BARE TO BREAKERS 2023
By, The Nudist Humorist TIM CHIZMAR
Go watch THE NUDELS OF NUDELAND at NudistHumorist.com
Nudists don’t belong in the closet, that is where the clothes are! We need to get out and make a difference by being seen. I recently discovered how important that is by participating for the first time ever in BAY TO BREAKERS. I am a longtime nudist and someone that loves to be connected to where/when clothing optional and nude events are occurring, anywhere in the world, of course I’d heard tales of the annual marathon called BAY TO BREAKERS held in San Francisco, California. Although that is the proper title for it, as textiles call it, nudists everywhere have referred to it lovingly for decades as BARE TO BREAKERS because of its permitted legal allowance of full nudity. Fully unabashed unashamed no artificial additives needed, true nudity. The citizens of SF dress up in wild, outrageous, and colorful costumes and the bare bodies are seen as just another quirky way to express oneself. As though that is just another costume: the traditional dress of the nudist. I’d heard about this nearly eight-mile party with music and drinking and I wanted to experience it for myself. I’d seen pictures and heard tales of adventures but also of their perils (rogue cops forcing people to put clothes on) and I was tired of hearing about it all second-hand. Last year I was involved in an episode of “Nudes in the News” from Corky Stanton’s award-winning website Clothesfree.com and we co-produced with the naturist writer D.H. Jonathon by this man sending us footage of him walking the course, interacting with clothed people, and in general spouting about how he wished every day was like this. The freedom that came through his footage looked wonderful and so I made a pledge to him and the viewers of the show that I would participate in 2023. I circled it on my calendar and purchased two tickets to attend it. One for myself and one for NudistHumorist.com’s hilariously silly Keight Leighn, my cohost of the television program NAKED AND NOT AFRAID.
A few things happened as the months piled on, the first was she pulled out of going (travel issues) and I had some nervousness about doing this all myself. I’m in Las Vegas and although I do a lot of unique activities, I do have a comfort zone for things like live standup comedy shows, nude resorts, San Diego Comic Con, etcetera but that does not extend to this event. For starters, I’d almost never been to SF. The two times I had been there were not good. Once I was touring as a regular headlining standup comic and my then girlfriend had us staying with snooty rich people that looked down their nose at nudists, and this was proven when we all visited Baker Beach and they encouraged me to get naked if I wanted too but it was being treated like a joke. I chose not to be the butt of their comments on this day and thus I did not add myself to the nude bodies at that beach. The following time I came out there I was filming hot air balloon stunts for my movie HELL’s COMING FOR YOU (available now on Amazon) and we were sadly the victim of something far too common, a smash-and-grab, as they call it up there. We had nearly $15,000 worth of camera equipment and luggage stolen from the back windshield of our rental car in a matter of minutes. The police never showed up to take the report, even though we had eyewitness video footage from a nearby business. Nobody cared. The crime in this area is like some post-apocalyptic war movie. I have my concerns about that corner of the world from snooty attitudes to tolerance of overt crime, to how they forced vaccine cards and mask mandates. I’m not a fan, so that said I needed a running buddy if I was going out there. I was not putting up with this all myself.
