Champion Of "Free Speech" Dead

Champion of nudity found dead in jail cell
'Naked Guy' won fame in Berkeley, challenged values

Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, May 21, 2006

The Naked Guy, whose au naturel jaunts through Berkeley spurred a nudity revolt in the early 1990s and earned him national fame, died in a San Jose jail cell, apparently of suicide.

While many chuckled at the exploits of Andrew Martinez, friends and family of the 33-year-old talked Saturday about a troubled 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."

After his days as the Naked Guy, Martinez spent the next decade bouncing among halfway houses, psychiatric institutions, occasional homelessness and jail, but never getting comprehensive treatment, his family said. His life ended in an apparent suicide Thursday morning.

"It was an endless cycle of trying to get answers but never getting any," said his mother, who requested that her name not be used. "It was endless, endless, endless."

Doctors were never able to give Martinez an exact diagnosis, and he struggled for years with his medication. Some periods he was his familiar, lucid self, but other times his mind "seemed to be commanded by an alien spirit," Schwartz said.

But before his mental illness wreaked havoc on his and his family's lives, Martinez was a bright, charismatic, sweet-natured youth with a promising future.

"He was such an adorable little boy, such a joy," said longtime family friend Lee Ann Fagan, a nurse in Sonoma County. "His entire childhood his future seemed so bright."

A star defensive lineman and straight-A student at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Martinez was a popular -- if nonconformist -- figure on campus.

"Everyone loved him. He was warm, positive, brilliant. He was a math whiz even though he barely studied," Schwartz said. "All the girls were asking him to the prom."

He never adhered to social norms, however, always "staying true to himself," Schwartz said. That originality and self-confidence endeared him to his classmates, largely because he was such a kindhearted person.

He planned to study business at UC Berkeley, but once he enrolled he became more interested in academic subjects like rhetoric and sociology.

Martinez earned the moniker "Naked Guy" in 1992 when he was a sophomore and started attending class in the buff, give or take a book bag and sandals. His nakedness was a form of free speech and a challenge to what he called the sexual repression of Western society, he told reporters.

At 6-foot-2, with an athletic physique and handsome face, he gained instant fame on campus and beyond. He appeared in Playgirl magazine, on national TV talk shows and in dozens of newspapers.

"He wanted us to question the things we take for granted about Western values," Schwartz said. "He wanted to us challenge the norm."

In typical Berkeley fashion, Martinez's nudity soon hatched a political movement. In September 1992, Martinez organized a "nude-in" on campus, in which about two dozen people stripped down to their birthday suits to exert their right to free speech. Martinez became a hero to nudity advocates and garnered a devoted following, including the Berkeley performance troupe X-plicit Players.

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It seems to me that many darlings of the left travel down similar paths: "After his days as the Naked Guy, Martinez spent the next decade bouncing among halfway houses, psychiatric institutions, occasional homelessness and jail......"

Maybe it's due to their self indulgent, no responsibility, no consequences lifestyles??