currents - Pacific San Diego Magazine

currents
first things
coolture
HOME BODY action
chainsaw
HARD BODIES
statues and other firm memorials
B y C o o k i e “ C h a i n s a w ” R a n d o l p h
Photo by Brevin Blach
America loves paying tribute to icons—alive, dead or nameless—
and that passion burns in San Diego.
The very-much-alive Tony Gwynn never won baseball’s triple
crown, but he’s won the triple crown of monuments: the Aztecs’
Tony Gwynn Stadium, Tony Gwynn Way which skirts Petco Park and the
Tony Gwynn statue inside Petco’s Park at the Park.
Gwynn’s our version of Oprah—everywhere he goes, there’s something
named after him. Maybe that’s why, whenever I go to an Aztecs game, I
check under my seat for keys to a new VW Beetle.
San Diego native Ted Williams was born (and died) too late to receive those
kinds of memorials. Plus he left San Diego as a young man; plus he was kind of
crabby. What he did get was a stretch of state Route 56 in North County called
Ted Williams Parkway—which, unless he got lost one day looking for a creek to
fish, he never personally tread until the 1992 dedication.
The San Diego Ice Arena in Miramar might be a more fitting tribute
for the Splendid Splinter, what with his body currently being cryogenically
preserved until science learns how to regenerate dead tissue (the erectile
dysfunction industry has made huge strides for at least one organ so far).
Let us consider the genesis of our obsession with naming things after
people. The trend traces back to Biblical times.
Young Moses never forgot the summer
vacation between second and third
grades when his parents drove
him and his brother Aaron
(“you kids stop the horseplay, or I’ll
turn this asscart right back around”)
through the intersection of Sodom and
Gomorrah in downtown Leviticus Township for
the first time, craning their necks to see the gigantic
statues of Adam and Eve.
(Continued on page 32)
Chainsaw
prepares for his
golden moment
with Nurse
Amazon.
30 pacificsandiego.com {July 2011}