PandaMania

When I visited Washington DC a couple years ago, there was a city wide art display called PandaMania with decorated panda bears. Below are a couple of the pictures I took of them.

I hadn't realized that it was a temporary display at the time, and that the bears would be auctioned off. I thought it was a permanent display - like the New Glarus Painted Cows.

The panda to the right was hanging around at the National Zoo.


This was my favorite panda, because of all the jewels on it. It was in front of the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, which is pretty upscale. Its official name is "Ling Ling in the Sky with Diamonds"











Perennial Panda was found sitting in a flower bed near the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, near the Adams Morgan/Zoo metro station.








Yin-Yang was found standing outside the entrance to the National Zoo.


And of course, you can't forget about the real pandas!

Painted Cows

I've been trying to find some reasonably priced plane tickets to go to Wisconsin for Christmas. In the process, I ran across an article about the Cow Parade of Wisconsin this year.




This is a bit of a rip-off from the New Glarus Painted Cows, which they ripped off from the painted cows in Zurich Switzerland airport. The difference between the New Glarus Painted Cows and those in the Cow Parade is that New Glarus permanently displays them, rather than having them as a temporary display and then auctioned off for charity.




There are about 15 of them in all and scattered around town. At least the cows make sense to me. Some cities have now adopted similar types of gimmicks that may or may not make sense. For instance, Washington DC had PandaMania in 2004 where 150 painted panda statues were scattered throughout the city for several months before being auctioned off. This sort of makes sense since the pandas are still a major attraction at the National Zoo. On the other hand, last winter Phoenix had Guitar Mania -a temporary display of 75 painted 10-ft tall guitars that were auctioned for charity. They are planning to repeat it again this year. I'm still trying to figure out how a guitar is symbolic of Phoenix. I guess some mysteries will remain just that.