College Streaking - Part 36

 UCSC First Rain

The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) has a naked run tradition called "First Rain."  It started in 1989 after the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake struck on the San Andreas fault only 10 miles away.  Trying to relieve stress after the quake, students in Porter, one of UCSC's ten residential colleges, were playing "Simon Says" in their dining hall.  The student playing Simon told everyone to take off their shirts.  Then he told everyone to take off their pants.  At that point the manager kicked all the students out of the dining hall.

(Above: students gathering in Porter College for the naked run in 2006.)

After the students were kicked out of the dining hall, they walked naked around the campus and found it provided stress relief.  Someone said they should do it again someday.  Wayne Hendrickson, a university community safety officer, told them that some colleges had a naked run on the first snowfall of each year.  He suggested that UCSC hold a naked run during the year's first Pacific rainstorm.

(Above, students at the 2006 naked run.)

So, the next year, the first "First Rain" naked run was held.  Santa Cruz, like much of California, has a Mediterranean climate with a dry summer and a rainy winter.  The first substantial rain usually happens in October or November.

(Above: the First Rain run in 2011.)

Over the years, some rules were added to clarify exactly when the run would happen.  It had to be on a school night (not a weekend), and it had to rain nonstop from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm, so it couldn't just be a drizzle or an intermittent shower.

(Above: the First Rain run in 2012.)

The students gather in Porter College, and if the conditions are met by 10:00 pm, they start running around the campus, visiting all ten residential colleges.

(Above: a short video of the run in 2012.)

Here's a short video of the First Rain run in 2013.

And another very short video of the 2013 run.

We end with two undated photos of the First Rain run.  The first picture shows some nice frontal images except for the student holding his clothes in front of him.

And the second photo shows the same student (I think), but it must be a different year because he's carrying different clothing.  He now seems to have overcome his shyness and become an unashamed male.

Hiking - Part 30

 Yellowstone

Yellowstone was known to Native Americans for thousands of years, but the first white man to see it was John Colter.  Colter was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803-1806.  He left the expedition in 1806 to return to the Rocky Mountains to do beaver trapping.  In 1807 he traveled through what is now Yellowstone.  Upon his return, his stories of geysers and boiling mud were not believed, and the region was sarcastically called "Colter's Hell."

In 1808, Colter was captured by Blackfoot Indians who, for sport, stripped him naked and made him run for his life pursued by Blackfoot warriors, giving him a short head start, as pictured on the book cover above.

After outrunning all but one of the warriors, Colter suddenly stopped and turned around, and the surprised warrior fell while trying to stop, dropping his spear.  Colter seized the spear and stabbed the warrior, pinning him to the ground, then continued his flight, eventually reaching a trading post 11 days later.

(Above: illustration for the story Bloody Ordeal of Trapper John by Howard O'Hagen in True Western Adventures magazine, 1960.)

In 1872, Congress declared the Yellowstone region to be the world's first national park.  After the construction of railroads across the country, tourists started to arrive, and a hotel was built near Mammoth Hot Springs in the park.  In the woods in back of the hotel was a warm pool called Bath Lake, pictured above by Welsh artist Thomas Henry Thomas who visited it in 1886.  Bathing in the lake was nude, of course.  This incident happened in 1883:

"President Chester A. Arthur’s party arrived along with the European VIPs ... Six sons of prominent Englishmen arrived a week or two ahead of their parents and began irritating the local cowboys with their behavior. On a lark they went for a swim in Bath Lake and looked up to see masked cowboys stealing their clothes. ... They angrily converged, almost naked, on a beleaguered desk clerk, swearing all the while that they would take the case to the highest levels of the U.S. government ... The clerk calmly reached under his desk and handed their clothes back to them."

Yellowstone is a huge park, and it has much more than just geysers and hot springs.  Here's a hiker in the woods in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone has spectacular waterfalls, like the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, above, which is 308 feet high, viewed here by Joey Richards.

Here's Joey at the overlook at the rim of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone.  I can't recommend getting naked there, because it's a very public spot (I've been there).  But I highly recommend visiting Yellowstone, one of the world's great national parks.

