New Top Banana At The Banana Museum

January 10, 2013

When you take over a banana museum, you’d better be ready to wear the banana suit.

Fred Garbutt wears oversized banana yellow glasses, a banana watch and locket, and a banana print Hawaiian shirt. He drives a banana yellow Volkswagen Beetle. His Chuck Taylor high-tops are lime green with yellow laces. “I tell people they’re not ripe yet,” he cracks.

Fred also owns a full-body banana suit (“I felt that the museum needed a mascot, just like Disneyland”) but he isn’t the one who wears it. “If I’m trying to attract attention,” he said, “I make my daughter put it on and go out front and start running around so people see her out on the highway.”

Going bananas over bananas came late in life to Fred. As of 2010 he was a contractor who built tennis courts, part of a family that also owned a liquor store out in the desert in Mecca, California. Then Fred’s mom read about how the entire collection of the Banana Club Museum — owned by former top banana Ken Bannister — was for sale on eBay. “I thought, hey, that would be a fun thing to do, have a banana museum,” she told us at the time. “Maybe people would want to stop just because it’s crazy.”

Fred liked the idea, bought the collection, and after two years of work transformed the bar next to the liquor store into the new International Banana Museum. It opened its doors in November 2012.

Fred has added 2,000 more banana items to the collection, which now numbers almost 20,000. He personally positioned all of them in the new museum: banana knives and forks, popsicles, a banana putter, kaleidoscope, telephone, banana nail polish, handbags, hair putty, band-aids. A seven-foot-tall banana with a monkey climbing it serves as a photo op. Fred scents the museum with banana nut bread candles and refreshes thirsty visitors with banana shakes, smoothies, and floats at the now-non-alcoholic bar.

“I would love to get a wall of celebrity photos, like they used to have at the Brown Derby,” said Fred. He already has one: of Ron Jeremy holding “Platty,” the museum’s squeaky-toy banana talisman. “It was The Big Banana meets the little banana,” said Fred, delighted.

Fred and the museum are an ideal match of his enthusiasm and its location, which is just exotic and far enough away that getting to the International Banana Museum becomes an adventure. “When people come in the door their mouths fall open almost every time,” said Fred. “It looks so much different inside than outside. And I get to watch them enjoy the heck out of it.”

“There’s just something about bananas,” he said. “A museum about apples or avocados wouldn’t be as much fun.”

Sections: Attraction News, Places
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What’s That Up Ahead? SlotZilla and Pole-Licker Flick

January 4, 2013

We officially enter the teens of the 21st century with the enthusiasm of college sophomores on their first road trip and the tempered caution of Dad steering Mom, Bud, and Sis through a rattlesnake ranch.

A number of attractions currently in mothballs are slated to return in 2013, among them the Giant Transformer Robot of Pittsburgh, the Unconditional Surrender statue of San Diego, and the World’s Largest Pair of Drumsticks in Ohio. The Cake Museum and Presidential Pet Museum are scheduled to reopen, as is the World’s Largest Light Bulb tower, shuttered since the 1990s.

There’s still no clue as to when Kickstarter-funded darlings such as the Robocop statue in Detroit and the Tesla Museum of Long Island might appear. Robocop really should arrive some time this year, but there probably aren’t laws to mete out prompt robot-justice to heel-dragging kickstarters.

Anniversaries? Harold Warp’s Pioneer Village — a five-Smiley roadside wonder — turns 60 in 2013, the World’s Oldest Time Capsule turns 75 (only 4,925 years until it’s opened), and General Sickles’ blown-off Civil War leg bone will celebrate its sesquicentennial (150th birthday) at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. April 3rd will mark 500 years since Ponce de Leon first set foot in Florida; his Fountain of Youth still hasn’t delivered as advertised (that we know of) but bold, de Leon-esque claims are a legacy of some of the Sunshine State’s most memorable attractions.

Notable destinations to debut in 2013 include the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum in Colorado, the Lee Harvey Oswald House in Texas, the Bourbon Visitor Center in Louisville (with its five-story tall liquor bottle), and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — which in March is scheduled to be transformed into the world’s largest permanent LED light show.

Many new, Roadside-worthy sculptures have appeared in recent years, and it’s impossible to know all of the outdoor creations that will debut in 2013, but one that we look forward to this year is Hammond, Indiana’s statue of the hapless Flick from A Christmas Story, forever in bronze with his tongue stuck to a pole.

Finally, we admit to being curious-despite-the-hype about “SlotZilla,” scheduled to debut in June in Las Vegas. It’s a zip line, but it’s being strung 11-stories-high above downtown Fremont Street, and its riders will actually slide down through a “slot” cut into the canopy of the multimedia Fremont Street Experience.

