You've been on this site for six years (almost to the day!), you should know that a post like that will not go unanswered!
Posted on 11/13/2006 10:01:07 AM PST by DogByte6RER
Memorial for UC Berkeley's 'Naked Guy'
Monday, November 13, 2006
A memorial was held in Cupertino on Sunday for Andrew Martinez, whose naked jaunts through the UC Berkeley campus earned him the nickname "the Naked Guy" and national fame before he committed suicide May 18 in a Santa Clara Jail cell at age 33. Here, attendees watch a 20-minute video of Martinez made by his girlfriend, Micaela O'Herliha of Milwaukee.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Here is an earlier (May 19, 2006) FReeper thread that announcing the death of the freaky "naked guy" from Berkeley:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1635355/posts
Liberalism and the cult of personality.
Who else would idolize a seriously disturbed, violent sociopath? Liberalism truly is a mental disorder.
All those "smart" and "creative" "geniuses" at Berkeley and they came up with "the Naked Guy"? How brilliant!
Here is an earlier (May 19, 2006) FReeper thread announcing the death of the freaky "naked guy" from Berkeley:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1635355/posts
Wow, I remember reading about this freak when I was up in Davis. He'd walk around with a bandanna. Did he commit suicide cuz he couldn't walk around the jail cell naked?
And it's coming to a House near you.
"Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings."
response of David Niven, 1974 Academy Awards presenter as man streaks by live on stage.
a buddy lived up in berkely. he objected to the naked guy because his walks would take him by a gradeschool. the other locals were outraged that my friend would consider imposing his values on such a wonderful free spirit as martinez.
I hope he had his clothes on when they found him. I would be a bit flustered finding a naked man in a cell.
Eh, he was schizophrenic which I didn't know before my first post...not a violent sociopath as you pointed out. His antics in college were childish but your comments about someone you don't know are pretty pathetic.
Posted on Sat, Nov. 11, 2006
Friends remember the melancholy life of the `Naked Guy'
By Linda Goldston
San Jose Mercury News, Calif.
(MCT)
SAN JOSE, Calif. - He was known around the world in the early 1990s as "The Naked Guy," the 6-foot-5-inch-tall student who went to class and strolled around the University of California at Berkeley campus wearing only shoes and a backpack.
Clothes were a symbol of elitism and repression, and Luis Andrew Martinez planned to spend his life challenging the status quo.
He died at 33 in the throes of schizophrenia, though stories about his death made only vague references to problems with mental illness. Martinez's nearly 10-year descent into that dark world of jail and hospitals was too painful for his family and friends to talk about right after he killed himself May 18.
But in the nearly six months since, the people who knew him best realized there was much to celebrate. They will honor his short life at a public memorial Sunday in Cupertino, Calif., the city where he was a star football player and wrestler, the city where he took his first nude walk and where his dreams to change the world were born.
"Andrew once wrote, `It would really be sad if all I was ever known for was `The Naked Guy,'" said his mother, Esther Krenn of Cupertino. "He wanted to be known as someone who made a difference."
There was no sign of the troubled times to come when Martinez first made his mark as a child. His first-grade teacher at San Jose's Lowell Elementary School asked Krenn how she had raised him, saying she wanted to raise a child just like him. His sixth-grade teacher at Regnart Elementary School in Cupertino said she often felt "Andrew is the only one in class listening to me."
At John F. Kennedy Middle School and Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Martinez exhibited the charisma and values that later earned him a following at UC-Berkeley. He refused to wear designer clothes because many students couldn't afford them and was famous for taking dates to the library or to the woods to write poetry.
"At a time when everyone is so concerned with what everyone else thinks and what they're wearing, Andrew never did," said Bryan Schwartz, a civil rights attorney in San Francisco who was best friends with Martinez since junior high.
They met on a class field trip to the opera and traded Eddie Murphy jokes to pass the time. Their bond grew in leadership class in the eighth grade.
"He started to exert an influence on a lot of people around him," Schwartz said. "I suppose being that way, having such a strong sense of self in the eighth grade, is pretty radical."
His presence of mind saved his great-grandmother's life. At a family dinner, she started choking and while Martinez's parents "watched her turn blue, Andrew got up from the dinner table and gave her the Heimlich maneuver," his mother said. He was 11 years old.
