A recent Tuesday, 2:24 p.m.: The "naked guys" who hang out at Jane Warner Plaza in the Castro district have gotten a lot of attention since Supervisor Scott Wiener proposed legislation that would require them to put clothes on or be fined.

Opinions have been voiced. Stories have been written. Now, everybody knows how awful some find it to see naked people in the Castro - but what do the nudists think?

To find out, I decided to conduct a nudist fashion shoot of sorts. A casting call was made on a sunny afternoon in the plaza at the corner of Castro and Market streets. The only requirement was that participants give me an honest response to Wiener's proposed legislation - and, of course, agree to be photographed for all the world to see in the pages of The Chronicle.

Nine people showed without any clothes, four of them women, and only one had second thoughts about being photographed.

Wiener's proposal "is turning us into criminals, and it's criminalizing the human body," said Woody Miller, 54, a waiter working on his master's degree in history at San Francisco State who moved to the city in 1982 from Lancaster, Pa. "I think San Francisco has always been a place that has drawn people who've wanted to reimagine themselves.

"Very rarely do people ask me why I do this," Miller said. "I like the way it feels. I like the feel of the sun and air on my skin. I think it puts me closer in contact with who I am.

"A lot of people say we are too fat, too old, too hairy. But I consider my body to be a record of my lived experiences," Miller said, noting a dramatic scar from a heart operation that plunges down his chest and ends in a dimpled cross just above his abdomen.

Pete Sferra, 57, of San Jose locked arms with his wife, Laura Vaughn, 59. They smiled, wearing only their shoes and wedding bands.

"San Francisco sets the bar for tolerance of alternative lifestyles of all kinds," said Sferra, a technical writer at a large company in Silicon Valley. "The myth is that we're all sex-crazed. I'd like others to know that we're normal people.

"I'm very comfortable being nude," Sferra said. "There is nothing sexual about it. It's not really a statement; it's about comfort. ... It's about freedom, which is what San Francisco is about."

The rest is here:

S.F. nudists say it's about the freedom