Monday, September 04, 2006

Not Your Average American Monument

Posted by Picasa This colossal and controversial bronze sculpture of Lenin sits in front of the Toco Del Mar restaurant plaza in the heart of the Fremont district's commercial zone. It is huge and it is for sale for $150,000. Last Christmas season I noticed it was strung with red lights! The story of the sculptor, the statue's toppling in the former Chechoslovakia in 1989, and how it came to Fremont can be viewed here. It is believed to be the only depiction of Lenin among flames and rifles instead of more common statues of him carrying a book and such. To give you an idea of its size, if you click on the photo to enlarge it you can better see a man's foot (wearing a flip flop)just visible to the left behind the statue.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

whao! its huge!
did u hire the man to stand there? :)

Ame said...

Are you KIDDING me? That monstrosity is GINORMOUS! LOL! Can't believe it's on public display and is actually for sale...hmmmmmm....wonder how long you'll have to live with it! Hurry, someone cough up some dough quick-like! It'd make a great paperweight! LOL! ;-)

Ame said...
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Kate said...

Fascinating story and unusual. Photo is very good. Thanks for the "foot" explanation.

Kim said...

Kris, no, I didn't hire the guy to stand there. In fact I had to wait a heck of long time for him to get OUT of view. He seemed to want to be a celebrity ;-). In the end, I was glad his foot was visable, so that there was some way to judge scale. Have any of you had that problem with "hams" wandering on purpose into your viewfinder?
-Kim