Bipolar man gets naked, wins money

Back in February, a man named Seth Brigham went before the City Council of Boulder, Colorado in an attempt to protest a trend in heavier policing of public nudity. Brigham’s rationale was that the city, known to some for its “progressive” counterculture, annually hosts events such as the Naked Pumpkin Run and the Naked Bike Ride. He feared that restrictions on attractions like these would damage not only the local population but the tourism industry as well, as many people apparently flock to Boulder to see men like Brigham participate in various forms of exercise without their clothes on.

In order to emphasize his point, Brigham appeared in front of the council wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, and was promptly barred from speaking and escorted from the building.

Fortunately for Brigham, this constituted a breach in his civil liberties; specifically, his First Amendment right to freedom of speech and his Fourth Amendment right to protection from unlawful arrest. Rather than deal with the financial implications of a trial (not to mention the inherent risk in bringing to court a man with an inclination toward nudity in state institutions), the city of Boulder opted instead to pay Brigham a sum of $10,000 in exchange for his agreement not to seek further legal action.

But even the settlement sum is replete with its own strange twist in this story. After his lawyer’s fee, Brigham found himself $6,000 richer, a not insignificant sum that someone in his position would most likely feel better about having around in the event of a rainy day. Unfortunately, according to Brigham, holding on to a sum of that size would void the long-term disability compensation he receives for his bipolar disorder (presumably he would be “earning” too much at that point to be eligible for the benefits, which he will continue to need even after these winnings dry up). In order to retain his right to the disability compensation, he will be forced to spend the money almost immediately. He says that he has considered putting it toward a collection of boxer shorts for any member of the council who agrees to wear them (and only them) to future meetings but, predictably, none have stepped forward so far.

Now that Brigham’s “too soon” boxer joke has bitten the dust, he has allegedly gotten serious and decided to spend the money on a scooter instead. Although it’s a little surprising that he’s not putting it directly toward the organization of another landmark nudity event, a quick Google search shows that Boulder does not yet have a Naked Scooter Race, and it’s conceivable that Brigham might simply be in the early stages of putting together just such a game-changer based on his previous naked antics. Of course, this becomes a little less certain in light of the fact that Brigham himself has never participated in any of the public nudity for which he so boldly bared his civil liberties, but by now this story is probably so far past reality’s point of no return that it is of little to no consequence anyway.

On the other side of the coin, the Boulder City Council has taken measures to ensure that something like this never happens again. First of all, they have taken steps toward instituting new legislation, to the dismay of Brigham, that would prevent citizens from speaking at meetings for longer than two minutes when there is a queue of 15 or more waiting (part of what led to Brigham’s arrest was his refusal to yield the microphone). The city has also continued its vendetta against public nudity, with its next plot to ban it in the town hall setting.

So it seems in the end that Brigham may have done more harm than good. After all, before he launched his pro-nudity campaign, a bipolar man could stand in front of the city council without his pants on and walk away with $6,000 or a new scooter, depending on which day you asked him. Now, such a stand is quickly becoming grounds for arrest. Going forward from here, it looks like you really won’t be able to fight City Hall.

But maybe the outcome isn’t the point. Perhaps it’s the chase that keeps men like Brigham, self-proclaimed “activists” (his quotation marks, not mine; they appear with such persistence on his blog that you’d almost be fooled into reading all of this as some kind of joke) doing what they do. And if that’s the case, then it’s only a matter of time until Brigham is back at it, considering by his count he has already harangued Boulder on over 60 separate occasions. This time, though, when Brigham fought the law, he won.