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Gypsy Taub
Gypsy Taub protesting San Francisco nudity ban in January 2013
Nationality	Russian, American
Other names	Olessia
Years active	1988–present

Gypsy Taub is a Russian American activist in the San Francisco public nudity movement.

Early life and education

Taub was raised in Moscow and went by the name Olessia. Her family consisted of her; a physicist, inventor father; a French teacher, fashion designer mother; a brother, and a sister.

Taub moved to Boston in the fall of 1988 at the age of 19 to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her family immigrating to the city the next year. When she was 23, she attended the City College of San Francisco as a pre-med student. She dropped out after 18 months.

Career

In 1995, Taub changed her name to Gypsy and became a Deadhead. She began her activism shortly after her daughter, Inti, was born in 2000. She is a 9/11 truther and began a public access television show called Uncensored 9/11 to increase awareness of her beliefs about the September 11, 2001 attacks that 9/11 was an inside job, that it was orchestrated by the government. She hosted the show without clothes on. In 2008, she started a cable television show named My Naked Truth.

In 2012, San Francisco supervisor Scott Wiener proposed that any city resident older than five years could be fined $100 if they appeared in public naked. The proposed law also allowed for up to a year in jail on the third offence. Taub led a movement of activists who protested against the law. A public hearing on the proposed law was held at San Francisco City Hall on November 5, 2012. she went to the hearing along with her three children. The overwhelming majority of the people at the hearing opposed Wiener's proposal. She wore a shift dress and no underwear. She then took off her dress and was escorted out of the hearing room and detained. She filed a class action lawsuit against the ban at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Five plaintiffs signed the suit and it was filed by Christina DiEdoardo three months before the nudity ban went into effect in February 2013. DiEdoardo stopped representing the lawsuit's plaintiffs since there were disagreements between the plaintiffs. Gill Sperlein served as Taub's second lawyer for the suit. He was previously a member of Wiener's campaign committee. DiEdoardo claimed that the police were discriminating in regards to who could be nude in the city, noting that they went for people who had little political influence. In the two years since the ban was put into effect, Taub was denied a permit ten times, once for a parade of fewer than 50 members despite there being no policy in San Francisco's police code defining a minimum number of people required to have a parade. A discrimination claim by Taub was settled for $20,000 by the city in June 2015, and in September, she was granted a restraining order against the police department to prevent them denying her a permit for a nude parade at Jane Warner Plaza that was held that month.

On September 13, 13, 2017, Taub attended a Berkeley City Council meeting about a proposal by the Topfreedom "Free the Nipple" campaign to allow woman to go topless in public. Officials of the council postponed a decision, because one of them, Sophie Hahn, felt it wasn't an important issue for the city to address, and over concerns that men would have to cover up their nipples too. At the end of the meeting, Taub stripped off her clothes and criticized the council members.

Personal life

Taub attended a Montana Rainbow Gathering, where she met Jamyz Smith, who was 20 at the time and came from Jackson, Missouri. The two were engaged in Berkeley, California and married via a nude wedding protest at City Hall on December 19, 2013. In June 2015, Time magazine listed it as one of "The 17 Most Intriguing Weddings of All Time." In early 2014, Taub and Smith posed for a photoshoot for a New York magazine story about San Francisco. It depicts the two standing naked in line to ride a Google Bus. Jessica Powell, Google's vice president for product and corporate communications, responded by saying there should be "no nudes on the bus. It might interfere with the Wi-Fi." Taub and Smith lived in a flat in Berkeley. As of 2015, Taub and Smith are separated.

References

1. ^ Whiting, Sam (December 16, 2013). "Naked truth behind Gypsy Taub's nude nuptials". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
2. Bay City News (February 1, 2014). "Nudists Hold 'Body Freedom' Protest on Anniversary of San Francisco's Nudity Ban". NBC Bay Area. Retrieved December 4, 2020 – via nbcbayarea.com.
3. Whiting, Sam (November 17, 2013). "Nude activists cause a stir at protest in Castro". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
4. ^ Lybarger, Jeremy (December 2, 2015). "SF's Most Notorious Nudist Stakes Her Claim to History". Retrieved April 4, 2018.
5. ^ Raguso, Emilie (September 13, 2017). "Naked activist slams city officials after 'free the nipple' proposal dies"". Newsweek. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
6. Sinclair, Harriet (September 14, 2017). "A naked protester turned up at a council meeting in Berkeley to "free the nipple"". Retrieved December 4, 2020.
7. Whiting, Same (December 19, 2013). "S.F. couple pulls off their nude wedding". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved December 4, 2020 – via sfgate.com.
8. "The 17 Most Intriguing Weddings of All Time". Time. June 17, 2015. Archived from the original on October 11, 2019. Retrieved April 12, 2018. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; January 1, 2019 suggested (help)
9. ^ Bowles, Nellie (March 12, 2014). "Who Are These Naked People Getting on My Google Bus?". Recode. Retrieved April 12, 2018.

• 1969 births
• American naturists
• Female sex workers
• Russian emigrants to the United States
• Living people
• Social nudity advocates
• American female erotic dancers
• 9/11 conspiracy theorists
• People from Moscow
• American conspiracy theorists