Sneaking peeks at the porn clowns

Even flaming exhibitionists agree: Digital cameras and the Internet make invading a person's privacy much too easy.

By Daniel Terdiman

Mar 7, 2002 | Ouchy the Clown and his wife iKandi are, as their names might suggest, no strangers to attention. In the 2001 edition of the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Best of the Bay awards, Ouchy was named "Best marriage counselor who will beat you into reconciliation." It's not clear how much competition he had. For her part, iKandi was one of a group of guerrilla porn clowns who were recently thrown out of Macworld trying to promote their fake company, Evil Klown Industries LLC, and its iKlown Personal Digital Companion.

But when Ouchy and iKandi found pictures of themselves taken last fall at San Francisco's infamous Folsom Street Fair posted online, they got steamed. Ouchy had been performing his locally famous evil clown act, collecting $1 per minute spent flogging people on behalf of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, made up as he often is in a carefully-done fusion of white-face, red nose, black leather and lots of skin. IKandi, who has worked for years in public relations, was doing what she calls her "media bitch thing": trying to get the many would-be Annie Leibovitzes in the crowd to donate $1 per picture to the Sisters.

What they didn't know was that Stuart Zimmerman, the owner of a new photo storage Web site called Funpixs, was part of the camera-toting paparazzi. He snapped some shots of Ouchy and iKandi -- and several of their friends -- and then posted them on his fledgling site.

Flash forward several months to the day some friends sent Ouchy and iKandi a URL for the Funpixs pages where their Folsom Street Fair pictures were on display. Funpixs, which ostensibly bills itself as a place to store your own personal photographs, also functions as a site where people can buy hot images of hot people doing hot things at hot events.

They blew up, and iKandi fired off a furious message demanding the shots be removed. A couple hours later, a response arrived, granting her wish. But the message was hardly contrite. "[K]eep in mind that you were photographed at a PUBLIC EVENT and knew quite well that your picture would be taken probably hundreds -- if not thousands -- of times without your permission and without any say as to what is done with them. That is just your implied consent for being there and dressing up to attract attention."

Next Page: When a Hustler photographer ogled iKandi, it was OK. He asked permission

• View blog reactions