Halloween 2024

Halloween

Several cities have held naked pumpkin runs on Halloween, with people running around naked except for footwear and a pumpkin (or pumpkin facsimile) on their head.  

Today's photos are from a naked pumpkin run in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington in 2011.

The pumpkin runners cross a street.

Crossing the street, rear view.

The pumpkin runners visit the Fremont Troll under the Aurora Bridge.

And here they are by the statue of Lenin in Fremont.  Wait a minute!  We know that Fremont is a liberal neighborhood, but why is there a statue of Lenin there?

After the USSR fell, many Communist monuments were toppled.  In 1993, an American found it in a Slovak scrapyard.  He bought it and brought it to Seattle.  Since 1995 it has been "temporarily" displayed on this prominent street corner in Fremont.  Despite conservative criticism of the city government for endorsing "communist chic," the statue is actually on private property and the city had nothing to do with it.

So, Happy Halloween!

Protests - Part 60

Emmanuel Macron

In 2017, Emmanuel Macron was elected President of France.  Within hours, unions began protesting, fearing that Macron would take away workers' rights.  A large demonstration took place in Paris on Sept. 12, 2017 (above).

Is the guy holding the banner naked?

Yes, he is, wearing nothing but a guitar.  Here's a rear view of him.

The demonstrators were a mixed group ...

and he seems to be the only naked demonstrator, which did not discourage him.

Other marchers wore jackets and scarves, so it seems to have been a bit chilly out.

But that didn't faze our guy.  Here, with arm raised, he seems to be giving a speech.  The sign in the background "Je suis faineant" means "I am a do-nothing."  This is a response to Macron's denunciation of union workers as faineants, i.e. do-nothings or idlers.

Here our guy is singing and playing his guitar and posing for a photo.

More posing.

Call out the police!  There's a naked protester!  Actually, I think he's just performing in front of them.

While we're talking about Macron, we should mention the persistent rumors that he's gay (he's not; he's happily married).  During the 2017 election campaign, it was rumored that Macron (above left) had an affair with Mathieu Gallet (above right), then head of Radio France.  Gallet, who is gay, said it was a complete fiction, and they had only met three or four times.

In 2019, the press hounded Macron over the "Benalla affair."  Alexandre Benalla, who had been Macron's personal bodyguard, was caught on video beating a May Day protester.  It was found that Benalla had a diplomatic passport, and photos seemed to show an unusual closeness between Benalla (above left) and Macron (above right).

So, just how personal was Macron's personal bodyguard?  After a week of furious and speculative news coverage, Macron spoke to the press, saying, "Alexandre Benalla has never had the nuclear codes ... Alexandre Benalla has never been my lover."

The photo above has obviously been Photoshopped with the faces of Macron (bottom) and Benalla (top).  The heading says, "Thank you manu, thanks to my passports I can penetrate everywhere."

In August 2024, photos and a video appeared on Facebook showing Macron kissing a man on a boat (above right).  They were fake.  Fact-checkers verified that they were AI-generated from real Macron vacation photos (above left).

Macron has survived the rumors, and he is still President of France today.

Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 39

Ivy League Posture Photos

Yale started taking nude photos of incoming freshmen in 1919 as part of a program to detect and correct posture problems.  The Yale photos have erroneously been associated with William Sheldon, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Nazi-like eugenic theories who used Harvard nude posture photos to illustrate his theory of somatypes.  The Yale program predates Sheldon, and, as far as I can tell, the Yale photos were never connected to Sheldon's work.

Here are posture photos of eleven more Yale students that I had the opportunity to acquire.  For privacy reasons, I redact the names of men who might still be alive.  Nine of these men have passed away, so their names are not redacted.

This is Yale freshman A.R. on Oct. 8, 1953.

In 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to photograph the front, rear, side and top view.  Prior to that, the posture photo was just a side view.

This is Yale freshman Ivan Hugh Wolpaw on Oct. 12, 1953.

Note the strange pins stuck to each student's back and chest.  The pins were stuck on at specific points for later posture analysis.

This is Yale freshman James F. Loucks II on Oct. 7, 1953.

Supposedly, by examining the angles formed by connecting the points where the pins touched the body, certain posture problems could be detected.

This is Yale freshman Charles T. Ludington, Jr. on Oct. 13, 1953.

If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions, and a second posture photo was taken.

This is Yale freshman William James Penner on Oct. 9, 1953.

The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

This is Yale freshman John Lee Robinson on Oct. 7, 1953.

Nobody outside the gymnasium staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.

This is Yale freshman Thomas John Rohner on Oct. 8, 1953.

The posture photo program was discontinued in the 1960s, and later, most of the photos were burned.

This is Yale freshman R.S. on Oct. 16, 1953.

However, some of the photos escaped burning, including the photos that I have been showing in this series.

