Thursday, May 26, 2005

Public Art and No Bicycles on the SLU Campus

When I ride my bike to work, I cut through the Saint Louis University campus. Early in the morning there are few people wandering around there, which gives me time to gaze at all the bad public art. There are all those terrible bronze statues, including the Billiken, some odd, Norse god, a sort of kewpie doll and the mascot of the school's athletic teams. Then there's the statue of the Native American bowing to Bishop Dubourg and the statue of Pope Pius, the Fascist Holy See, giving the peace sign. But the really scary statues are the ones of students sitting frozen on benches, and, of course, the laughing concrete dolphins squirting water out of their mouthes.

The obvious collegiate icons missing on the SLU campus are bicycles. There are very, very few, which I find weird.