People were just artsier back then. I thought about the wood sculptures I used to see along the freeway in Berkeley, you'd see them even from the windows of the bus to the city sometimes.

So I went looking for a picture of the Dinosaur, or the Viking (who I remember was wearing a helmet that looked like his head was the sun radiating)

All I found was this:


—does anyone remember?—the Mudflat Sculpture in the tidela nds beyond the Eastshore Freeway before it was expanded and “improved.”

At high tide much of it was underwater. But if you happened to be driving to San Francisco at low tide, you could see Don Quixote on his rearing horse, a prop plane ready to take off from what looked like a buoy, a huge hand rising from the swampy tidelands clutching at the setting sun—and dozens of other creations that appeared and disappeared, made from driftwood and trash and whatever people could manage to cart out there in defiance of “No Trespassing” signs.

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2005-06-07/article/21570?headline=Commentary-Mudflat-Sculpture-Art-to-Remember-By-DOROTHY-BRYANT

(And I tell you, those mudflats were stinky even on the bus going past, and once in they were slippery and you'd slide through green mud. That fish and the dog and the guy waving were there the same time I was. I'd always wave back to the guy, the one on the right with little bits of wire and strung wood as his face, who was waving his long stick fingers at me: "Hello!" even going past on the bus, but on the bus I would have to be a bit constrained. I'd put my arm across the bottom of the window and give him a little surreptitious wave.

Back in a distant time, and an ancient place called "tidela nds". Perhaps a typo for tidelands.)  ¶ 1/05/2011 01:30:00 PM