Good times. Good times (via Fark):
It is 30 years since the word streaking entered the English language - courtesy of an Australian accountant who bore more than a passing resemblance to Jesus.
Michael O'Brien set the ball rolling when he invaded an England-France rugby match at Twickenham in April 1974, wearing nothing more than a smile.
It's been over 30 years here in the States. The 1973 Oscar streak is still a high point in Academy Awards history (as is presenter David Niven's response[1]), but I didn't catch it when it aired, and I was largely oblivious to the phenomenon until high school. Streaking, Old School notwithstanding, always seemed like a '70s thing, and any naked running around I did in those days was explained away by the fact I was a toddler.
Three decades on and streaking has been accepted as part and parcel of our sporting culture.
We've had people getting their kit off at the football, the cricket, the tennis - even the Richard and Judy weather map, for goodness sake.
Streaking is, I guess, preferable to random people running out on the field fully clothed, if only because you can't help but wonder where they'd be able to hide any possible weapons. I think it's a mostly harmless - if occasionally annoying - distraction. Even so, it's hard to keep things like the attacks on Monica Seles and Tom Gamboa out of our minds. Never mind that for the last few years, we're keenly aware of the attractiveness of large crowds as targets. And you'd probably still be hard pressed to convince players or officials on the field of play that such people don't pose a threat.
Quite by coincidence, I hear there was a streaker at Tuesday's Cards-Astros game.
I can't tell if streaking is on the rise or if it's just something temporarily latched onto by marketing geniuses. GoldenPalace.com has certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of the Super Bowl streaker and adult film actress Brittney Skye at last year's U.S. Open. Maybe some enterprising future streaker will take the NASCAR approach and obtain multiple sponsors to bedeck his/her naked bod.
Anyway, I'm not much of an exhibitionist, so I've never felt the urge to let it all hang out. Fortunately, it looks like the fairer sex is starting to pick up the slack, as it were:
But the title of streaking queen has to go to 22-year-old Tracy Sergeant, whose crowing glory came at the Indoor Bowls Championship in 2000.
A statement from officials read: "After having studied the whole unsavoury incident on 43 occasions, including slow motion replays, we have decided against implementing a rule that spectators should remain clothed at all times."
At least they were thorough. In any event, we seem to have missed the boat to the utopian vision of Streak Dome '97.
[1] "The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping... and showing his shortcomings."
"Ethyl, you shameless hussy..."
I am opposed to streaking. I find that it competes with the art of covering oneself in shaving cream and running around between residential colleges leaving body prints on large panes of glass. On the 13th. Or the 26th. Or the 31st. Baker 13. Now that I'm an ex-student, I can use the real name.