Comments on: Remember This: Champions for wasting money

By: RdwithCypress

RdwithCypress — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 17:04:04 +0000

Okay Len,
Thanks for the link. Letter to OMCCF & CEDA
Dear Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Greg Hunter & Walter Cohen, let’s make it easier to build live work spaces. Between residential and industrial sites. Let’s provide better venues for Art shows. Let’s allow are Artists to have their gallery parties. Lets allow permits for Art and Wine Festivals in East and West, Like other cities do. Everyone likes these festivals.

By: len raphael

len raphael — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:50:01 +0000

re Oakland icons and monuments: if our ex mayor Elihu Harris got indicted re the Peralta College financial and academic mess, would the state buildng get renamed to the Don Perata Building?

By: len raphael

len raphael — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:31:03 +0000

how’s the chiodo creature coming along?
http://www.remember-them.org/artiststatement.htm

listening to kqed re golden gate bridge; how engineering projects and large sculptures can do great things for cities. we got the chiodo creature

By: Freddy

Freddy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:38:43 +0000

In other news, its plinth is now a burgeoning skatepark.

By: len raphael

len raphael — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 07:32:17 +0000

send those emails out to the Creature’s larger donors because the unsubstantiated rumor is that the project is running out of money.

question: is the city obligated to maintain the Creature forever if only stage 1 is completed?

By: KenO

KenO — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:35:47 +0000

Len, good idea.

Not to enter an ad hominem here, but the ChiodoCreature sounds like Frodo Creature, and brings to mind the bankster gnome-like phrase “my preciousss” and other imagery.

I hope the sculpture is never built. Maybe Parisians thought the same of Eiffel, and San Franciscans of Transamerica Pyramid, but my those were different times: steadily growing resources available to the world, and ever more money created based on them.

By: Dave C.

Dave C. — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:55:37 +0000

That sculpture could make a fun climbing structure for young kids. That is, until one of them falls and hurts himself, and the city attorney’s office settles a multi-million dollar lawsuit, and then a fence has to be erected around the whole thing in order to prevent further injury.

By: len raphael

len raphael — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:20:30 +0000

The CC (Chiodo Creature) needs to be fed about 4 mill $ more to grow to his full 60ton, 1/3 football field size according to the sfgate article.

Question is whether the major donors can be convinced to donate more or whether the project gets quietly scaled down.

Just a short polite email to each of the public major donors listed at
just to let them know that the project is controversial would help them make the right decision when they have to decide whether to donate more.

http://www.remember-them.org/donors.htm

By: Livegreen

Livegreen — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:26:04 +0000

Or the emporer who wore no clothes. I only hope it’s the meaning & purpose of the statue that’s concentrated on, and not the poor quality of the statue itself (at least as I’ve seen it so far. Since my viewing has been ltd to the online photos I could b mistaken).

This is emblematic of Oakland on at least several counts: –Idealism implemented without regards to costs; –Attempting to do something really big (perhaps in a vain attempt to catch up to SF in one leap) when the City has challenge executing smaller projects; –Paying attention only to the Ideal but falling short in execution; –Buying into the project as much or more because of the insider connections of it’s creator than the ideal itself. –Working on secondary goals while ignoring or procrastinating primary needs (the budget, crime, etc.).

Look at just about any CC meeting Agenda & see the # of non-essential issues that outnumber priorities.

Any other parallels?

By: len raphael

len raphael — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:45:50 +0000

reminds me of the line from Arsenic and Old Lace, where peter lorrie (the defrocked plastic surgeon) explains why the new face he gave the evil brother makes him look like Boris Karloff.

“oh Jonny, I’m so sorry. I saw that horror picture just before I operated. I was a little drunk”

Then there’s scene in Alien, where all the faces are pushing out thru the cocoon, waiting to be eaten.