Badmovies.org Forum

http://www.dunnvilleonline.ca/thebigmudcat/chronicle.htm

Oh man - has your town ever embarrassed you?  A fifty-foot plastic fish???  Whoich will end up costing about $100K all told?  This article is from two years ago, but they have now selected a site for this incredible tourist magnet: a park on the edge of town.  Just think: in a couple of years, I can direct people to my home saying, "...then turn left at the big plastic fish..."

The town is divided: half of us are in mudcat denial (the town has long been associated with the fish - ugh) and the other half seem to think this will be a source of economic salvation... 

How many of you would or have travelled to see the giant goose in Wawa ON?  The giant buffalo in Jamestown ND?  The Big Nickel in Sudbury ON?  The giant Holstein cow in WI?  The Paul Bunyon statue (wherever it is)?

I always stop at these things if I'm in the neighorhood.  I wouldn't make them a destination or anything, but they are good fun if you stumble on them. 
-Ed

Yeah, if I'm travelling in the area, I'll make a side trip to look at something like that. Been to the giant goose at Wawa a couple of times, the big nickel at Sudbury, the big thermometer at White River, giant Muskoka chairs at both Gravenhurst and South River, the giant muskie in Kenora, and even a couple of roadside flying saucers.

Actually, with a four-lane superhighway under construction, all of the towns in my area are thinking about what is going to happen when the tourists who used to drive through will be going around, and just how to entice some of them to take the exit and look around.

That's what a giant fish (or whatever) is all about. Nobody is going to make a special trip to see it (some would, but not that many). However, if they're passing through, they might plan a stop, especially if they have kids. It's just enough to entice people to go that little bit out of their way.

Funny that you should post this. I just wrote a column that went out in today's paper on this very subject, although intended as humour.

http://www.almaguinregion.com/almaguin/article/112157 (http://www.almaguinregion.com/almaguin/article/112157)

In Paris TN  a few miles from here, there is a scale Efile Tower about a 100 feet tall or so and a giant Fiberglass catfish about 30 feet long, because Paris claims to be the catfish fry capital of the universe and well it's Paris and has to have a Efile Tower!!!! Ok what ever ...
(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1412/1325547434_778fccde9d.jpg?v=0)
(http://www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/es/tn/es_tn_fish_1_m.jpg)

I've seen them both just because I drove by them, I wouldn't plan a trip around it ... if the town wants economic salvation they'd been better off investing that 100K in oil futures. Because I haven't seen a huge tourist industry spring up around Paris.

What I don't get is why Dunnville is doing a giant roadside attraction. I've got some relatives down around Caledonia and Cayuga, so I've seen the area. Yeah, the Grand River is right there, and the Mudcat Festival is the town's big event, but I just don't see a big fish doing any good in that area.

You look at any of the attractions I listed, they're all on the Trans-Canada or Highway 11. Those are big tourist routes. People driving across the country, or just driving to the cottage or a campground, will use those highways. There aren't a lot of choices in the north. So on a long weekend in the summer, that's a lot of vehicles, thousands of them passing through little towns every day. You've got families on vacation, on the road for hours on end, and quite a few businesses count on a fraction of them stopping for whatever they need. That's where there is an advantage in making your town look like an interesting place to stop and stretch. Giant attractions don't so much draw people as entice them to stop. You need people passing through.

Even so, I think most of these things are relics of the 60s, before highway bypasses, fast-food drive-thrus and DVD players to keep the kids quiet. People will still pull over to have their picture taken in a giant Muskoka chair. I saw some people doing that today, in fact. But these things don't have the same power they had when people actually drove through the towns, when the non-air-conditioned cars were hot and stuffy, the big V8 motor needed frequent drinks, and the kids were all bored and restless.

In any case, I just don't see something like this working in Dunnville. Has anybody done a study? Some traffic counts maybe? A survey? If they have the numbers, fine, but it just doesn't seem like a good fit. I would think anybody driving through Dunnville is most likely going there or someplace close by anyway.

