The Naked Guy of Berkeley

Like well-meaning parents, both the University and the city were tolerant of Martinez's "militant nudism"—his own preferred term for what he was up to—at first. For a semester, he was allowed to attend classes naked, and although he was arrested for jogging in the nude one night near the dorms, the charges were dropped after the prosecutor reasoned that nudity without lewd behavior didn't break any laws. It was only after some female students lodged complaints about the Naked Guy's state of undress that the University adopted a rule explicitly forbidding nudity on campus. Martinez was finally expelled after turning up at a disciplinary hearing—naked. The city followed suit seven months later, adopting an anti-nudity ordinance in July 1993. Martinez was the first person arrested under the new law. He showed up at City Hall to protest its passage—naked—and was sentenced to two years probation.

he made it back into the news on May 21, 2006. A headline in the San Francisco Chronicle that day read "Champion of nudity found dead in jail cell." Years after leaving Berkeley, Martinez had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. According to the article, he had struggled with mental illness for at least a decade, "bouncing among halfway houses, psychiatric institutions, occasional homelessness and jail, but never getting comprehensive treatment." In the end, he pulled a plastic bag over his head and suffocated himself. He was 33.