
"I've done it over and over again and it gets to be kind of routine,"
Mills says. "The heart-pumping excitement isn't there."
Only in San Francisco is the biggest threat to the public nudity
movement not the cops, or prudes, or even kids. It's boredom.
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