If you’d asked us a year ago what to expect in 2012, we’d have missed many full-of-awesomeness sights that have debuted over the past 12 months. It’s a huge continent, there are always unexpected things to see, and that’s what makes it fun to get into a car and drive.

Sections: Attraction News, Coming Soon, Tourism News
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Decoding The Mindfield

December 23, 2012

“I think most people have a conversation with themselves, but not in such an oddball way,” said Billy Tripp, creator of the Mindfield, a giant artwork in the little town of Brownsville, Tennessee. “Because my conversation is odd, it gets more attention than it deserves.”

Well, that — and the fact that it’s 130 feet tall and as big as a football field.

Billy views the Mindfield as something only relevant to himself, so he exerts little effort to make it understandable to others. We, however, thought that the artwork would be more enjoyable if people knew what they were looking at. But please don’t mistake us for artistic savants; we only know this stuff because Billy told it to us.

The canoe belonged to one of Billy’s favorite authors, William Least Heat-Moon, who used it as transportation for his book River-Horse: Across America by Boat. The circle above it represents the sun; the gray color symbolizes the afterlife. The large word “Begin” above it is the first and last word of Billy’s own book, The Mindfield Years, Vol. 1.

The happy girl silhouette represents Billy’s wife, Beth Shaw Tripp. The trident symbol above it is the Greek letter psi, also the symbol for psychology (Billy’s wife is a psychologist). The metal letters below it, “MF Interpreter,” stand for Mindfield Interpreter, a role that Beth has assumed on occasion.

The crescent-topped spire is currently the tallest point of the Mindfield. Cut into the web of the uppermost beam are silhouettes of three sets of hands (Billy and his two brothers) and a heart (Billy’s Mom). “I call that my Dad’s grave marker,” said Billy, “although he’s not buried there.”

In Honor of: Turd is painted on the bulbous upper part of the Mindfield water tower. “Most people think it’s a nickname,” said Billy, but he meant it as a way of saying that the lowliest thing is still worthy of respect. Billy said that he had a “backup plan” in case the town demanded “turd”s removal: bookend it with the letters S and Y, making it “In Honor of: Sturdy.”

Sections: Attraction News
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Professor Cline’s Year-End Statue Roundup

December 17, 2012

“Too bad my cloning machine has been broken,” said Mark Cline. This was a year in which there were many times he’d have liked to be in two places at once.

We spoke with Mark, creator of Foamhenge and countless oversized fiberglass roadside statues, just after he had flown in from Elberta, Alabama, where he’d been installing his two latest creations: Lady of the Lake, a giant half-submerged woman; and Bamahenge, the world’s first full-size fiberglass Stonehenge.

“I had to make Lady some new eyelashes since she lost some on the interstate,” said Mark. “Each is about two feet long. Maybelline would be proud.”

The two artworks wrap up what has been an eventful year for Mark. It began with his first ever honest-to-goodness art museum show; cratered with the malicious immolation of his Haunted Monster Museum; rode the fickle whims of celebrity with an on-again, off-again reality TV series; and somehow accommodated Mark’s usual output of dinosaurs, aliens, and giant ice cream cone men that always seem to be in demand.

Mark said that the fate of two more of his attractions — Dinosaur Kingdom and Hunt Bigfoot with a Redneck, which both abutted the now-destroyed Monster Museum — are currently in limbo, pending the decision of the property owner. Scrap or rebuild?

“Once I’m gone, they aren’t gonna find another Mark Cline to come in and weave the magic like this one did,” said Mark, but he added that he would accept whatever the owner decides.

Also unclear is the fate of Foamhenge, part of the same property. Mark built it out of styrofoam in 2004, and the elements (and moron vandals) have taken their toll. It needs maintenance and restoration work, but will the property owner be willing to pay for it? Mark said that he would rather tear Foamhenge down than let it crumble into a ruin more ruinous than the original Stonehenge, but it’s apparent that the project is still close to his heart.

“Foamhenge was a question on Jeopardy last night,” said Mark. “I done gone and hit the big time!”

As for the immediate future, Mark has big plans — which could be dismissed as mere bragging if he didn’t have such a good track record of completing his previous big plans. These include one project that’s simply too large and too secret to mention, and another that we’re only allowed to describe as “anything goes.”

Lest you think that Mark is merely blowing smoke, two upcoming projects that he isn’t shy about describing are a 14-foot-tall robot in Virginia holding a crushed motorcycle “as the cyclist is running to escape,” and a 150-foot-tall Jesus in North Carolina built to be one foot shorter than the Statue of Liberty.

