Archive for March, 2008

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Roadside Creatures: Monster Pig Story

Monday, March 31st, 2008

College road trip through the rural south. Our gas gauge below empty, we rolled into a no-service service station, miles from the interstate. The garage bays were open. The office door creaked in the hot breeze. No attendant. Everyone was gone…where? Suddenly, as if in answer, an inhuman grunting echoed off of the pumps. Around [...]

Surprise! Dillinger Museum Reopens

Monday, March 31st, 2008

A fascinating “Crime and Punishment” tourist attraction has returned to public view. We first visited this shrine to former Public Enemy No 1 in the 1980s, when it was owned by Dillinger fanatic Joe Pinkston in Nashville, Indiana, and visited again in the ’90s. Joe died in 1996, and the collection (including John Dillinger’s death [...]

Ultimatum for World’s Largest Pile of Oil Cans

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

One of the tallest things in North Dakota, the World’s Largest Pile of Oil Cans, has been given a May 29 eviction date by its current owners. The 45-ft. tall pile was built in Casselton the 1930s next to a gas station, and quickly became a popular attraction. Its stewardship was assumed in 1973 by [...]

“Unconditional Surrender” Headed Back East?

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

And people in San Diego were just getting used to the World’s Largest Random Embrace. A brief news item on Florida news station WWSB claims that Sarasota, FL’s city commissioners have welcomed a return east to the city of the towering sailor – smooching – nurse statue. “Unconditional Surrender,” by artist Seward Johnson, is a [...]

Tucson Tiki Noggin To Survive Magic Carpet

Friday, March 28th, 2008

The immense stucco sculptures that have awed patrons of Magic Carpet Golf in Tucson, AZ since the 1970s will be saved. Well, most of them, anyway. Fears were raised earlier this year when it was learned that a Mercedes-Benz dealership from Phoenix had bought the old mini-golf course and was planning to bulldoze the Sphinx, [...]

Shame of the North

Friday, March 28th, 2008

An editorial in the March 25 Niagara Falls Reporter lambastes America for its wimpy approach to tourism in the face of a Canadian juggernaut. It notes that not a single new tourist attraction has opened in Niagara Falls, New York, since 1982, and that was a shopping mall that didn’t survive the 1990s. “In the [...]

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