The Botanical Society of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, a southern California beach community, wanted to honor the area's surfer culture. It raised $120,000, hired a local surfer-sculptor who had trained in Florence, Italy, and got what it believed was a great bronze statue, which was unveiled on July 22, 2007. Named "Magic Carpet Ride," it depicts a teenaged boy doing a "floater" on a broken wave. "The expression on his face," said Michael Clark, a member of the Surf Sculpture Committee, "is one of, 'Oh wow, I get it!'"

Not everyone in Cardiff agrees. Especially loud in their criticism are what Clark calls "middle-aged surfer guys" (by middle-aged, Clark explained, he meant anyone older than 29) who insist that the statue is an embarrassment. The surfer boy is too pansyish, they complain; his pose is dorky. By extension, the statue ennobles surfers who aren't surfers at all, but surfing-wannabes -- the accountants and insurance agents and tourists who buy thousand-dollar boards, come to Cardiff, and get in the way. The kind of people that real surfers hate more than anything.

Magic Carpet Ride has been pranked by its critics, which takes some effort given that it stands 16 feet in the air and is next to a busy highway. "They put a pink, pleated skirt on it with a bikini top and a Mexican wrestling mask on its head," Clark told us. "Then somebody tried to put a top hat and cane on it, but they got caught." Clark, however, accepts the protests in a laid-back, southern California kind of way. "Everybody in Cardiff prides themselves in having their own opinion," he told us. "I totally respect that."

Clark says that there are no plans to replace the statue or to modify it to please those who find it offensive. Magic Carpet Ride, all 10,000+ pounds of it, will remain just as it is. "Frankly, I'm just pretty okay with it," Clark told us. "We did what we could. No agendas."

February 10, 2012

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