AndyC, I would tend to agree.  I cannot see a giant mudcat attracting traffic away from the northern route to Niagara Falls and the vinyard tours etc.  (Goodness knows the Mudcat Festival does not.)  Apparently a survey or study of sorts was done: the main out-of-town traffic passing through is Americans going from Buffalo to Michigan.

(I am familiar with your area too: hubby's family has camped and cottaged around there for forty years.  Lakes Cecebe, Ahmic, Meighic and Horn, Magnetawan and Burk's - been there frequently.)

It could be worse: one of the main employers in town is a Bick's Pickle plant.  (Menard cannot post, right?) - it could have been a giant gherkin.

The family road trip is a dying tradition, when I was a kid we went to Niagara Falls and we might have stopped to see a giant plastic fish, but it would be unlikely ... those oddball road side attractions are disappearing across the landscape.

Gone are the Mountain Zoo's, the small amusement parks, the theme campground/villages, gone are the days of license plate bingo, sitting in the backwards set of a Country Square station wagon looking out the back window pretending the divider lines on the road were laser blast from a spaceship ... or was that just me?

Yep, people today don't want getting there to be half the fun. They just want to get there.

We've got this big classy statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest right off I65 as you're entering Nashville. I would imagine it's the main reason most families visit Nashville, right?

 (http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/morrisawilliams/nbfs2.gif)

"He's crying, "Follow me!" " said artist Jack Kershaw. The statue stands between 13 battle flags and 13 Confederate flags. The horse and rider stand 25 feet high ( twice life-size ) with the horse in gold leaf and Forrest in silver leaf.

Funny, I always thought he was saying "AAAAAAIIIIIIIGH! BRTBRTBRTBRT!!!"

Cuz's Antique store in nearby Lebanon, TN has bigfoot's stuffed head in their window, but it's starting to look a bit moth-eaten and is certainly not a five-star attraction like big ol' crazy Nathan.

(http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/morrisawilliams/cuz_creature081007.jpg)

Our only tourist attraction in the very rural area where I live is a picture of a mule (helpfully labled) painted on the side of a bluff. I pass it several times a week, and it is quite amazing.

(http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/morrisawilliams/mule.jpg)

Read the complete unvarnished history of the mule!
http://www.tngenweb.org/dekalb/mule.htm (http://www.tngenweb.org/dekalb/mule.htm)

Ah you think that's sometime ... check out this fine tourist attraction in my nearby town of Mayfield KY ...

You will be stunned! This guy dead over 100 years ago and had likenesses of his family made to surround him in death. People from all over come to see it, some of them as far as 5 miles away.

(http://www.cityofmayfield.org/cemetery/images/lookwest.jpg)

More info on that here ...
http://www.cityofmayfield.org/cemetery/tour.html (http://www.cityofmayfield.org/cemetery/tour.html)

I live in the Niagara area, and I think it's been at least eight years since I've gone to the Falls.  And the American side of the Falls are grotesque, everything's very run-down and unclean-looking, punctuated by casinos run by the remnants of local Iroquois tribes.  The Canadian side is gorgeous with real attractions like the Toronto Butterfly Conservatory. 

One of these days I'm going to get out to the Falls and search for the big statue of Nikola Tesla that's supposed to be around there (Tesla engineered the first hydroelectric dam at Niagara Falls).  That'd be cool. 

Where I grew up, our tourist attraction wasn't so much an object as a culture. It was smack dab in the middle of Ontario Mennonite country. From that draw, some local entrepreneurs managed to gradually turn one of the local villages, St. Jacobs, into a massive conglomeration of tourist traps that has gotten less authentic by the year. A lot of locals tend to avoid it unless they have business there.

One physical feature that draws tourists is the bridge in West Montrose, another little village in the area, built on the same river that passes through Newt's neck of the woods, in fact. West Montrose is noted for having the last remaining historic covered bridge in Ontario.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/2007.05.24_17_Covered_bridge_West_Montrose_Ontario.jpg/250px-2007.05.24_17_Covered_bridge_West_Montrose_Ontario.jpg)
This was actually a location used for Trapped in Paradise, with Nicholas Cage, Dana Carvey and John Lovitz, and the bridge can be seen in the movie.