This is Yale freshman Roger Adams Bachman on July 17, 1942.

This and the following photos show only a profile view because they were taken before the 4-way view equipment was installed in 1952.

This is Yale freshman Melvin Fay Pierce on July 9, 1942.

This is Yale freshman Karl Anton Piez, Jr. on July 17, 1942.

*        *        *

Note: some of my followers have questioned the propriety of publishing these photos.  If you think I should not publish them, please don't comment to that effect.  Too much time and space has been taken up on the subject.  We can agree to disagree.  If you don't like it, go to some other blog.  Here is my position:

1. Were these photos an invasion of privacy for the students?  By today's standards, yes.  By the standards of the day, not so much.  In that era, guys were routinely naked around each other in locker rooms and in swimming pools when women weren't present.  Being asked to strip and even being photographed naked as part of a posture examination would not seem too outrageous.

2. To protect the privacy of the students, I redact the names of students who may still be alive.  I only publish the names of students who have died.  Legally, the right to privacy does not extend beyond death, i.e. it does not extend to spouses, children, grandchildren, etc. of the deceased person.

3. In my opinion, publishing these photos is similar to publishing nude photos of athletes and soldiers taken by LIFE magazine photographers.  At the time, the understanding of the photo subjects was that photos with frontal nudity would not be published in the magazine (and they never were), but the LIFE photo archive containing those photos is now publicly available online, and nobody seems to be complaining about it.

4. I consider these photos to be a historical record of the time.  Almost all of the Ivy League posture photos were burned when their existence became widely known.  In my opinion, that was akin to book-burning of books that someone claimed were obscene.  These photos are not obscene.  They should be celebrated, not hidden away.

Ads - Part 58

Steamworks

Steamworks is a private men's gym, sauna and bathhouse for gay men, located in several cities.  Above is an ad for Steamworks Halloween events in Vancouver.

A similar ad for Steamworks Halloween events in Berkeley, California.

And a Halloween ad for Steamworks Chicago.

Here's a slightly more explicit ad for Steamworks Berkeley ...

along with this ad for their weekly disco fuck party.

Not to be outdone, Steamworks Vancouver offers a fall to your knees Sunday service ...

as well as offering frequent fuckers rewards.

And Steamworks Chicago promises good old-fashioned Thanksgiving stuffing.

We'll give this Steamworks Seattle ad the last word (and the last image).

The Naked Farmer - Part 35

New South Wales

We continue our series of photos posted by the Naked Farmer, Ben Brooksby, a young Australian farmer who posts photos of naked Australian farmers on social media sites. The naked photos are to get people's attention, and his message is to encourage people with mental health issues like suicidal thoughts to talk about it with someone and not to hide it away. Ben himself had suffered from panic attacks in school.

Farmers send Ben naked photos of themselves from all over Australia.  I organize the photos by which Australian state they're from.  Today's photos are from New South Wales, abbreviated NSW.

We start with the photo above from Gloucester, NSW captioned "That ought to get em moving."

Todd with irrigation equipment in North Star, northern NSW.

Upsalls Creek, NSW.

Warrumbungle National Park, NSW.  I love Australian place names.  By the way, the concealed frontals are because Ben posts on Facebook, which does not allow frontal views.

Watering cotton, Nevertire, NSW.

A bath in a watering trough, Tibooburra, NSW.

The photo above was captioned "Wee waa!"  There is a town called Wee Waa in New South Wales.

We end with this beautiful view called "The Rock."  And the landscape is pretty, too.

Bodybuilders - Part 11

Jim Park

Jim Park (1927-2007) grew up in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.  He enlisted in the Navy right out of high school in 1944 (World War II was going on) and was discharged in 1947.

Moving to Chicago, he got into bodybuilding, winning some local contests like Mr. Central U.S.A. (above).

He also started posing for physique photographers.  Above, an early photo of Park (left) with Vic Siepke, taken by Douglas of Detroit.  I got this photo from Vintage Muscle Men.  Thanks, Jerry!

In 1952, Park won the Mr. America contest.  When Park was announced as the winner, the audience erupted with booing and catcalling from those who wanted Malcolm Brenner (above) to win.

By the way, Brenner also posed for physique photos.  That's him at left in the photo above by Bob Mizer.

But getting back to Jim Park, he posed for a whole series of photos by Chicago physique photographer Clifford Oettinger in 1952.  The rest of these photos are by Oettinger.  Above, Park (right) with Vic Siepke, who competed against Park in the 1952 Mr. America contest.

Jim Park (right) and Vic Seipke.

Jim Park.

Jim Park (left) and Tim Sweeney.

We end with Jim Park (bottom) and Tim Sweeney.  I'm not saying that Jim Park was a bottom.🙂 He was straight and had a wife and children.

Jim Park died in 2007 of natural causes at age 79.