Naked truth behind Gypsy Taub's nude nuptials

Gypsy Taub, who led the rally, is handcuffed by police Sunday November 17, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. Police arrested and cited a group of nudists who staged a rally at the corner of Market and Castro Streets, violating the city's nudity ban. less Gypsy Taub, who led the rally, is handcuffed by police Sunday November 17, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. Police arrested and cited a group of nudists who staged a rally at the corner of Market and Castro ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close Naked truth behind Gypsy Taub's nude nuptials 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

Gypsy Taub is not certain what she will be wearing at the beginning of her wedding ceremony on the steps of San Francisco's City Hall, probably the thrift store wedding gown she's having altered, and a bridal veil for sure. She's more certain of what she will be wearing by the end of the ceremony: just the veil.

That is if the naked wedding, scheduled for noon Thursday, comes off at all. Taub, 44, expects to be arrested for violating the city ban against public nudity, along with her naked groom, Jaymz Smith, who is half her age, minus two.

The suspense is whether Taub, who in just one year has become the full front of nude activism in the city, will be able to get her vows off before she is handcuffed and marched naked to a police van, where she will be issued a blue blanket and driven to the station to be cited and released, as is the pattern.

Then the question becomes whether, in the spirit of the holiday season, she will be able to keep the police-issue blankets to go with all the others from earlier arrests. Taub and Smith, plus her three kids, live in an upstairs Berkeley Victorian flat that is perpetually freezing, and they can always use another blanket. There are three bedrooms and six people if you count David dePappe, a hemp jewelry maker and father figure who will double as best man.

"Planning the wedding is stressful, but it's exciting because I'm a big rebel and I just like to stir s- up," says Taub, while taking time off from the hoopla to sit for an interview in her living room. It is midafternoon, mid-cold snap, and the windows are wide open, which makes the household "clothing optional" rule less appealing. So she is wearing several layers of woolen hippie garments plus her heavy sheepskin indoor jacket.

"I don't really know how weddings work," says Taub, who had not selected her bridesmaids a week before the event - but her daughter, Inti Gonzalez, 13, has agreed to serve as flower girl. Son Daniel, 8, will bear the ring, and his brother Nebosvod, 10, will give his mom away.

George Davis, a minister of the Universal Life Church and a long-standing nude activist, will perform the ceremony. Taub has booked a mariachi band for the naked parade to follow the ceremony, but that's as far as she's gotten in the way of a reception.

'A lot of passion'

Despite her ignorance of wedding tradition, this is at least the second, and possibly the third, marriage for Taub, who is not that interested in running down the chronology, or the lineage of her three kids.

"If you want to enumerate all of the relationships I've had, it might take up a lot of space in the newspaper," she says, laughing. "I've had a very exciting life with a lot of passion and a lot of drama. Let's put it that way."

Born Oxana Chornenky, and raised in Moscow, she's always gone by the name Olessia (Forest Girl) and always "wanted to be free from body shame." But she could never quite achieve it until she arrived in Boston at age 19. She had won first prize in an English-speaking contest in Moscow but had no work permit, which did not seem to be a complication at the Naked Eye, the strip club where she found work.

She met a man named David Taub, and they moved to his hometown of Los Angeles to get married. That lasted just a few months before she wandered off to Hawaii and back to San Francisco, where she didn't know anyone.

She enrolled at City College and got straight A's in the sciences. Her goal was to become a psychiatrist but she left after one year in fear that she was becoming "over-educated," she says. To cure that, she became a wandering Deadhead and changed her name from Olessia to Gypsy. When her daughter was born, she needed to get serious and settle down, so she switched careers from Deadhead to "Russian-style revolutionary."

After Sept. 11, 2001, Taub became a believer in the theory that 9/11 was "an inside job." Dissatisfied with the coverage of her point of view, she started a political talk show on public-access TV called "Uncensored 9/11" and figured out a way to secure an audience, the same strategy employed at "Naked News," a Canadian broadcast.

"I figured if I take my clothes off, people would listen better," she says, "and they did."

'My Naked Truth'

"Uncensored 9/11" has evolved into "My Naked Truth" at 10 on Saturday nights on Channel 29 ( www.mynakedtruth.tv). She's willing to discuss politics, drugs, sex, spirituality or any other serious topic with anyone - provided the guest is willing to stand there naked for a half hour. San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener, for one, has not been on the show.

