Dodge City, Kansas: La Salsa Muffler Man

Maybe not so permanent as advertised. Went to see La Salsa Man at his latest advertised location and he's not there! Instead there's a row of shiny new fast food joints. Did some research and found a newspaper article from July, 2017 suggesting he'd be installed on 3rd by the SMH Consultants building, alas, no Salsa Man and his friend is missing as well! Salsa Man got outta Dodge!?

The late Dennis Hopper was an artist as well as a movie star. For the first ten years of his life he lived in Dodge City, Kansas; his adult relationship with his birthplace was rocky.

So Dodge City isn't quite sure what to do with a gift bequeathed to it from the Dennis Hopper Art Trust: two Muffler Men customized by Hopper into "La Salsa Man" -- a caricatured Mexican -- and "Mobil Man" -- a gas station attendant. The county commission unanimously voted to put the statues in Dodge City's new expo center.

The city commission unanimously voted against it, but that's where they were unveiled on May 21, 2013. A letter from the administrator of the Dennis Hopper Art Trust describes the statues as, "large, impactful, and a defiant blend of Californian and Southwestern culture mixed with Hollywood grandeur."

They don't really fit with the expo center's usual displays of tractors and irrigation pumps, so Dodge City wants, eventually, to move them to an outdoor park near its Boot Hill Museum. But there could be problems with that as well; these unique Muffler Men are technically works of art by a famous person; La Salsa Man was once exhibited in Paris. Sticking them outdoors in Dodge City might not be in their best interests.

As Dodge City vice-mayor Brian Delzeit explained to us, "We get high winds, hail, ice, and snow. It will be interesting to see how the fellows stand up to our weather." Brian also mentioned that the Boot Hill Museum, years ago, had its own Muffler Man -- a cowboy named Big Matt -- but he's gone now.

Brian didn't go into details, but we know why the cowboy left town -- he was frequently decapitated by the Kansas wind, and eventually moved to Yuma, Arizona, with an entirely new (and strange) head.