The Bay Guardian Finally Drops Trou

By Erin Sherbert Thu., Jul. 19 2012 at 4:45 PM

After the Examiner brought the San Francisco Bay Guardian earlier this year, the paper's publisher vowed that not only would the city's most progressive paper still be progressive, but it would get "progressively more progressive."

We didn't know that was possible, but now we see -- literally -- that it is.

Today's cover on the Bay Area's nude beaches gives us a sneak peek at what we might actually find at those beaches. Let's just say, the men on the cover are finally showing us what they packed in their picnics this year.

And because San Franciscans haven't seen enough dick this week:

Here's how SFBG Editor Tim Redmond explained the stark change:

Here's the thing: I've been doing this a long time, and we've put a lot of naked people on the cover (nude beaches, sex issue, random stories about public nakedness) -- and when it's just women, nobody peeps. Full frontal, whatever -- it seems in our society that it's perfectly okay to show the unclothed female body. But not a dick. God, not a dick. I've often wondered why a movie that shows tits and (female) asses can get away with a PG-13 rating and even full-frontal female, and lots of it, only gets you an R. But a single glimpse of a male organ, even in its unaroused state, automatically turns a movie into NC-17.

Readers might recall last year's Nude Beach issue, which, as Jezebel put it, proudly displayed boobs and bush, while cloaking all the penises behind Psychology Today and picnic baskets.