…you got up to check, didn’t you?
Critter Con 14
Day Two: In which we see a giant that is NOT Jesus, have slide races, and visit the Museum of Just Plain Goofy Shit.
We woke up at the crack of 9:00 this morning and Sweetie had the Bus on the road by the time we were out of the shower. Breakfast was great, of course, and since the ride from Bakersfield to Long Beach is about 2.25 hours on a good day, we spent our after breakfast time talking and playing a couple of dice games.
When we got to Long Beach, our first roadside attraction was visible from 100 feet away, because it was a 65 foot tall statue of a poodle. There were plenty of Ooohs & Awws, and one “Thank goodness it’s not Jesus!”
The story of Bill the Poodle, starts 20 years ago when local residents and characters Frank and Olivia East got a standard poodle puppy that they named Bill. Avid walkers and frequenters of local gathering places, they met a great many folks, all of whom loved Bill. Over the next 15 years, Bill became a local celebrity. When he died at 15.5 years of age, 6,000 people showed up at his memorial service when his ashes were cast out into the ocean.
Almost immediately thereafter, a movement started to create a memorial to the popular pooch. Since Frank and Olivia were also artists, they decided to create a large statue of bill. Three years and $300,000.00 later, the statue of Bill sits there, across the highway from the beach, looking out to sea.
Now a pretty big tourist attraction, you can stand outside and look for free, but to climb all the way to the top will cost you five bucks. We ponied up our money and went inside. The walls along the spiral staircases (one up, one down) are lined with thousands of pics of Bill alone, with people, with other dogs, and with other species of animals. It was pretty great, because you start with puppy pix, and go through the years as you go up. Bill’s final photo, of him sitting on a sofa, is large and right between the eye windows.
There is a gift shop and we bought a bunch of stuff.
On the D. Cross Giant Statue Rating Scale, this one rated as follows.
Size: 2 It was 65 feet tall.
Climbability: 5 The spiral stairs are wide enough to walk two abreast and the photos make for a slow and easy climb.
Appearance: 10 Very lifelike looking and exceptionally well maintained
Pose: 10 What is more iconic than a good boy smiling a big doggie smile and looking out to sea.
“Religiosity”: 10 Sure, it’s not a religious statue, but if you like dogs, that life told in photos is gonna grab your heart.
Once we departed Giant Bill, we went for ice cream at a local shop, then piled into the Bus and headed out to San Diego. Actually, we were going to El Cajon, but we were gonna eat lunch in San Diego first.
To kill the two hour drive time, we all went into the newly renovated and enlarged Slide Room and decided to do slide races. The room configured itself to have 8 two mile long slides, each with different but pretty similar twists and turns. They also followed all 4 walls, as well as the floor and ceiling and much of the interior of the room. Speed was controlled via a thing that looked like a bicycle hand grip. The harder you squeezed, the faster you went. The race was set for 5 laps.
Did I mention that each slide had at least one jump and a loop? They did.
The bell rang, we squeezed our controls and the race was on. We were all going pretty close to maximum speed (60 mph), but some of us (Grace, Cakes) were a bit more cautious on turns and such. The rest of us were more competitive and had several spin outs and “wrecks”, where we fell over and dropped our controls. The loops were okay, but the jumps were pretty damned thrilling.
In the end, Sasha came in first, Mary came in second, and Sam barely beat me out for third place. It was a fun way to kill time.
Our next roadside attraction was actually in an old medium sized shopping mall in Lemon Grove, a suburb of San Diego. We rolled in at 2:30 and I revealed that we would be visiting the Museum of Just Plain Goofy Shit.
Yes, that is the real name of it on the big sign that used to say Sears in the heyday of this mall. Every one of us was very interested in seeing what this place held.
We paid our $5.00 each and started on our guided tour. Our guide, a pleasant young lady named Kim, told us that the museum started out with her grandfather and a couple of his buddies, all in their early 20s, back in the 1950s. It seems that they used to hit up auctions and flea markets to see who could buy the “goofiest damn thing” they could find, then they would compare their finds over a few cold ones. After a while, they also started buying stuff advertised in magazines and on radio & TV.
If you’ve guessed that this lead to a big accumulation of goofy shit, you guessed right. Ten years ago, after inheriting yet another pile of stuff from one of his buddies passing away, Grandpa Artie decided to put it all in the cheaply rented mall store, honestly name it, and then see what happened.
What happened was that it became a Mecca for both roadside attraction junkies, goofy shit aficionados, and people who just wondered what the fuck the place was.
And folks, the place is GREAT! From “health foods” to tools of dubious effectiveness to WTF kitchenware, electronics, and a thousand other things, the sheer amount of stuff is mindboggling. It’s also hilarious, because early on, Grandpa Artie and the boys started audio recording their thoughts on various items. All of those words have been transcribed, swear words included, and are posted with the stuff.
We spent 2 hours wandering around and only saw maybe a third of everything, which prompted me to buy the 5 DVD set of Artie and Company, narrating a full tour.
And you betcha, we got shirts, fridge magnets, bumper stickers and a bunch of other stuff.
Back on the Bus and feeling pretty hungry, we tucked into a truly epic taco bar, then settled in to watch Star Trek episodes from Earth 3-G, where it had a double the episode budget, better special effects, and ran for 6 years. After 3 hours of that, it was just sitting around chatting.
Our stop for the night is in Skull Valley, Arizona, because fuck yeah! We’ll arrive there around 11:00 tonight.
Tomorrow: Fun and adventure in Arizona!
Starting Destination Sign: Metropolis
Ending Destination Sign: Winkie Country
Radio Station: WJAZ, New York, Earth 1-D, 1936
The Dociverse Blog 