INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — It's everybody's second favorite city. The
Alta California gave Mark Twain an adventure that would give us his
first full length book, “The Innocents Abroad.” But the City by the
Bay lacks something every other major municipality in America has — a
law against public nudity.
Custom generally governs social nuances such as nudity. We have a
beach here at Lake Tahoe where sun block is the clothing of choice and
life goes on without remonstration. Years ago, as a local reporter I
visited that beach to investigate, only to discover that there was no
there there, just happy beachgoers enjoying outdoor activities without
a care in the world. I did find it interesting that a lady coming up
the trail stepped aside to let a couple of naked fellows by who were
carrying a canoe that covered their heads entirely, yet she was able
to hail them by name.
San Francisco is a little different. Any afternoon in the Castro you
are liable to encounter a throng of naked men milling about as
naturally as llamas in the Andes. Tourists from the Midwest saddle up
alongside to get their pictures taken so as to impress their bowling
teams when they arrive back home.
But let's take an objective look at this picture. Adam and Eve were
perfectly happy in their original state. Mark Twain gave us a glimpse
of Adam's thoughts as he observed Eve. “I think I could enjoy looking
at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she
is a quite remarkably comely creature — lithe, slender, trim, rounded,
shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white
and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her
hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I
recognized that she was beautiful.”
Of course the eating of an apple and the development of a moral sense would soon bring a world of trouble for Adam and Eve and the rest of us to follow.
Nudity would evolve over time to arouse two distinct and different
emotions — lust and disgust. Neither of these two emotions is
displayed in public places by polite society, yet when one first
encounters nudity in a public place, he or she might involuntarily
utter “UMMM,” or perhaps, “Oh my God!” It cannot be helped. I hear
those same two refrains when ladies flash the Tahoe Queen and the M.S.
Dixie out on the lake of the sky.
Getting back to San Francisco, these old boys in the buff are not what
you might mistake for Australia's Thunder from Down Under; no these boys are sadly in need of a personal trainer or at least a yoga instructor.
Being a “live and let live” kind of a guy, I say if you don't like
what you see, smile and walk the other way — hey, it's San Francisco.
I would, however, caution these bold old boys from the Castro with a
parting word from Mark Twain, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have
little or no influence in society.”
— McAvoy Layne, proprietor of The Mark Twain Cultural Center at
Incline Village, visits schools as the Ghost of Mark Twain. Learn more
at www.marktwainculturalcenter.org.
From: http://www.foxreno.com/11at11/29396722/detail.html