Fans of Urban Nudism
Fans of Urban Nudism (F.U.N.) promotes the elimination of nudity taboos — which do far more harm than is generally realized. We foresee a better world, where everyone lives comfortably, robots do all the work that nobody wants to do themselves, and people are free to pursue the goals and activities that they find most appealing.
San Francisco’s tourist industry
needs to be rescued
The CoVID-19 pandemic has emptied this city of tourists.
Will tourists return to San Francisco after the pandemic subsides?
San Francisco was once a mecca for cultural freedom.
The city offered enticements unavailable elsewhere.
Musicians, dancers, writers, poets, political activists, strip clubs, gay venues — attracted visitors in droves.
This is not the first time that an increase in tourism has been needed to counteract economic declines in San Francisco. It is instructive to study how the city made itself more appealing to tourists during such periods — for example, the period from 1950 to 1980, when most of San Francisco's manufacturing and shipping businesses moved elsewhere.
San Francisco has, in the past, responded to such crises by turning itself into a mecca for cultural adventures that were frowned upon or even outlawed in most other parts of the country and in many other parts of the world. Some of these efforts were literary or artistic adventures that led to a vibrant counter-culture in the city: the Beat Generation, the Hippie movement, the Fillmore music venue. Other efforts were focused on sexual freedom: relaxation of censorship in all the arts; erotic entertainment at bars and clubs; the Gay Freedom movement. San Francisco’s positive attitudes towards nudity and sex created an atmosphere of liberty, tolerance and pleasure that drew tourists from all over the world.
Cities with more cultural freedom get more visitors.
Many other cities in the world are now freer than San Francisco.
All of the activities shown below are currently illegal In San Francisco.
Rebuilding a strong tourism industry by eliminating censorship and promoting cultural freedom has been a winning strategy in the past, and it is a good strategy to use again. But this time we must make sure that it becomes a permanent feature of the San Francisco scene, immune to efforts by neurotic prudes to whittle away at it by gradually legislating these freedoms out of existence. The world desperately needs cultural freedom in order to protect people's sanity and to preserve their ability to make sensible decisions.
In recent years, tourism has been San Francisco's largest industry, generating more than $8 billion annually for the local economy and supporting more than 71,000 jobs. But in 2020 the CoVID-19 pandemic shut down our tourism industry, along with much else.
As the pandemic fades and businesses reopen, will the tourists come back to San Francisco in their former numbers? Or will they now consider San Francisco too dirty, too expensive, too overrun with homeless people, too culturally bland, too infested with robbers and lunatics, and too dangerous to be worth visiting? The answer is not obvious. Many other U.S. cities have interesting tourist attractions and will be vying for tourists' time and money. Of course, San Francisco's own unique tourist-attractions — the Golden Gate Bridge, the Haight-Ashbury District, Fisherman’s Wharf, sea lions, etc. But the city has, in recent decades, lost the rich artistic atmosphere and the counterculture communities that used to act like magnets for attracting talent, ideas, and… yes, tourists.
If San Francisco’s business and political leaders want the city’s tourist industry to bounce back fully and quickly, then they should be doing some serious, unrestrained thinking about how to make this happen. A city that is now widely regarded as an overpriced slum cannot expect such a recovery to be automatic and effortless.