While Willie, my godson, and his dad, Big Johnny, were hanging out at the world’s most dangerous playground… (see last two posts)… I walked over to the Berkeley Marina. There happens to be a statue there that I helped to make, many years ago… but we will get to that…

First, some random pictures of San Francisco.

Because that is a city that photographs well.

From any angle…

Okay, so, the statue story. That thing is really tall, like over twenty feet. It is hollow. It is made of a frame consisting of bent steel rebar covered with chicken wire. Then, cement, mixed with some paint, was smeared over the whole thing. It weighs tons. There is also a drain in the back of the lions mouth… that leads to a pipe… that leads to the lion’s junk… so, when it rains, it looks like the lion is peeing. More on this… I mean, the statue, not the lion’s junk… in a moment…

More random Bay Area photos.

Almost done…

One gratuitous shot of the Golden Gate in the hazy distance. I like the way the pier leads your eye out to it. And if you turn around from that very spot on the Berkeley marina… you see this…

The statue… that I helped make. So, long story short: Had a girlfriend back in the late 70’s, early 80’s, and she met this artiest who traveled around Asia, taking photos of art, then coming back and recreating it… bigger. This is some good luck god from somewhere. An archer riding on what is supposed to be… supposedly… a lion. The three of us… I mean, the artist, my girlfriend, and I, not me, the luck god and the lion… made this thing on his driveway… but that isn’t the funny part… this is the Bay Area, for cryin’ out loud.

The artist wanted to donate the statue to the city of Berkeley. They said it would take at least 7 years to decide if they wanted it and if so, where they would put it. So, the artist rented a flatbed truck and a big crane, dressed some friends up in reflective road-crew vests, and dropped it off one night at the marina. Then the city said they were going to sue him… but it would probably take 7 or more years to figure out how much to sue him for, and whether to arrest him as well.

But, while the city went through its ponderous process, the people of the city fell in love with the lion-riding, arrow-shooting, good-luck-giving god, and decided they wanted it right where it was… so the city gave up and now it just sits there, a weird part of my history, and the history of Berkeley… that almost nobody knows about… except us.