In high school, Martinez stood out on the varsity football and wrestling teams. He was honored as best offensive lineman by his team his senior year; the league the school played in named him best defensive lineman.
He was often late for class in Advanced Placement economics because of a pickup game on the school's sand volleyball court. "The teacher couldn't get mad at him," his friend Schwartz recalled. "He was an exceptional student and the teacher would simply shake his head and say, `Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.'"
Until his senior year of high school, Martinez planned to be "a prosperous business guy," Schwartz said.
Then he read Thoreau and Emerson and found himself deeply moved by ideas about living a simple life. He joined the speech and debate team, discovered a talent, and began to reframe his ideas.
"Many of our dates were spent going to the library," said Lauri Dietz, assistant professor of English and director of the Writing Center at Angelo State University in Texas, who was Martinez's girlfriend at the time. "He was researching nudity laws at the time."
Martinez, she said, wanted to know whether nudity laws were based on hygiene - "if that were the case, he'd wear clothes. But if they reflected puritanical values, then he'd proceed with his statement."
His first nude outing was right after graduation. He had walked around the block clothed first, however, to ask neighbors whether they'd be offended if he went nude. Many were indifferent.
Martinez entered UC-Berkeley in fall 1990 with 14 credits from Advanced Placement courses at Monta Vista. He became active as an advocate for the homeless, and shaved his head when he joined the judo team.
He became "The Naked Guy" in 1992.
Martinez started going to class naked and fulfilled his dream of speaking out in Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, when he organized a nude-in. He was an instant hit with the media and stories about him ran around the world, many with carefully cropped photos.
"He felt that people should be free to be who they are," said the Rev. Jamie Dollins, associate minister at San Dieguito United Methodist Church in Encinitas, Calif., who met Martinez their freshman year when they lived in the same dorm. "He talked about how these were Victorian, antiquated principles that kept us repressed."
Martinez was on CNN, appeared nude on "Hard Copy," "Maury Povich" and "Doctor Dean." He was asked to wear a bikini brief for the "Montel Williams Show."
His philosophy and celebrity came with a price: The school and Berkeley banned public nudity, which led to his arrest and expulsion. He was suspended first but showed up nude for a meeting with the UC-Berkeley chancellor.
"Nude wasn't his cause. Freedom was his cause," said Micaela O'Herlihy, a painter and filmmaker in Milwaukee who counts Martinez as her first boyfriend. "He could convince anyone this was a righteous path."
The university expelled Martinez in January 1993, but he remained in Berkeley, earning his second-degree brown belt in judo in 1994 - traveling to competitions in France and England in 1995.
That fall, the cracks appeared.
"He was more and more finding himself in jail and not knowing what was going on in his head," O'Herlihy said.
Martinez's words became jumbled, confusion and fear replaced his good cheer, paranoia his zest for life. The man known as a consummate communicator could no longer connect.
"It seems like he time-warped the last 10 years of his life," O'Herlihy said. "At one point, it seemed like he gave up and succumbed to the system when he realized the help he needed wasn't possible to get."
Martinez sank deeper into a disease no one could seem to control, spiraling in and out of jail, from hospitals to halfway houses and back to jail again.
Friends and family dealt with the tragedy when he died.
This Sunday, they want to enjoy remembering the antics of the "brilliant gentle giant," as so many called him.
"He was a brightly burning fire," Dollins said. "That may be why the blaze went out so early."
© 2006 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.kansascity.com
You are just showing your ignorance....like many on FR... The Bay Area is an aweomse place....there are just a few spots in SF and Bezerkeley that are whacky.....the rest of the area is wonderful....you are just pandering to the ignorant and intolerant
Getting naked. Now, there's an achievement.
When I step off a bus, can I be presented with a "guy-who-just-got-off-the-bus" award?
:O)
If by "few spots" you mean all the neighborhoods with oxygen.
haha....I'll bet you have never been there....I just laugh at those that generalize to entire popuations....hell, UC Berkeley no more liberal then any other college, that is passe'....the city is...for sure....but did you know the College Republicans is the largest student org on the campus......it is not the 60s anymore my friend....
ping
You've been on this site for six years (almost to the day!), you should know that a post like that will not go unanswered!
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