Luckily my longtime actress / musician friend Sammy Sinn stepped up. She’s great as both a talent and an easy to get along with person with nudist sensibilities. The other concern I had was my weight. I stand five foot eight inches and weigh about two hundred and seventy pounds, which is not good. I’m diabetic and take metformin for it and I told myself I’d start walking more and hiking as well in preparation but after multiple disastrous personal trainer attempts, I gave up on myself, so as the day got closer, I was just getting angry at myself and more depressed. I then shifted focus to where would I stay and how would I get up there… in hindsight I think I was trying to self-sabotage because I didn’t want to look so bad in huffing and puffing and possibly dying out there. Eight miles sounded just terrifying to me. The stars in the sky aligned to my chagrin and I ended up with a yellow brick road to the starting line. Dammit… I spent some time with a dear professional hypnotist friend and his wife who live in the Los Angeles area, then Sammy and I met up with another like-minded individual with a preference to nude hiking and we carpooled up to the SF area. He had been a regular participant in BARE TO BREAKERS for something like twenty years and we captured some audio clips of his history for Stephane Deschenes’ popular naturist podcast THE NATURIST LIVING SHOW. It had been decided that I would create content for Clothesfree, the podcast, and try to cobble together a little article for THE NATURIST SOCIETY magazine if they take it. I have a hard time just relaxing and being productive like this gives my life some purpose. I remember discovering nudism while in college and reading the TNS magazine, so I always try to give back to my community. I was body-positive folks to know the truth about events and not just rose-tinted lies which I fear is often what is circulated. So, I was determined to learn the truth about the event. While in the area I was also going to conduct interviews at Lupin Lodge and help promote the clothing optional resort. I’d never been there, and Sammy had never been to any resorts, so it was quite an experience, as besides the mix of nude bodies of all ages there were also wild animals like deer, peacocks, turkeys, and more walking about. In the days leading up to it we heard stories about past races, a lady playing volleyball talked to us about how a cop had told her and her husband to “Get your clothes on there’s f***** Kids here!” and this matched what D.H. told us that one rogue cop told him to put clothes on as well; but in both incidents they all removed the clothes again out of eyesight and they were fine. Still nobody wants to be yelled at or made to feel like we are doing something wrong. I was hoping this would be a great experience for us, my fingers were crossed.
The morning of the race Sammy and I took a paid shuttle service from the lodge to the start of the event. We were among roughly nine other nudists coming from Lupin. Sammy was the only woman. In total I saw 70 nude men and 16 nude women during the event which I heard was down from prior years but then all runners were. They gather the runners in corals to start separated by families or expected pace of running or walking etc., and I heard from many nudists that in the past there were easily hundreds of nudists there. There were 18,000 registered runners this year and some tied together as centipedes or even running the race backwards as fish going upstream. I met up with my writer friend who was kind enough to pick up Sammy and my bibs to be official as well as the souvenir shirt. We all looked at these masses of people and here we are in a city in the daylight, and we all take off our clothes! It was so cool. Such a blast, naked aside from shoes and a clear backpack to carry clothes and wallet we joined in the crowd. Reactions from then and through the race were everything from cheers and happiness to affirmations of how cool we are and how they wished they were as confident. My group began with four of us but as the race went on, we were joined by various like-minded folks of all backgrounds and such. My crew that hung around me was around ten people consistently overall and it was a thrill to participate. Some of my crew complained it got chilly as this was morning near an ocean, but I loved every second, the wind just reminded me that I’m alive and living this moment right now. Lots of families with kids which was good to see for the mission to normalize nudity and the nudity was celebrated in mile markers and in general. We even bought a beer fully nude, walking in like it was nothing. We talked to clothes folks, laughed, and took pictures. Such joy, honestly but I will not claim there was no problems at all as we did have a few people say something cruddy such as what one obese black lady said, “Move along, ain’t nobody here wanna see that!” I could see tht she had issues with her own body image and perhaps my being an obese man comfortable nude was somehow triggering that if I was comfy why did she hide? I don’t know but I’ve often heard the saying: hurt people hurt people. Overall, by and large fun as a rule had won out the vibes of the day until we ran into a Golden Gate Park ranger named A. Fischer.
The plus and minus of running as a nudist collective group was that on the good side, we were safely protected by having each other’s backs but on the bad side we could easily be seen coming. On the race day it appeared Fischer and his fellow ranger were arbitrarily stopping some naked people and telling them to put their clothes on. He saw us coming and told us this. He claimed the permit for the nudity in the race did not apply to the National Park. He was wrong, we knew he was wrong. I’ll never know if he and the other decided to go rogue due to personal issues and fears about nudity, but I do know I pointed out how absurd this was and how as he was stopping us three more individual nudists ran past us into the park, so it was not only wrong but a futile effort to ruin some people’s fun. I made sure I got his name and I saw my other fellow nudists all arguing but complying. I’ve heard since this that a lot of nudists that know the law claim they’d have not went with it – to that I say I doubt you’d have gotten arrested to prove a point. I did call him an idiot and told both of them they were wrong.
