Fighting crime in the streets together

Bridget’s grandfather lives in Marquette, Michigan, way the fuck up on the Upper Peninsula, miles from nowhere. (The closest city is Green Bay, which is a couple of hours away.) Going up there this past weekend, we drove past this big cast-iron dinosaur, which we thought had something to do with an Indian casino that was pretty close-by. Nope. Turns out it’s Lakenland, this homemade sculpture garden/theme park type of thing, owned and put together completely by this local artist kook type.

This guy (whose name, fortuitously enough, is Tom) writes on this big welcome sign that he’s never been to a sculpture garden, but that he thinks this is what one would look like. And he’s made all these sculptures out of metal, and they all look cool as hell. He also writes that people from this one local township keep harrassing him, so he’s got all these word bubbles up next to his assorted metal monsters: “Township Man better stop bothering Tom”, “Township Man can go jump in a lake lol”, that type of thing. Some sculptures are all about how the union he used to be in took all his pension money. There’s also the 9-11 stuff you knew would be there, as well as a gigantic pig that represents Enron eating a map of the U.S. and shitting all over a tiny person that’s labelled as the American taxpayer or whatever. The whole thing is just awesome, and I’d recommend visiting if I thought anyone reading this would ever find themselves near Marquette, Michigan.

It warms my heart that there’s still these weird little pockets of sui generis artistry out there in the world, stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with the internet. (There’s a Lakenland website, but I guess the domain name has expired.) Salutes to another Tom.