Topless activist arrested for stripping off outside restaurant

London - A topless activist celebrating the 20th anniversary of being able to bare breasts in public was arrested for stripping off - in front of a restaurant in Times Square.

Holly Van Voast was arrested and handcuffed outside the mid-town New York branch of the popular ‘breastaurant’ ‘Hooters’ and taken away for a three-hour ‘mental evaluation’.

“I wanted to have a fun time eating chicken wings and honouring a day that is important to me, it wasn’t even anything against Hooters for me,” the Daily Mail quoted her as telling The Gothamist.

“I just thought that it’s funnier than doing a typical demonstration type event outside City Hall or something.

“I guess a lot of people prefer me to be an activist, but so many activists and activist activities don’t seem to have a sense of humor, and that’s important to reach people,” she said.

The 46-year-old, who sometimes goes by her transgender character Harvey, said that she wanted to mark the 20th anniversary of a court ruling making it legal to go topless in New York State.

She thinks that it was passersby, rather than staff at Hooters itself, who called the police to report her behaviour.

And of her stay at Roosevelt Hospital, she said that the doctor wasn’t aware of the law.

“The doctor had no idea it was legal to be topless in NY. He checked it out, said it was very interesting to hear.

“I was very lucky a photographer was there to document what had happened,” she said.

This was, she said, because “it’s not an uncommon occurrence for me. Most of the times I end up in an ambulance I can reason with people and I can leave”.

Van Voast was celebrating the NY State Appeals Court 1992 ruling that exposure of a bare female breast violates the NY state penal code only when it takes place in a commercial context.

This means women are free to flaunt their assets anywhere else in the city.

In the past, she has gone bare breasted in Grand Central Station, the Statue of Liberty, the Staten Island Ferry, and Manhattan Criminal Court.