After we walked maybe a block or two most of us took our clothes back off. Sammy had just thrown a T-shirt on, and I’d thrown gym shorts on to shut him up. I say most of us because the timider amongst us never got naked again. That fear the park ranger put on them of getting cited or arrested ruined the experience and I’ll be honest that my joy on this day was although not completely shattered, was entirely diminished. I could feel how grumpy I got continuing the race as now I was on high alert every time, I saw a ranger or another cop. Were they told to be on the lookout for us? Will a second warning take us away? That whole scenario sucked. We did not encounter another rogue authoritarian like them again this day but that one run-in was enough for some people in my group that now may never do it again, and that plainly sucks. How many people did A. Fischer ruin on that day?
When we crossed the finish line the lady on the microphone said some cute tongue-in-cheek things like “You never know what you’ll see out here!” She made a plug for my nudist humorist website but then followed up after we walked by saying not to let your kids go that site. Shame, even in fun she was connecting nudity with sexuality and that’s a shame. We did not participate in the additional extended walk or the party atmosphere which was partially due to some of us needing to get to the shuttle, us being wore out (I had such blisters and calf cramps), and the ranger making us a little more aware that not everybody appreciates the nudity. After a frat boy type guy yelled, “Why are there so many dicks?” To which I retorted, “You’re the biggest one I’ve seen.” We all decided to grab our metals and part ways.
On the shuttle back I was debating with other passengers about the ranger situation and just how much it had damaged the trip. Could I recommend this event as a nudist supportive event, or would I warn that they speak out of both sides of their mouths? In my media content how could honestly talk about this all? In arguing with a BARE TO BREAKER lifer that had slipped passed the ranger he told me it was mostly a great time… to which I finally shut him up by saying, if I made you your favorite sandwich with all your favorite ingredients, meats, cheese, veggies, and I added a tiny piece of human excrement to it. Just a tiny bit of turd and I told you that you can just choose to eat around it, I doubt you would and if you would eat it for that one time, I doubt you’d come to my restaurant again. I made my point with the diehards and the bus was quiet. I was still wrestling with this the next day on my way back from SF area on the way to Santa Clarita to pick up my car. I was with two other nudists and the hiker recommended I call the Golden Gate Park rangers and complain. So, I did, I called and spoke about A Fischer and the incident in detail to someone who then put me through to the supervisor who was in fact: A Fischer! You can imagine my shock and annoyance, like is this a game for them? I went off on him about how he’d ruined multiple people’s experience and how we were completely in the right and how he was a fool as most of us just stripped off again anyway and nobody cared that we did but him! He took all this in and eventually responded with an apology. He claimed he was given different information about the park’s rules and according to him two hours into the race he was then told by his superiors to stand down and that it was perfectly legal for nudity. Not only this event but he informed me that full nudity at the park was allowed during the Pride celebration as well. He volunteered that news to me. I’m aware of multiple opportunities for public nudity in SF including four separate World Naked Bike Ride events, the clothing optional beach, and Folsom Street Fair (although that’s far more on the sexual side) but as far the park is concerned it is just these two events: Pride and Bay to Breakers. He admitted he was wrong but claimed he was nice about how he was enforcing the rules, and we ended the call saying how we hoped we could have a handshake and a laugh the next time we met up. While I was on the phone, I also had asked him what he would have done had we not complied and put on clothes, he admitted he would have cited us, and we both agreed that would have been bad for him as it was a perfectly legally permitted nude event by the city.
When I got off the phone, I recorded some audio for the Podcast as I wanted it to be a brighter happy optimistic ending than what I had previously recorded. I don’t want to promote doom and gloom, but I also don’t want to paint everything with rainbows and unicorns either, the truth is important. No matter if it is harder to swallow. I choked up a little honestly as I spoke about it all. The driver next to me commented, “You’ve discovered the joy of being an activist.” I don’t know about that but I’m sure glad I got off my couch and went. Even the physical hardships, the money crunching, the travel, and the fears were overall so worth it. My interactions with the park ranger ensured nobody else will have to go through that again in the future. One person can make a difference. Getting out of the closet made a difference. Yes, I’ll be back and next time I’m bringing even more friends.
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