The Breast Freedom Parades were a response to the fallout from "the naked guy". Basically nudity was outlawed in Berkeley and some residents started an annual protest. This started in the early 90s (I want to say 93 but I didn't actually look it up) and they had at least 10 of them. Unfortunately they were less interesting than you might think from a gawker's perspective since there never seemed to be any UC Berkeley students there, except perhaps a reporter from the Daily Cal. So guys hoping to see a lot of naked co-eds were very sad.

The basic pattern is that they would meet at People's Park and get in some chanting and then the organizers would disrobe and encourage others to as well. This was a good year in terms of marching around - once they left the park they went up and down Telegraph several times.

Note that this whole thing eventually morphed into the "Breasts not Bombs" protest in Berkeley - same folks, same process, different name.

I'm not entirely sure what the order of these is so I'm just going to do the best I can. Unfortunately I took maybe a dozen pictures this year, many of them redundant (I was using some point and shoot that didn't focus very well with crowd shots so it was very hit and miss).

Despite the sign saying "Breast Freedom March" all the printed stuff always used the term "Breast Freedom Parade". There was lots of standing at different places in a circle and singing the breast freedom song. Note the guitar on the right. It was a small group so typically it was basically just a few people surrounded by a ring of guys with cameras (yes, myself included).

Some of these people are marchers and some gawkers. It's a bit hard to tell which are which because some people who showed up with cameras took their shirts off when they realized they'd blend in better. The thing where the marchers would get totally nude didn't really happen for a couple of years. This was the typical One Cute Girl - actually, looking at my pictures for that year she might have been one of only 2-3 topless gals - it was a really small group that year.

Brought the kid, nice move.

I had to crop out the left of this because the poor kid in the prior picture was in the frame and let's just say it was an embarrassing shot.

That's all I have for that year!

 


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