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Roadside News: Jan. 21, 2009

January 21, 2009

• Flood Warning

- June 2008: Flood swamps International Wrestling Museum in Waterloo, Iowa

- December 2008: Flood swamps Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas

- January 2009: Flood swamps Memorial Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

The press blames various causes, but maybe all of this water has gradually worked its way south from here?  Heads up, Texas!  Watch out, Bayou Bob!

• Stupid Shoe Tree: A previously unreported shoe tree in Toquerville, Utah, was “mysteriously torched” and cut down a few months ago — and now its successor is threatened as well.  ”A Toquerville city councilman admitted to us he cut down the old tree after it burned … [and] says he’s planning to cut down the new one too because he thinks the whole idea is stupid.”

• Biggest Floating Tourist Attraction: We were pleasantly surprised to read a couple of week ago that the ocean liner Queen Mary — docked in Long Beach, California — was giving everyone in California the chance to visit for free.  Now we know why.  Its owners are hoping that someone will buy it.

• Rosa Parks Photo Ops:

A race has been underway to be the first bus station dedicated to bus-sitting civil rights icon Rosa Parks.  She sat in Montgomery, Alabama — but the honor has just been won by: Eugene, Oregon?

“Eugene is believed to be the first U.S. city to dedicate a bus station to Parks, just ahead of projects scheduled in Detroit and Dallas….”  The station also has a life-size statue of Rosa that you can sit next to for snapshots. (East coasters can always visit the Great Blacks In Wax Museum to bond with Ms Parks.)

• Scissorhands Sculpture: The University of South Florida in Tampa has spent $27,000 to erect an over-eight-foot-tall topiary bull.  ”…this piece of art is much less than a larger sculpture would be. In fact, the artist who created this was also the same one who did the topiary work in the movie Edward Scissorhands.”  We would like it even more if Pearl Fryar had created it — but the bull certainly seems to trump the topiary pigs of rival Central Florida college town Winter Park.

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