“Guys like me just don’t know what retirement means,” said Mark, “which means we either love to take on a challenge or are too dumb to know what we’re getting into.” If building Stonehenges and giant robots connotes an absence of intelligence, then we wish more people were as emptyheaded as Mark Cline.

Sections: Attraction News, Tourism News
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Wacky Science Museum Named After Ross Perot

December 9, 2012

H. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire businessman, was known during his two failed bids as a presidential candidate for dancing with his wife to the song Crazy by Patsy Cline. It was his way of acknowledging that people considered him a little nuts.

Now a new generation will associate the Perot name with a new kind of nuts… an over-the-top science museum that cost $185 million to build.

(Keep in mind, of course, that we love “over-the-top” and “nuts” in all their myriad forms and colors)

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas was funded in part by a monstrously generous $50 million donation from Perot’s kids that resulted in the new facility being named after their parents. Ross and his wife cut the ribbon at the museum opening last week.

The intentionally off-kilter building is a 14-story-tall concrete cube broken by design clefts and strata. It was promoted by posters showing the building in the embrace of a Godzilla-size dinosaur. Outside is “Leap Frog Forest,” where huge amphibians glow an eerie green at night. Inside are 11 exhibition halls, musical stairs that play notes as you walk up and down, and a museum cafe operated by celeb chef Wolfgang Puck.

In the Bio Lab you can don a white coat and chop the head off a fruit fly larva. In the Sports Hall you can race for 55 feet against an athlete, a cheetah, or a Tyrannosaurus rex (Tip: pick the T-rex). In the Dynamic Earth Hall you can wobble on the “Earthquake Shake” floor during a mild tremor, or collapse like jelly when you choose the “extreme” setting.

From what we’ve read about it, the silliest part of the museum is probably the Hunt Energy Hall, named for the sponsoring oil company. It gives brief nods to eco-trendy power sources such as the sun and wind, but its principal goal is to sell “fracking,” the injection of fluids to blow out subterranean natural gas.

To that end the Hall features a comically oversized drill bit boring its way along one wall, and the “Shale Voyager” 4-D ride. The ride shrinks you to the size of a peanut, drills you over a mile into the earth, then blows you out with a cool whoosh of gas. The safety and environmental regulations for frackers are conveyed in a song.

“You Be the Cocoa Bean” attraction experiences have come a long way.

Our top pick for wack, however, would have to be The Perot’s Being Human Hall. There you can have yourself bathed in powerful light so that everyone can see your veins, view sliced human cadavers mounted in glass, and attempt to launch a ping pong ball with your mind.

Sections: Attraction News
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Bronze JFK: Alive In Fort Worth

November 20, 2012

Those familiar with the John F. Kennedy assassination know that the President flew into Dallas, Texas, on Air Force One, then was picked up by a motorcade and promptly driven to his doom. But most people don’t know that he didn’t fly to Dallas from Washington or some other far-off spot. He flew from Fort Worth, only a half-hour drive from the assassination site. Kennedy could have taken a limo to Dallas and probably arrived as early, if not earlier, saving a whole lot of gas and perhaps even his life.

This close proximity between presidential life and death has fueled the rivalry between the neighboring cities of Fort Worth and Dallas. It grew a little hotter this week with the unveiling of the JFK Tribute, across the street from the Fort Worth hotel where JFK spent his last night on earth. The Tribute features an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of President Kennedy, which stands on almost the exact spot that the real Kennedy stood on the morning of November 22, 1963, when he gave an impromptu speech to a crowd gathered in the hotel parking lot.

“This isn’t about the tragedy of Dallas,” said Betsy Price, mayor of Fort Worth, at the statue dedication. “This is about his life.”

The JFK Tribute tacitly beckons passers-by to pose with the giant President, a much more inviting memorial than the freakish Kennedy Assassination Cenotaph in Dallas.  Still, it has quirks. The statue was sculpted by Lawrence Ludtke who died five years before it was unveiled (There were many delays). Conceptual drawings show JFK with his right hand extended, ready to shake hands with the crowd just as he did on that fateful morning. But the finished statue instead has its hand in a clenched, upright fist, as if JFK is holding an invisible little American flag, waving it at a passing parade on Main Street. Or maybe he’s just shaking his fist at Dallas.

The statue is backed by granite walls inset with eight-foot-tall photos of JFK on his last morning on earth: Kennedy speaking to the crowd, JFK standing with Jackie in her soon-to-be-infamous pink suit and pillbox hat, etc. And so no one misses these images, they are lit from behind at night, and the statue has its own set of after-dark spotlights.

Sections: Attraction News, Statues
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