Nudity Ban Protest: 1-Year Anniversary

1st February 2014

Scheduled for 12 noon at Jane Warner Plaza in San Francisco, the protesters started setting up around 11:45 a.m., with posters galore as usual.

Gypsy and Jaymz were busy fixing the “stage” for their one hour protest while the San Francisco SS watched them carefully, to see if anyone sneaked in nudity early in the presentation. A police patrol car was already parked half a block down on 16th Avenue by 11:30 a.m., and a second came just when the first protesters showed up. Some anti-social individual obviously had alerted the black-shirted corps to come for an easy job - - to ogle the semi-nudes and attack the totally nudes. They actually did physically attack one nude guy, slamming him face first into the concrete, have two cops on top of him with one knee slammed into the guy’s back, and manacling him. When they got him up, I saw a bloody elbow. This happened half an hour into the protest, after the police sergeant (or is it Standartenfuehrer?) had screamed at the now nude protesters that they had five minutes to get dressed, before action would be taken, namely arrests.

Till then everything had gone peacefully, with the regular protesters supplemented by another few semi-nudes and nudes, and presenting their spiel about the traitorous Scott Wiener and informing about the federal lawsuit progressing through legal steps. The perennial nude supervisor candidate George Davis had just finished his presentation, and Gypsy Taub was about to give hers, when the storm troopers barged in from a couple sides, among the crowd of onlookers. The Razzia was witnessed and recorded by masses of cameras, and a couple of TV stations (channel 2 – KTVU) and Russian Television were busy recording the rather violent actions going on. Four persons were arrested, hand cuffed and carted off in a paddy wagon.

Knowing Gypsy, this is not the end. There will be more protests this year.

Leif Heilberg