When Taub first heard about the nudity ban that Wiener was sponsoring in late 2012, she loaded the kids in her van and drove to testify at a public hearing before the Board of Supervisors. All three kids and their mother spoke against the ban, but only the mother punctuated her speech by dropping her dress, having momentarily forgotten that she was not wearing any underwear.

That earned Taub her first blanket. It also made the TV news, and "the video just went viral," Taub says, proudly. "I was all over the Internet."

Up to that point, the nudity story had been the same four guys walking up and down Market Street. After that point, the nudity story was about Gypsy Taub.

When she came to the follow-up meeting in which the Board of Supervisors voted in favor of the nudity ban, she made more of a show out of it.

"I had to take my pants off and my shirt and all of that," she says. "I got naked and started yelling at the supervisors."

Blanket No. 2.

There would probably be more, she admits, but she homeschools her kids, and repeat naked protests and arrests are limited in educational value. As part of the homeschool regimen, the kids take extended field trips in their "school bus," with its painting of the bus driver on the hood and the words "You Are Beautiful" in the destination window.

Last summer they were at the Rainbow Gathering in Montana when she met Smith, 20. He knew what he was getting into, because Taub was dancing naked at the time. Taub knew what she was getting into, too: Her long-dead lover Sergey, reincarnated. She had first met him while traveling in Russia and considers him husband No. 2, though there was no need for the formality of a wedding.

"We had an insanely passionate relationship," she says, "but three years into the relationship, he ended up killing himself."

Sergey, reincarnated

She'd been looking for the spirit of Sergey in the 15 years since he hanged himself. Now here he was in the body of Smith, same looks, same gestures, same smile, same eyes, though she had to wait for him to clear the hair out of his face to make that point.

"After Sergey died, I used all these techniques to bring him back in some form, and I did meet him," she explains. "Jimmy is the same exact person as the Russian."

Smith was willing to go along with it, so he climbed into the school bus for the return trip to Berkeley. He describes his professional occupation as "traveler," so if the relationship didn't work out, he could write it off as a business trip.

Six months later, he seems to fit right in with Taub and the kids on Woolsey Street in south Berkeley. At 2 in the afternoon he comes down the stairs, wearing one black sock and one white sock and looking like he just woke up, his hair as much in his face as the day Taub met him.

Taub and her kids have lived here for four years, and the place still looks like move-in day, with overstuffed milk crates stacked high.

'Don't have to pack'

"If we move, we don't have to pack," says Taub, who speaks with a trace of her native Russia and is good humored about both her lack of circumspection and her living circumstance.

It is unclear at this time of the workday who provides for the family. Smith does not seem to be busy in his career as "traveler." Taub, who scrapes by on support from family, does not get paid for her TV talk show, though she has gotten paid for nude modeling and Internet videos where she operated on both sides of the camera.

"I've done a couple with guys," she says, "and a few with girls."

At 5-foot-3 and 100 pounds, she keeps herself in strip shape by a diet of raw organic fruit and vegetables, running and yoga. She has a professional reputation to uphold, so if you ask to take her photo with a cell phone, she wants to put on makeup first.

Smith was an amateur in public stripping until the moment he stood on a chair during a protest arranged by Taub at Jane Warner Plaza in the Castro last month. He seemed hesitant at first, but he stepped up as his bride-to-be announced their engagement through a bullhorn strapped to her shoulder. Then the police brought them down from their chairs and cuffed them for their walk of un-shame. It was Smith's first arrest for public nudity and Taub's fourth.

Arrest No. 5 might be as soon as Tuesday, when she plans to appear before the regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors and invite all 11 members to the wedding.

"Usually I get naked at the end of my speech so I get through it before they kick me out," she says. As a decoy, Smith will be in the audience and stand up naked to punctuate the wedding invitation.

Arrest No. 6 should come right around 12:30 p.m. Thursday. They will have a wedding license but no parade license, which would provide a legal loophole for their nude nuptials.

"If they arrest us, we are just going to keep coming back until they let us get married naked," she vows. For their honeymoon, they plan to caravan with the Deadheads for a January show in Mexico.

There is also the possibility of a different kind of honeymoon, because Taub faces a year in jail as a repeat offender. She won't go down without a trial before a jury of her peers.

"It would be the biggest thing to promote," she says. "My reputation will skyrocket."