Famed Berkeley "Naked Guy" dies

I was sad to hear of the death of Andrew Martinez, the student at UC Berkeley who fought for the right to attend university in the nude back in the early 1990's. He apparently had had mental health problems and was at the time in jail on assault and battery charges. He committed suicide by putting a bag over his head. The story is here. I kind of secretly admired him for his dogged insistence that public nudity was not only his right, but was non-prurient. There were many demonstrations at Berkeley up until the time he was expelled for refusing to don some clothing.

( After the cut, a NSFW picture of Andrew sunning himself on campus, clad only in Birkenstocks. )

A sad day for old Columbians

I get my alumni newsletters mostly online now. A sad tale in the latest one:

A beloved Morningside Heights bar, The West End, has closed its doors and will reopen in July as a Cuban restaurant, Havana Central. Renovations will increase the restaurant’s capacity to 150 people. A Columbia University School of Business alumnus, Jeremy Merrin, is overseeing the renovations and promises the new restaurant will retain the same charm (and student-friendly prices!) of The West End.

When I went there, they didn't have student-friendly prices, but they did have reasonably good burgers and fries. It was thought of as the postgrad students' bar. But, it's sad to see it join the pantheon of legendary Columbia U. eating places in the Great Restaurant Strip-Mall in the Sky: Mama Joy's, with imported beer and great sandwiches, Ta-Kome, with the Hoagie Special, on which I chomped my way to mammoth obesity, Chock-Full-O'Nuts on the corner of 116th and Broadway with that "Heavenly Coffee" and the date-nut bread, Moon Palace, the Chinese restaurant on 111th (I think), and Steak and Brew (well, there was never one on Morningside Heights but we used to go down to the one on Broadway in the low 50's and eat and drink ourselves to oblivion.)

I could do with a Hoagie Special now and again. However, they're probably unreproducible.