Next Spring, I will move from California to Georgia to quietly live out my sunset years (assuming another financial market crash doesn’t completely kill my retirement investments). One of the things I will miss most about living on the “left coast” will be the people who call the coastal communities home.
South of my home is the beach community of Cardiff-by-the-Sea. This town is actually a part of the city of Encinitas, but has its own ZIP code. Cardiff is known world-wide for its surfing conditions, but since 2007 it has also been known for the Cardiff Kook. The Cardiff Kook is a 16 foot tall bronze statue called, The Magic Carpet Ride. The statue, commissioned by the Cardiff Botanical Society and created by artist Matthew Antichevich, was intended to depict a surfer performing a “(backside) floater”, but the Botanical Society ran out of money, and thus the statue is missing any actual surf. The public never seemed to embrace the statue the way the Botanical Society hoped, but pranksters did and when the statue is vandalized it sometimes makes national news.
Vandals, which may the correct legal word, but certainly not the intent, have dressed the Kook as Oprah Winfrey, Osama bin Laden and Vincent van Gogh. The Kook has been eaten by a shark, grabbed by a pterodactyl, been a fan of the Chicago Bulls Basketball Team and has made a ton of marriage proposals. He’s mourned Michael Jackson and celebrated Zorro.
The statue, despite its original intent, will always be famous for being creatively vandalized. The website, The Cardiff Kook, has been keeping a photographic record of the statue’s many lives and is worth checking out.