Protests - Part 32

 Penis Protests and Other Giant Penises

In 2015, a street artist in Manchester, England who calls himself Wanksy protested the potholes in the streets of Manchester by drawing penises around 70 of them.  He used a type of paint that can't be easily washed off or removed, forcing local authorities to quickly repair the potholes, covering the penises with asphalt in the process, before children would see the dirty pictures.  Within 48 hours, half of the potholes that had been there for years were repaired.

A different kind of protest was made by Ollie Nancarrow, a British teenager who lives near the airport where President Trump was scheduled to touch down in 2019 on a visit to England.  Ollie cut a giant penis and the words "Oi Trump" into a field on his family's land, and the words "Climate change is real" into another field, hoping that Trump would see them when Air Force One arrived.

Another giant penis was cut into a field by Jamie Rix of Stratford, Prince Edward Island, Canada.  It started out as a crop circle, and then he decided to make it into a penis pointing toward Ottawa, Canada's capital, as a protest against the federal government.

The penis was clearly visible on Google Maps (above).  Unfortunately it's not there any more (I checked).  The field has grown up and Google Maps has been updated.

While we're on the subject of penises cut into fields, in 2020, police in Cornwall, England were using a drone to search for an offender who had run away, when the drone came upon this image in a field.  The police shared the image online, to the amusement of the locals.  One man commented, "Must be a hardened criminal."

Giant penises are everywhere.  Here's one in Uffington, Oxfordshire, England.

Here's one that someone made in a dry lake bed in Marcus Hill, Victoria, Australia.

At Fairfield College, Hamilton, New Zealand, some students made six huge penises in the lawns with weed killer.  Two of them are visible above

In Devon, England, someone transformed an "artwork" of a bicycle on a hillside into a giant penis.

But really, we shouldn't be surprised.  Guys have been drawing penises on every available surface for thousands of years.  The guy in Devon was just following the example of the Cerne Abbas giant that was cut into the turf on a hillside in Dorset, England, thought to be at least 900 years old.

And it looks like we will keep on making giant penises.  These tracks were made by one of NASA's rover vehicles, Spirit and Opportunity, on Mars.  It's the first giant penis on another planet (that we know of).

Artists - Part 35

 J.C. Leyendecker

Before there was Norman Rockwell, there was J.C. Leyendecker (1874-1951), shown above in his studio drawing a baseball catcher.

When we think of Saturday Evening Post magazine covers, we think of Norman Rockwell, but Rockwell was influenced and inspired by Leyendecker, who made 322 Saturday Evening Post covers.  Many Leyendecker covers were humorous but affectionate portrayals of American life, like "The Dressmaker," above.  Later, Norman Rockwell carried on that tradition.

However, a difference between the two artists is that some of Leyendecker's works would be considered homoerotic today.  Above is a Leyendecker cover depicting U.S. Olympic rowers in 1932.

Leyendecker became the leading commercial artist of his day.  From 1905 to 1931 he created ads for the Arrow Shirt Company featuring the "Arrow collar man" who became an iconic representation of the fashionable male of the day.  What the public didn't know was that the Arrow collar man was Charles Beach, Leyendecker's lover, whom he lived with from 1914 to the end of his life.  Being gay was illegal at the time, so Leyendecker never came out.

UPDATE - I thought this Kupperheimer ad was illustrated by Leyendecker, but it's actually a modern tribute to Leyendecker.  The text is from the original 1921 ad.  Thanks to reader Brian for the correction.  

This 1919 Ivory Soap ad illustrated by Leyendecker depicts World War I soldiers bathing on a troop transport.  No explicit nudity, but clearly it shows a bunch of naked men together.

He also did covers for magazines besides the Saturday Evening Post.  Here's a barely-covered man on this 1907 Collier's magazine cover depicting the god Mercury.

Here's a cover for a 1915 issue of Physical Culture magazine.

Here's an illustration for the 1910 book "The Voice in the Rice" by Gouverneur Morris.

Typical of Leyendecker's work is this illustration for a Scribner's calendar in 1908, showing muscular men but no outright nudity.

Leyendecker did paint some explicit nudes as an art student.  This is Nude in the Academie, 1896, painted when he was studying art in Paris.

We end by contrasting Leyendecker with Norman Rockwell.  Here is Rockwell's famous 1943 picture of Thanksgiving, Freedom From Want.  A beautiful depiction of family values.

