Few nudies show up for 'Bare to Breakers'
It was the lowest turnout I've ever seen. Is my 'tribe' going extinct?
May 19th was the Bay to Breakers Fun Run, also known to us nudies as the Bare to Breakers or just B2B. There weren’t many of us. A few from the Facebook Bare to Breakers private group and a few more from the Meetup.com Bare to Breakers event.
It was, by far, the lowest nudie turnout I have ever seen. Add to this a few dozen (at most) solo males scattered through the corrals and the usual smattering who came to display their erections. Because of the diminishing number of nudists, I’m not certain that I’ll be doing it nude next year.
As usual, I spent the night at my sister-in-law’s home, and we took the 7 a.m. BART train to the race start. This BART run is special, just for B2B participants. Ordinarily, it doesn’t run until 8.
The weather was perfect. The last of the clouds disappeared as the sun burned through. There was very little wind. At the beginning and end, I was cool, but I never felt cold; a pleasantly sensual experience. In the middle of the course, on Hayes Street Hill, I started to sweat a little, another pleasant, sensual experience. I’m naked, surrounded by tens of thousands of accepting textiles and hiking through the heart of a great city where it is usually forbidden. The psychological experience is one of limitless freedom. It’s not as cosmic as it was a couple of decades ago for my first time, but it’s still outstanding.
It is different from the WNBR. There, you are segregated from the world, a demonstration to be viewed from a distance. Here, you are enmeshed in it. I chatted with quite a few textile people and groups. Nobody seemed to have the slightest problem with nudity. Just another costume.
Our small group formed up near the Embarcadero and stripped before heading to our respective corrals. Most of us were in the D corral, a primarily walking group. The corrals are sorted by how fast you intend to run the race. Seeded and subseeded and A corral are all the serious runners. B and C start running, but many slow down after the first mile. D-F corrals are varying mixtures of walkers and joggers, G is walking only, and H is for the handicapped and families with small children.
However, this is honored more in the breach than the fulfillment. Even in B corral, most do not run the entire distance; few make their corral time.
I moved on ahead to my assigned B corral. I’d never started so far forward, and I wanted to know if it differed from the walking corrals. My feeling now is the people in the more rearward corrals were chattier and had more exciting costumes. When I go again, I’ll probably start farther in the rear, where the costume craziness lives.
There aren’t any photos taken by me here. I took lots of photos, but my camera “disappeared” at some point after the event. 😠 Somebody is in for a surprise when they look at the images.
I went through some YouTube videos and found myself briefly in a couple. I’m in the above video at 11:23 on the far side of the street with another nudie. If you watch the full video, you’ll see other nudies, but it is quite long.
I ran the first mile (I did not want to obstruct anyone seriously running) and then walked the rest of the way. Along the way, I met a few nudie guys and two top-free women. I chatted with them. Two of the guys mentioned that they had yellow hats from the past but hadn’t brought them. One said his first Bare to Breakers was in 1986.
As usual, I saw a couple of dudes showing off their erections. That happens every time. 🙄 That’s something you could theoretically be arrested for, but the police ignored it. I didn’t see any textiles who were particularly bothered by it, and some even wanted their picture taken with them.
There were plenty of porta potties and stations for free water along the way.
I did the breaker bonus. It was a beautiful 3K stroll down the highway fronting the beach. I thought I might see some yellow hats at the finish line festival, but I didn’t. I grabbed my loot, a funky medallion and a souvenir shirt, dressed and caught my 12:30 shuttle to head back. Uber was overbooked. Miss that shuttle, and I’d have to go offsite to catch a Muni bus. (My sis-in-law had wanted to do the walk but didn’t have a shuttle ticket.)
Most of the people were locals and so had other ways to get home. Some turned around and walked back to the start. I was tempted (More naked time!), but I had blisters starting on the balls of my feet, and it wouldn’t be fair to keep my sis-in-law waiting for 3 hours more.
As usual, most people didn’t pay any attention. I might as well be wearing jeans and a T-shirt. One guy told me I forgot my clothes back at the start. Three women gave me Mardi Gras beads. Three other women wanted their picture with me.
The best photo coverage I’ve seen is by the SF Gate. They always seem to do a good job. About halfway down the article is a shot of some of the other nudies in our little group.
It felt like this year, there were fewer nudes than ever before. Thinking back to 2001 when there were 500 nudies, most in an exclusively nude corral. A guy organized and put a lot of time and money into promoting it. He retired, and then he died. No large organization is interested in promoting it. Since then, it has gone steadily downhill.
COVID shut the race down for two years and fewer nudies returned. The nudist crowd is also slowly aging out of this kind of activity with few replacements. Plus, the country has slid conservative. After what happened in Wisconsin, there may have been second thoughts. The story about how Christian fundamentalists turned the Madison WNBR into politically motivated moral outrage is here:
Last year, a cop erroneously told people in Golden Gate Park that they had to dress or be ticketed. He was eventually corrected, but damage was done.
OTOH, the day before had been the B2B weekend WNBR. I didn’t have a bike with me and seriously doubted I could do 17 miles on San Francisco’s hills if I did. Frisco is a very nude-friendly city and has 5 WNBRs a year, plus nudity at the Pride Festival and other random events. An event that has pulled a parade permit can allow you to run around naked legally. There are a lot of those. I showed up nude at an “anyone but Trump” rally back in 2016, and it was completely cool.
Still… I am considering not going next year. When I started this, there were almost 500 nudes. Last year, there were at least 100 nudies. This year, far fewer. To my knowledge, there was no Lupin shuttle to the race, and the Lupin Lodge nudist resort is up for sale. This does not bode well.
I feel like a dinosaur. Like my “tribe” is going extinct.
There is enough interest in nudity in SF that, with planning and resources, we could once again have significant nude participation in the B2B. WNBRs do well there, but then, those are properly organized and promoted. The nude B2B no longer has a constituency. I’ve done what I can, but I am low on resources and energy. Unless a group picks it up to promote or an individual with cash, connections and commitment steps in, it’snot going to happen.
For a more upbeat assessment of the 2023 Bare to Breakers, go here:
Bay to Breakers 2023
May 21st was the annual Bay to Breakers Fun Run. Participants run from the Embarcadero on the San Francisco Bay across the city to the Pacific Ocean. Well… most walk. It started in 1912 as part of the recovery from the Great San Francisco Earthquake. Over the century-plus since then, it has evolved into the wild and crazy event it is today.
Even Wikipedia has it wrong. The article says that nudity was banned. It was not. The law passed prohibited nudity on public property unless you had a parade permit. You cannot be denied a parade permit because nudity is involved. There are many events with open nudity in SF every year.
Great article Fred - if there are problems in SF I'd guess the combined suggestive inuendo-ing of the prudists is gaining traction. I'm in England but feel that where nudity was once just 'naughty' in the public mind it is now being perverted by the prudists into a form of shaming that no-one in authority is willing to recognise is just one more manifestation of 'hate speech'...