Andrew Martinez

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Andrew Martinez reading the paper in a park in Berkeley, California. Known as "The Naked Guy" around town, locals became accustomed to Martinez's nude appearance.

Andrew Martinez (November 15, 1972 – May 18, 2006) achieved fame at the University of California, Berkeley, as The Naked Guy.

1 Early fame
2 Later life
3 Quote
4 See also
5 Sources and notes
6 Further reading

[edit] Early fame

Martinez, a 6'2" former high school football player, began appearing naked in public September 1992, his sophomore year in college, having led a campus "nude-in" to protest social repression. Campus police first arrested him that fall for indecent exposure while jogging naked near northside dormitories at 11 on a Saturday night. The county prosecutor refused to prosecute, concluding that nudity without lewd behavior was not illegal. The university then banned nudity on campus. Martinez began strolling around campus, naked, for philosophical reasons. He explained that when he dressed in expensive, uncomfortable, stylish, "appropriate" attire, he hid the fact that his personal belief was that clothes were useless in his environment except as a tool for class and gender differentiation.

That year, he wrote in a guest column in The Oakland Tribune: "When I walk around nude, I am acting how I think it is reasonable to act, not how middle-class values tell me I should act. I am refusing to hide my dissent in normalcy even though it is very easy to do so." Martinez, who typically attended classes wearing only sandals and a backpack, became a cause célèbre at the university for a while, sparking a number of nude-ins on campus and performances by the Bay Area nudist group the X-Plicit Players. Soon, he became a media celebrity as well, appeared on national talk shows, was profiled in a photo essay in Playgirl, adored by feminist author Naomi Wolf and was parodied in the 1994 college comedy film PCU.

UC Berkeley eventually asked him to leave, after issuing its "Policy Statement Concerning Public Nudity and Sexually Offensive Conduct" on December 7, 1992.^[1] Martinez continued living in Berkeley, and was arrested for public nudity by the city of Berkeley. He fought the charges, and won. For many months, it was legal to walk around nude in Berkeley, until the city later adopted an anti-nudity ordinance after Martinez came naked to a City Council meeting.^[2]

[edit] Later life

After being asked to leave Berkeley, Martinez continued in athletics studying Judo and began to write a book about his experiences -- until signs of mental illness stopped his progress. Doctors were never able to give Martinez an exact diagnosis, and he struggled for years with his medication. "It was an endless cycle of trying to get answers but never getting any," said his mother. "It was endless, endless, endless."

He spent the decade following his national fame bouncing among halfway houses, psychiatric institutions, occasional homelessness and jail, but never getting comprehensive treatment, his family said.^[3] On January 10, 2006 he was arrested after a fight at a halfway house where he was living and charged with two counts of battery and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. He was placed in maximum-security custody in Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose. ^[4]

The last time Andrew's mother saw her son was three weeks before his death when she visited him in jail. "He was sad. He was tired. He said he had had enough", she said. "I alerted everyone, but nothing happened". On the evening of his death a guard checked on him at 11 p.m. and he was fine, but a few minutes later other inmates reported hearing sounds coming from his cell. An officer returned at 11:19 and found Martinez unconscious. The 33-year-old Martinez was found with a plastic bag cinched around his head. He was taken to Valley Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead of apparent suicide on May 18, 2006.

Friends and family of the 33-year-old remembered Andrew as a man who struggled for years with mental illness. "He was a person with tremendous gifts and charisma who could have been a great asset to our society, but instead I feel like society -- me included -- failed him", said Martinez's best friend, Bryan Schwartz, a civil rights lawyer in Washington, D.C. "It's such a waste".

[edit] Quote

"I don't want to facilitate the power structure with my conformity."

[edit] See also

Wikinews has news related to:

'Naked Guy' Andrew Martinez dies

[edit] Sources and notes

^ Berkeley.edu News
^ San Francisco Chronicle article BAY AREA FOCUS -- NAKED REBELLION - It's all about free speech, Berkeley nudists insist published March 30, 1998
^ San Francisco Chronicle article Champion of nudity found dead in jail cell - 'Naked Guy' won fame in Berkeley, challenged values published May 21, 2006
^ Yahoo News article Former 'Naked Guy' at UC-Berkeley Dies published May 20, 2006