Naked people in the trees - San Francisco
 

Ok, Fodorite help is needed to explain this one...

October 30th, 2005 San Francisco, 10am -
Doing the tourist thing with my wife (she and I have been to SF numerous times) and her parents from Russia who had never been to California before. We enter SF, drive down Lombard St and proceed towards Coit Tower. About 2 or 3 blocks from Telegraph Hill I glance over to my right and I see a row of trees along the street... that are filled with naked people. Each tree had two or more completely nude people in them, sitting on branches, leaning against trunks, etc. Obviously, this was cause for surprise, astonishment and laughter amongst our group and we drove on and continued with our normal sight-seeing day. The only explanation I could provide to my in-laws was a laughing "Only in San Francisco" but since getting home I've searched the web looking for an actual explanation but have come up empty. Was it an art exhibit in the making? A protest? Just a bunch of folks freely expressing their naturalistic philosophy? Someone out there must know what the story was...

Thanks,
John R.

I don't know what was going on, but I am glad your in-laws got to see some craziness while they were here - a visit wouldn't be complete without some :)

What kind of people were they? Maybe they were San Francisco fruit trees?




Sorry, couldn't resist.

We are just back to Canada from a week trip to SF and the only unusual things we saw in trees were perrots in Telegraph Hill and at the Presidio.

Patrick,

That is priceless!

It sounds a heck of lot more interesting than The Gates in NYC. I which they could come to my little conservative town in Minnesota and freak people out. Nobody in my town has ever seen anyone naked before.

I cannot remember the artists' name, but I do recall a session at Grand Central Terminal awhile back where dozens, if not hundreds, where photographed nude; I think the artist has done several such photos at various US locations.

I was thinking that was maybe the deal too... I'd seen those other naked group art photos before and the setting was pretty artistic... there was some guy with a fairly large video camera on his shoulder in the street but I couldn't tell what his role was as we passed the whole scene in about 10 seconds. Had that been the case I would have figured there would be some kind of mention on the web but I came up with nothing relevant.

Oh, my Ghandi!! In my country we do not see naked people. Sometime I see dead people. All the time we are wearing our clothes. There is great shame after being in the trees with no clothes. What about tree sap sticking in the wrong places? What are the right places, you may ask? We do not have the culture to withstand this kind of problems here.

Do seek truth in your travels and you will never be chilled, sticky, or naked.

AR

Back east we'd say: &quot;Stay out of the woods...squirrels are gathering <i>nuts</i> for the winter&quot;:O)

Simply us locals going about our day!

LOL, only in SF for sure!

I am not stating this as a fact John_R but I suspect the naked people in the trees were protesting the cutting of some trees on Telegraph Hills due to the wild parrots that live there. I didn't really read the article in the SF Chronical regarding the tree cutting and the parrots so don't know for sure. Did you get any photos?? Take care and come back to SF soon!

Armani_Rugpilot is my new favorite poster here.

I wish I could help find more info on this interesting topic, but a google search proved fruitless. :) I did find this news article, though, about the most naked people on a roller coaster:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/s...es/3734635.stm

I bet this title got a lot of attention. :-) I googled your question and found this website. http://www.treespiritproject.com/

Cool...

Reminds me of when my kids were little and asked me &quot;Is a naked man funny?&quot; I had to think about it, but replied that a naked man is not funny, just naked. But a naked man doing something unusual, like jumping on the roof, would be funny.

Naked people filling trees? Now that's hilarious!

Must be just a Halloween decoration, nothing unusual 8-|

I read in the news, a woman hang herself, and the cars were passing by, thinking it's a decoration. Not in SF, but don't recall where.

Maybe it was a recurrence of the Fruit Fly infestation.

NB

My mother uses a lot of expressions from the south, and one of her favorites is, &quot;Nekkid as a jay bird.&quot; I never really knew what a jay bird was until now. Evidently they have naked jay birds in the trees of SF. Thanks for clearing that up, I've been wondering about that my entire life. :-)

If it was on Oct 22nd it was probably me, Mrs Kal, Faina2 and CaliNurse...no wait...Cali didn't show up.:'(

SF always did have some of the best acid on the Left Coast.
@-)((R)) @-)((R)) @-)

...or that's what I've been told

I just had another thought--are the naked jay birds part of the wood pecker family? :-?