I completely forgot one of the stranger tourist attractions in Ontario. The town of St. Thomas has a life-sized statue of Jumbo the elephant, as well as a mural on a downtown building that also features Jumbo. What, you may ask, is the connection between P.T. Barnum's famous elephant and this Ontario town? Jumbo was hit by a train there in 1885, and folks in St. Thomas are pretty proud of that.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Jumbo1St.jpg)
I suppose a claim to fame is a claim to fame. Take what you can get.

Murals, we got murals ... bunch of them all up and down the flood wall.

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/212/446146730_106e2aec60.jpg?v=0)
(http://www.seeya-downtheroad.com/2007/PaducahMurals2.JPG)

We've got these hideous things in our town:

(http://www.winonadailynews.com/content/current/special/lakeheron.jpg)

It's supposed to be a heron.  Local business owners are encouraged by the board of gaudiness to purchase these things and paint them anyway they want.  The picture above shows what "anyway they want" means.  They're probably 8' tall.

And no, I have no idea why this particular one is depicted perched upon a pile of its own feces.

I've once taken a half-a-day detour (one way - well almost) to visit the one and only boll weevil monument in Enterprise, Alabama.

So, I consider all of the afore mentioned masterpieces well worth a visit. If nearby, I would consider a detour time between 2.7 minutes (driving by the painted walls) and 6/8th of a day (the mule) appropriate.

I also enjoyed the thoughts of Bill Bryson on this topic in, I think, "In a sunburned country" (the bull with balls!).

Quite possibly my favorite author, having traveled most of my life I completely relate to everything he write. I even tried hiking the Appalachian Trail, a few years before he wrote his book "A Walk in the Wood" and I died laughing because so much of it I could really remember going through my mind at the time. I will finish the trail before I die... anybody want to go?

"The Lost Continent" would be good reading for this topic. Talk about a blast from the past, traveling back roads America.

There might be one or two books of his at most I don't have. Defiantly one of the few authors I can buy a book from and know I'll enjoy it.

Toronto did the same thing with moose in the 90s. Those actually turned out quite nice, at least the ones I saw standing near businesses and attractions in the city.
(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/26/59258998_7d4214d2c7.jpg?v=0)
Looking up a little background, I guess they had over 300 of the things, sponsored by businesses and painted by local artists. Apparently, they did influence tourists, and are credited with adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy, while also raising a couple of million for Olympic athletes. Of course, there was a major amount of promotion by everyone involved, moose tours were offered, and the international media gave it a fair bit of coverage.

Close to half of the moose were later auctioned off for charity in 2001.

Here's a link to a listing with photos:
http://www.toronto.ca/moose/moose_moosellaneous.htm (http://www.toronto.ca/moose/moose_moosellaneous.htm)

Nashville did that with guitars - much more boring than mooses. I think Memphis did catfish or something.

I've visited the Boll Weevil monument in Enterprise. It's a sight I'll never forget!

One place which couldda/shoulda been a mecca for tacky tourist traps is Dayton, TN - site of the world-famous Scopes Monkey Trial. I visited there on business (!) several years ago fully expecting to enjoy a meal at The Monkey Trial Cafe and load up on Monkey Trial teeshirts and postcards. It seems the good folks of Dayton are not only not proud of their spot in history, the folks I spoke to got downright persnickety when I asked about it. There is a rusty plaque on the courthouse and that's about it.

Dayton was in the news again a few years ago when Rhea county decided to officially ban gays from the area. Needless to say, Dayton briefly was overrun by protesters until they threw out the law.

Official website!
http://www.daytontn.net/ (http://www.daytontn.net/)
See pictures in the History section of the big 60's ice-storm, but not a word about the monkey trial!

So cool! Hiking the trail would be something I defenitely would like to do, unfortunately I live on the wrong continent, so it would take lots of preparation. At least I have walked a couple of yards on it when I was in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park a couple of years ago...