To some, he is a middle-aged naked guy riding around on a motorized scooter wearing nothing but a thong and a cape, shocking the town and scaring children. To most Madisonians, however, he is a caped crusader, a naked knight, a scantily clad star. He is Thong Cape Scooter Man.
Fifty-seven-year-old Bryan, who requested to withhold his last name for privacy purposes, has a very unique hobby. While some would rather spend a Saturday afternoon tailgating a Badger game, Bryan enjoys donning one of his 22 custom-made capes and a barely noticeable thong to ride through Madison on his scooter for your viewing pleasure, or displeasure.
“A handful of people hate me out there,” Bryan said. “What would I say to them? Smile. Lighten up. If you don’t want to see me just look the other way. I’m quiet.”
His silence is no accident, as one of Bryan’s biggest pet peeves is loud noise. Part of the reason why he rides around half naked on a scooter is to protest loud noise.
“There are people with loud motorcycles,” Bryan said. “People with radios on loud. I’m quiet. You could be standing on the sidewalk talking to someone and I could ride by and you’ll never even notice it was me … The way I kind of look at it is, if you were sitting in your backyard, and your neighbor next door was naked, and the neighbor on the other side was blaring music, who would you rather have next door?”
To a few, this question is a reality. Bryan explains his neighbor’s thoughts on living next to a guy regularly seen pulling out of his driveway in next to no clothing.
“The guy that lives across the street from me, he’ll give me a solidarity sign when I go out,” Bryan said. “His wife thinks I’m nuts. A neighbor kid lives next door to me and he’s 17. His uncle lives behind me and he was telling his uncle ‘that’s my hero!’”
Bryan planned the rides, even bought his first moped; he just needed a naked-looking bike, which he found in a Honda Ruckus. It was Thong Cape Scooter Man’s first form of transportation.
“You could see through the seat, it was just bare bones,” Bryan said. “No storage, nothing. Just a frame and a motor. I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be neat to ride a naked-looking bike, naked?’”
Thus, Thong Cape Scooter Man was born. His first ride occurred on Saint Patrick’s Day of 2012, a very hot year that saw Bryan in a fuzzy green hat and green shamrock cape. It was Easter weekend when Bryan wore a loin cloth and crown of thorns that he was pulled over for the first time.
“The cop asked me ‘why are you doing this?’ so I said to him, ‘Jesus died on Good Friday and he rose on Easter Sunday,” Bryan said. “And this was on a Saturday, and I said to the cop that no one really knows what happened on Saturday, so my guess is if Jesus had a scooter he’d be out on a scooter. And the cop wanted to laugh; you could see him starting to smile.”
According to Bryan, many Madison police officers love Thong Cape Scooter Man. They’ll smile, wave and talk to him. But a handful of officers don’t like him. One negative run-in with authorities occurred during a Badger football game when Bryan was stopped in traffic on busy Lake Street and approached by a policeman.
“He gets out of his car and walks up to me and says ‘I’m not amused. I want you out of here,’” Bryan said. “I wish I would’ve gotten his name; I should’ve written something to the city. Are we paying our cops to be amused? Or are we paying them to do a job? I was pissed.”
It started out as a little protest. Bryan participated in the first World Naked Bike Ride in Madison in 2010 and saw about 10 people receive citations for disorderly conduct, which turned into about a year-long court proceeding. Eventually the charges were dropped.
“The city told them ‘if you agree to not sue us, we will drop the charges,’” Bryan said. “Personally I don’t think they should have dropped. They should have sued the city. It pissed me off when they did that.”
So along with sweet silence and body acceptance, Bryan mainly rides because people get distressed over nudity.
“There are a lot of people that get upset because they think you’re naked,” he said. “You’re not even naked, but they think you are. So they’re upset.”
The thought of ditching his thong has crossed Bryan’s mind, and he is even confident he could go to court and win his case. But there’s a reason why he continues to keep his private parts private.
“I do believe what would happen though is they would pass an ordinance saying you can’t be nude,” Bryan said. “And that would ruin it for the naked bike ride and a lot of different things. So I don’t want to push that.”
Bryan encourages anyone wanting to ride with him to message him on Facebook at his Maddogbry account. You can wear a helmet to remain unidentified, but Bryan generally enjoys extreme outfits to match his own.
“I think it would be better to wear either nothing, next to nothing or overdress,” he said. “Prom dress, wedding gown, whatever. The two extremes I think look better than average.”
When Bryan isn’t riding around Madison for naked rights, he’s working fulltime Monday through Thursday at a job he has asked to remain private. He has a son and daughter in their late-twenties, early thirties, both of whom he believes do not know of his secret identity, although many of his friends and his girlfriend are aware of his unique hobby.
“If my son knows, he’s never let on that he does know,” Bryan said. “He knows I’m weird though. All my friends think I’m weird.”
Weird hobbies aside, Bryan also enjoys photography (nude models, of course), fishing and kayaking in his aptly named boat “Naked 4 Beer.” Although now, he spends much more time on his scooter than he used to spend on the water, because he simply enjoys riding so much. He completes around 2,500 miles a year on his rides, which include his first moped, a scooter and his “Spyder,” a massive three-wheeled bike bought for his eventual retirement and its simple and safe driving abilities.
“I don’t think I got on my scooter this year with clothes on. The Spyder, I might have put 50 miles with clothes on,” Bryan said. “I don’t find much enjoyment in riding a bike of any sort with clothes on.”
Along with human passengers, Thong Cape Scooter Man has been riding around town with a large gorilla hanging onto him, whose identity remains unknown. And the explanation for the primate passenger is probably not what you expected.
“There’s a sort of air bubble on the Spyder because of the windshield,” Bryan said. “I did do two rides on it with a cape. But that doesn’t work because the cape likes to wrap around like a bib. So that’s why I got the monkey, I needed an extra element.”
Because riding around in a thong just isn’t enough.
