I've already covered the
public penises of the Deep South, the reddest of the red states. Now it's time to look at the Southeast, which has some mind-numbing homophobia, plus nice gay neighborhoods (in Atlanta, Savannah, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale), top-ranked museums, musical theater rivaling Broadway, beaches where the ocean is as warm as bathwater, and lots of hunks in speedos (on a few beaches, out of their speedos).
And a lot of interesting public art. Here are the top 10 public penises of the Southeast.
1. Norfolk, Virginia, on Chesapeake Bay, is one of my favorite cities, with an interesting historic district and a nice gay neighborhood.
On the grounds of the Chrysler Museum of Art, there's a statue of a statue of a nude horseman reaching down to a reclining nude comrade. It's "The Torchbearers," by Anna Hyatt Huntington.
2. King Neptune was erected in 2005 in Neptune Park in nearby Virginia Beach, to honor the city's maritime heritage.
3. The old Lucky Strike building in Shockoe Bottom, east of downtown Richmond, VA features a muscular, 25-foot tall Native American peering out over a parapet. Named "Connecticut," he originally peered out over The Diamond to watch Richmond Braves baseball games.
4. Many people in the South are upset about the Civil War, where the Union "invaded" and "conquered" their sovereign nation.
When I visited my
Cousin George in South Carolina, we didn't go to The Memorial to the Confederate Defenders in Charleston, with a half-naked man being escorted to Valhalla by a Valkyrie.
5. "No Goal is Too High if We Climb with Care and Confidence," in downtown Atlanta, depicts a group of naked students climbing a pile of books with care and confidence. It was sculpted by art students at Georgia State University.
More after the break.
6. Florida, where I lived from 2001 to 2006, is a weird state, 80% swamps, 10% urban sprawl, and 10% Disney World. 80% Southern redneck cowboys, 10% Cuban Americans, 10% ultra-liberal New Yorkers on holiday. And lots of beefcake. O'Leno State Park, north of Gainesville, features a shirtless, muscular worker for the Civilian Conservation Corps. He has 60 twins in parks across the country.
7.In Orlando, this muscular warrior has a towel draped coyly over his penis, except the towel is penis-shaped, thus giving him the nickname "The Orlando Wiener."
8. The Wolfsonian-Florida International University Museum in Miami is dedicated to preserving the Mitchell Wolfson Collection of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. Including this stylized, Michelin-Man type statue, complete with penis.
9. The Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach opened in 1990. Architect Kenneth Triester attempted to "convey the unimaginable" with a four-story tall outstretched arm, on which hundreds of naked concentration camp inmates are trying to climb to freedom.
It's grotesque and disturbing, but that's the point. Did you expect a Holocaust Memorial to be sexy?
10. Manuel Carbonell sculpted the Pillar of History, overlooking Brickell Avenue Bridge in Miami. It's a 36-foot high pillar covered with representations of the Tequesta Indians, Miami's first inhabitants, topped by a 17-foot sculpture of a Tequesta warrior and his wife and child.
11.He also sculpted Centinela del Rio, "The Sentinel of the River," a naked muscle god blowing a conch shell over Miami harbor.
