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? :-?

P_M,
:)):)):)):))

Maybe they are just happy to see yah?

I was pretty certain this was due to the parrot issue, but it turns out that the tree wasn't cut down until 10/31.

In SF, could be anything.

Regardless, getting up there and standing, sitting or whatever- sure couldn't have been comfortable. Ouch!

.....and there is no way I'd park my car under those trees!! :-O

The view of the person going up ahead of you was going to be the second part of my post, but just thinking about it stopped me from typing. But it didn't stop KAL! LOL!

.........please...don't encourage me. :$

Katie bar the door!

Nikki...&lt;snert&gt; :))

&quot;Katie bar the door!&quot;
also:
Fodor's bar the windows! ;)

John, cerlaurie, was right, here's the &quot;invitation&quot;.
...only in San Francisco!
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/10/1777009.php

There have only been a few times when I've seen naked people hanging around in public. (no pun intended) It's funny how the people who are most into nudism are the ones you least want to see naked. I don't take much notice of the ladies. But I do feel the urge to tell some of those men to stop displaying their shortcomings. :-[

I noticed that when we were staying at Sandals Negril which abuts the Hedonism resort. Seems that all the naked people at Hedo are both fat and tattoo covered....sadly the tattoos do not cover their dangling participles.....

KKKKkkkkkkaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllll

where are you when we need you :)

Last time I was in SFO I saw naked people too ( well actually I was in Sausalito)
we were eating on a deck at one of the restaurants and a speed boat of bouncing beauty queens kept buzzing by laughing hysterically at the reaction they were getting from the diners
Whenever I have been to SFO its too cold to take off clothes- they are a hardy bunch who live there and go naked

I get it, sunbum, you are saying that the shrink factor is what accounts for all of the shortcomings. Now it makes sense. :-)

A few years ago, my friend and I were on our lunch break in Chicago and we saw these naked women run out of Spago (which used to be at Grand and Dearborn). They ran into the middle of the street and back again. It was so quick we weren't sure what we really saw. Afterwards we were interviewed by Fox News about our reaction. We found out by watching the news that they went to a few locations in Chicago and they were photographing the girls for some kind of greeting cards. It was pretty funny. Coworkers that saw us on the news said they needed to start hanging out with at lunch time.

John, did you tip them?

Good job Joan! That has to be it. Now I wanna know what the guy who wrote the invitation was taking or is that just the loosey goosey SF way? LOL

You'd have thought it'd have been too cold between 8 AM and 10 AM. Lots of short comings there...do they really want to be photographed? LOL

One of my aerobics instructors in Tampa was invited up to a nudist camp north of town as guest teacher of an aerobics class. Picture it! P_M...she said they were pretty much as you described...not the sort you'd want to see hanging in public, and especially not doing high impact aerobics!

Nudists doing aerobics....EEEEWWWWW!!!!

:-&amp;

In the same vein....not naked - but &quot;only on San Francisco&quot; our CPA brother-in-law from Ohion was here on business and my sister decided that she had to shock him - well, mainly just show him how different it is here....so she took him for Mojitos in the Mission, somewhere else kind of wile, then for Moroccan food out in the Avenues - with belly dancing and sitting on the floor eating with no utensils, etc.... and at the end of the evening she needed to run to the store to get some milk. ....

So they ran into the Safeway at Castro and Mission..... her normal neighbor store - and he said that was the best part of the trip!

(You've gotta live there to know - but you really see it all at midnite in Safeway!)