Running Naked in Sacramento

Elizabeth Weintraub with her jeep in 1974.

It is obviously time to run naked in the streets of Sacramento but nobody is doing it. Makes me wonder that after the Sacramento City Council removed the nudity privilege, whether there was a lot of squawking from radical nudists about their bare-naked rights. What is sort of amazing is that for a time in 2015 it was perfectly OK to appear nude in public in Sacramento as long as you were not in a city park. You could stroll down the sidewalk in front of Lyon Real Estate on J and 28th Street, flaunting your naked self and nobody could arrest you.

But please don’t do it. There are very few people who really look good without any clothing. The older you get, the worse you look without clothes, well, unless you’re Jane Fonda or Cher. Take it from The Snake Oil Willie Band and their hit single, I Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore:

One of my first clients in Sacramento is the owner of the Naked Lounge over on 15th Street. When he bought a home in Sacramento, he handed me an earnest money deposit drawn on his Naked Lounge account, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Was it a strip joint? I guess I was a bit relieved when I discovered it was a coffeehouse lounge, although I would be perfectly OK representing an owner of a strip club or even a stripper, for that matter; I don’t discriminate against anybody, except maybe a fanatical right-winger. I could not in good conscience, for example, work for Jerry Falwell.

Jerry Falwell wouldn’t look good naked, either. Besides, he’s dead.

But it’s not just the overweight people who don’t look good naked. It’s us old guys of any size. I’ve managed to keep my weight in check, and let me tell you, getting old is best spent with somebody else who is getting old right alongside with you. It keeps you from obsessing over every gray hair and every new wrinkle or barnacle that appears out of nowhere.

When I attended my 20th high school reunion in 1990, I could not believe all of the old people in that room. Most of the men were pretty much bald and fat. In my mind, I was not old. I wore a black mini skirt, paired with knee-high leather boots and my hair was fairly long and dark. I was so weight conscious that I weighed the other side of 100. On my way to the Reunion, I was stuck in the back seat of the car sitting on the hump. With my knees shoved into my face, all I could do was stare at the wrinkle in my knees. I was horrified. Where the hell did that come from?

So shocked that I made everybody stop at the 7-11 so I could buy a new pair of pantyhose. Obviously, the crinkle in my knee was caused by my pantyhose. There I was in the back seat struggling to get out of my existing pantyhose and pull on my new pantyhose as we drove along the city streets of Minneapolis in a car filled with 5 women. Imagine my shock when I realized it was not my pantyhose. It was my skin. And it’s been downhill since then. My skin is now starting to resemble crepe paper: when I turn my arm a certain way I can see it. Alien skin. I’m turning into E.T. My dermatologist prescribes all sorts of lotions for my dry skin, and there is just no turning back the clock.

You have my assurance that this Sacramento Realtor will never run naked down the street, even though it’s perfectly legal for now to do so. Besides, the only Barenaked Ladies anybody pokes fun at in my house is on iTunes.