Compare it to Leyendecker's Saturday Evening Post cover for Thanksgiving, 1928.  Ironic and slyly humorous, there are no family values here.  Leyendecker shows us how Thanksgiving had changed from 1628 to 1928, from a Bible-toting Pilgrim to an occasion for football.  This was before football games were televised, so it's even more apt today.  Note that his football player manages to be handsome and have suggestively ripped clothes.

Leyendecker's work went out of fashion in the 1930s.  When he died in 1951, his funeral was attended by only five people: his partner Charles Beach, three of his former male models, and Norman Rockwell.

Festivals - Part 31

 Falls Festival

The Falls Festival is an Australian music festival that started in Lorne, Victoria and then spread to other locations.  It's held over New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, which is in the summer in Australia.

Though not noted for nudity, it has seen its share.  Above, Warren Fitzgerald of The Vandals arrives for some New Year's fun on New Year's Eve, 2000.

The Vandals performed again at Falls Festival at Lorne on New Year's Eve, 2002.  The caption said "Warren Fitzgerald of The Vandals gets up close and personal with a CCTV camera."

Here's Warren doing a stretch while performing that same night.

There's a large parking lot and campground for festival attendees.  At the 2008/2009 festival, somebody provided a "Wank Tent."  How convenient!

These guys were at the 2012/2013 festival in Lorne.

A series of photos from the 2013/2014 festival said these guys were wrestling.  The wrestling seems to have consisted mainly of pulling off each other's shorts.

Here the shorts have been pretty much ripped to shreds.

Then somebody awarded each of them a ribbon, placed strategically in this photo.

Here's somebody showing off on top of a car or truck at the 2011/2012 festival.

We end with a dance in the parking lot by another unashamed male, with the spectators showing their appreciation.

Poem of the Day - Part 32

 A Song of Joys
by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was one of most famous American poets of the 19th century.  A Song of Joys was published in Leaves of Grass, 1860.  It's a long poem, with sections about the joys of the engineer, of the fireman, of the mother, of the fisherman, of the soldier, and others.  This is a very brief excerpt about the joys of being naked on the beach.

O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore! 

To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore.

*        *        *

Today being Groundhog Day, I think it's appropriate for us to see these guys racing naked along the shore again, and again, and again ...

Vintage Athletes - Part 35

 Muybridge Cricket

We continue our look at the stop-motion photography of Eadweard Muybridge published in his 1887 book Animal Locomotion. Muybridge did his work at the University of Pennsylvania, and his subjects were mostly students or graduates who excelled in the activity being portrayed.  Today we look at the game of cricket.

Muybridge was born in England and emigrated to the U.S. at age 20, so of course he was familiar with cricket.  After the Civil War, baseball largely replaced cricket in the U.S.  Cricket was still played in a few places in the 1880s when Muybridge was working, including the University of Pennsylvania.

I made the gif above from plate 289 in the book, labeled "Cricket, round arm bowling."  Bowling in cricket is the equivalent of pitching in baseball.  Originally, cricket bowling was underarm bowling, which Americans would call underhand pitching.  By the 1830s, the prevailing style had changed to roundarm bowling, where the arm is held straight out sideways from the body, allowing for a more powerful throw than underarm bowling.  At that time, overarm bowling (overhand pitching) was banned.

I made the gif above from plate 290, "Cricket, over arm bowling."  Americans would call it overhand pitching.  It was initially illegal in cricket, but it became legalized in 1864.  It then became the favorite style, allowing for even more powerful throws.

I made the gif above from plate 291, "Cricket, batting, drive."  In a drive shot, the batter swings the bat in a vertical arc, usually hitting the ball forward along the ground.

I made this gif from plate 292, "Cricket, batting, back cut."  I won't try to explain what a back cut is, since the description involved so much cricket jargon that I couldn't follow it.

I made this gif from plate 293, also called "Cricket, batting, back cut."  The model in all of these plates was model #69.  Muybridge called him "the best all-round cricketer," and he was presumably a student at Penn, but like the other models, his name was not given, and I haven't been able to further identify him.

As time went on, cricket became less popular in the U.S., even in its stronghold around Philadelphia, and it completely died out by the 1920s.  Of course, in England it remains the national game.