Sometimes the Dude abides and sometimes the Dude is taken from us before we are able to hangout and chill beneath his dude-ness.
According to a recent article in the Vancouver Sun, which if you ask us is more of a “bro” or even “brah”-friendly paper than a Dude-friendly publication, Guelph Park’s much-lauded Dude Chilling Park sign was stolen earlier this week.
As you may already know, the original Dude Chilling Park sign was installed in 2012 unbeknownst to the park board by artist Viktor Briestensky to look like an official park sign. Briestensky said the name was inspired by a wooden sculpture called the Reclining Figure by Michael Dennis in the Mount Pleasant park located at Brunswick Street at East Seventh. But others have taken Dude Chilling Park as a nod to Jeff Bridge’s Zen-like character the Dude in the Coen Brothers’ 1998 movie The Big Lebowski.
The prank park sign proved so popular with locals and on social media that the park board, after initially removing the sign, had it reinstalled and officially declared it a work of public art.
But this being Vancouver and all, the city-approved sign wasn’t without some grumbling. Members of the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant complained they weren’t consulted about the sign, saying: “People worked very hard to clean up the area and this sign sends the wrong signal.” This past July, someone going by the name Sasssssy! spray-painted the words “Guelph Park” over the sign with a line through Dude Chilling Park. And in August, the repaired sign was vandalized again, this time with someone spray-painting “girl” over the word “dude” and the female symbol over the word “park.” And now the sign is gone altogether. By whom, we don’t know. Angry members of the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant who have access to power tools? Feminist graffiti artists who’ve run out of spray paint? German nihilists? Bowler Jesus Quintana?
The possibilities are endless in a city where residents often find fault with the slightest change to their scenery, who lament a lack of fun yet don’t look fondly upon frivolity, who like the notion of public art or events or gatherings as long as it’s not in their backyard. Or maybe we’re blowing this out of proportion. It is just a sign that started off as a joke, after all.
Regardless, the sign or a facsimile of it will be back, assures park board commissioner Sarah Blyth. “It’s unfortunate that this happened. This is a sign that was brought to us by the people,” Blyth told the Sun, adding, “Once something’s in a park it’s a part of the park and I don’t think people would like anything in their parks going missing.”
Sadly, Blyth was either unwilling or too unfamiliar with The Big Lebowski to use the most opportune Dude quote ever: “This aggression will not stand, man.”
