Easter Island Fisherman

Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Easter Island Fisherman stands outside a seafood restaurant that opened in 1968 as a Polynesian eatery named Aku Aku -- a reference to an identically named 1950s book about Easter Island and its mysterious giant Moai heads. Appropriately, flanking the entrance to Aku Aku, were two 25-foot-tall replica Easter Island Moai, rendered as if carved from mahogany but more likely made of fiberglass.

When Aku Aku closed in 2000 the restaurant was converted to its current seafood theme. One of the heads vanished, but the other was sent away for what the new owner called "plastic surgery," and returned as a peculiarly elongated and cartoony old salt New England fisherman, outfitted in yellow rain gear, with pale skin, rosy cheeks, gray chin whiskers, and a tobacco pipe in his mouth.