I’m Assuming His Attorney Didn’t Advise Him To Do This Interview

For someone awaiting sentencing on a misdemeanor charge of public lewdness, raw-food restauranteur and renowned subway flasher Dan Hoyt seems rather unrepentant:

Without skiing or bike racing as an outlet, he took to exposing himself in public. He is very matter-of-fact about it. “It’s the possibility of being caught or discovered, the thrill of doing something crazy,” Hoyt says, comparing the feeling to one he had many years ago, when he was skiing Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon and abruptly veered from the trail, flying off a 40-foot cliff for no reason. “I’ve raced motorcycles, raced bicycles, skied competitively. I’ve hit trees at 60 miles an hour. Been run over by a motorcycle. I’ve broken arms, broken my leg, tore cartilage in my knee.”

Since 1994, when he was arrested for a lewd display on the 8th Street N/R platform, his thrill-seeking hadn’t gotten him into trouble with the law again — until recently. Hoyt says he doesn’t make a habit of touching himself on the subway, but he occasionally reveals his penis in other settings. “There have been situations in a bar or nightclub where you’re fooling around with somebody and yeah, you’re exposed. It’s nothing really accessible. Just sort of hidden, but risky. If someone looked closely, they could see what’s going on.”

Some people are offended. “Everybody has their limitations,” Hoyt says. “For some people, it’s very, very wrong. Everybody has things to hide — things they don’t tell their best friend. I’ve seen Websites with scat and stuff and I think, What? Who would possibly be excited about that? But there are people who probably look at me and say, ‘How could that possibly be exciting in any way?’ “As for his R-train exploits, Hoyt says, “I’ve met women who enjoy it. After this incident happened, I had a woman tell me, ‘You know, that sounds exciting to me.’ She wouldn’t mind being on the other end.”

. . .

In his account, the perpetrator is [the victim], who misread his intentions (he claims he was already mid-masturbation when she stepped onto the train) and then humiliated him by posting his picture on the Web. He says he didn’t even realize he’d been photographed. “Even so, I wouldn’t imagine somebody throwing it up on the Internet for millions of people and destroying your life like that,” he says. “It’s one thing to take it to the police. But on the Internet, I read a lot of people saying, ‘That was not too cool of her. That was really screwed up.'”

Hoyt believes that if he and [the victim] had only met under different circumstances, she might really like him. “You know, she’d go, ‘That guy’s pretty cool. He’s got this restaurant, and he’s fun,’ “Hoyt says. “She’d probably want to go out with me.”