A #SanFrancisco mystery: What happened to the middle Doggie Diner head on JFK Promenade?
On my morning exercise walk, I was surprised to see that one of the Doggie Diner heads was missing, replaced with a sort of whirling windvane mobile art thingy.
If you're not sure what I mean by Doggie Diner heads, I've got a picture from last year showing all three.
(Two are still there today, at least when I walked past earlier this morning.)
![[Doggie Diner heads]](https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/importable/2022/doggie-diner-south-0924.jpg "Doggie Diner heads")
When I was there, I checked for a ransom note. Nope, nothing. I checked the SF Chronicle website, they had no info, nada.
Finally, I tried a news search and found the answer at SF Gate "Remembering when a group of SF punks took a city landmark on a cross-country road trip":
…A 10-foot-tall Doggie Diner head propped up on the back of a pickup greeted crowds as they gathered around the 118-year-old Savoy Tivoli, the quintessential neighborhood bar and restaurant that finally reopened in December after a long hiatus. Amid the unusual scene, it didn’t take long to spot notorious San Francisco artist and eccentric John Law.…
…It might seem like a herculean task to transport just one of the 300-pound roadside attractions across the city from their current home on John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park. But it’s nothing compared with 20 years ago, when a group of San Francisco punks, burlesque dancers and rodeo clowns affiliated with the DIY art bike collective Cyclecide went on a cross-country road trip with all three of them. The eight-day voyage from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge is the subject of “Head Trip,” a 2003 documentary co-directed by Law and skateboard videographer Flecher Fleurdujon that will soon be available to stream on YouTube and was shown to a public audience Wednesday for the first time in years.…
[Updated to add:] Alas, that's not the end of the story. When I posted on Mastodon, Doug Tobacco posted
a link to Doctor Popular who posted a link to (artist) John Law's Instagram post:
Just before the show in North Beach, we were informed that some psycho had burned one of the two Dog Heads that was in Golden Gate Park.
We will probably have to take the two remaining Dogs out of the park and back home to their kennel. It's just too much of a risk.
Update to the update: I was back in the area around one in the afternoon; there was just one Doggie Diner head remaining.
I guess John Law was indeed bringing them someplace safe(r). When I was in the area around 2:30, all the heads were gone.
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