Proposed Ban on Public Nudity Offends Some in San Francisco
Proposed Ban on Public Nudity Offends Some in San Francisco
San Francisco’s tolerance toward tolerance is wearing thin..
A city supervisor here proposed a law Tuesday that would ban nudity in most public places across the city. For years, the city has held an “equilibrium” with nudity at public events and occasionally in neighborhoods, said the supervisor, Scott Wiener, but the nudity recently “has just gotten extreme.”
At issue is a public plaza that regularly attracts nudists in the historically gay Castro neighborhood, prompting a debate about the limits of civil liberties in this famously tolerant city. After complaints about the naked people by some businesses and residents, Mr. Wiener proposed the bareness-busting bill.
The proposed ban doesn’t sit well with some urban nudists.
“This is, in my opinion, an attack on freedom,” said George Davis, 66 years old, who was soaking up the sun Tuesday wearing nothing more than sunglasses and a hat, reading a book about Twitter, the microblogging service. As one of the Castro’s famous nudists, “I meet people from all over the world,” he said, including South Korea, France and Liechtenstein.