

Richmond Suck s

Welcome to the Richmond Sucks page, where I aim to crucify and ridicule my

home town, simply because it deserves it. Love it, leave it, or just live here.

Ahhh...Richmond, Va., undoubtably one of the most bass-ackwards places ever to

masquerade its shabby enclaves as that of a progressive city. Home of transvestite

hookers, police road-blocks, and Ukrops. As I move around the city, I feel a

mixture of rage, fear and shame. But wait. I can already feel your hackles raising. I

know what youre saying-- "If you dont like Richmond, why dont you just move?"

Well, before I Ted Bundy your ass, let me first of all point out this little thing called

FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Ill piss and moan about our city as much as I care to

and if you dont like it it you can stop reading. If I have to put up with David Duke

appearing at the local mall or the idea of Lee-Jackson-King Day, Ill say what I

damn well please. Its because there are many (well, a couple) good things about

our town that I bitch so loud. I AM that bellicose voice of progress. So before I

launch myself into the meat of the matter let me say at least one nice thing about

this seething cess pool of a city--

ITS CHEAP.

O.K., heres the rest of the article. Despite its semi-famous

art school, this town is full of some of the most gawd-awful

public art that you will ever have the misfortune of smelling.

Richmond is pocked with it, and I am here to ridicule the

most mediocre of this dubious collection. So let us start with

the endless procession of Fascist slave owners

that adorn every corner of this live-in-the-past

with-your-head-up-your-ass kinda town. Its a free country

and I respect your right to celebrate your "heritage".

So please respect my right to say that you are full of shit! Why are you so

proud of a heritage that kidnapped millions of human beings

from their homeland, placed them in perilous bondage, and

then proceeded to sell and enslave them. Maybe you need to

have that happen to your family. Lets see if you sing the same

tune after your Mom is hauled off by a bunch of

club-wielding drunks. So dont give me that shit about it

being about your heritage. If thats true then how come there

arent a bunch of statues of doctors and lawyers,

musicians and transexuals? DONT LIE. Those are statues to a war

you wish youd won that was waged to keep other people in

chains. So heres my proposal to rid our town of some truly offensive

(and bad) public art--take those statues of Lee, Jackson, and all their rascist,

Fascist, murderous brethren, bulldoze them, melt them into slag, and build a huge statue of

Hitler. If were gonna build a monument to hate, lets make it a doozy...





Still, black people shouldnt worry about all those honky metal men. After all, doesnt the black

community have adequete sculptural representation of some of their best and brightest? Like that Arthur

Ashe statue.....Arthur AAAAAAAAAAAShe! Ive seen a lot of bad art in my time...I went to V.C.U.

for gawdsakes! Since then, Ive made a career out of it. But that is absolutely the most confusing

and just plain stupid-looking piece of matter Ive ever had the joy of ridiculing. A friend of mine

took his kid to see it and ask the childs opinion. I quote the wisdom of Yar, age 10-- "It looks like

hes hitting them". And he is. An unsmiling Ashe lifts his racket/club on high, luring

the children in with a stack of anonymous books (gay porno). In vain they raise

their arms to sheild themselves from a volley of blows that only a Wimbeldon champion could

deliver. What does Pasquale, the artist behind this cultural monstrosity, have against

Arthur Ashe anyway, that he would portray him as a pummeler of the young?

Ive got news for you Pasquale--children are AFRAID of that sculpture, and

everybody else thinks it sucks, especially the black people that it is supposed to honor.

And why his strange prediliction for statues of pissed-off ethnic types?

Pasquale did the big indian at the Diamond--a cool piece of work but that

proud brave doesnt look too happy to be there. In fact it looks like hes about one inning away

from animating, breaking free, and devouring every season ticket holder he can get his mits on.

Its hard to imagine a more condescending and and

insulting racial stereotype than George Lucass

intergalactic Stepin Fetch, Jar-Jar Binks. But nevertheless

it does exist, right here in our fair-to-middling city...





Thats right kids, Im talking about the Bojangles statue in

Jackson Ward. Its bad enough that its also the name of a

famous chicken restaurant (but Dave, black folks LOVE

chicken) and that the statue literally looks like it was made

of shit, but enough is enough. Thinking about that statue

makes me pray for a race war. Then we can get everything

out in the open, burn everything down and start over again,

with the Earth ruled by a benevolent race of alien

tree-sloth people. I wonder what young black people who

have just turned off Monument Avenue think when they

arrive in front of their communities cultural icon. I bet they

are PISSED. In fact, I got jumped one time less than a

block from that thing. Look, Im not saying that Bojangles

was evil or an Uncle Tom or even remotely related to the Huxtables. But when

young black people look to the streets to see how they stack up against the Great

Southern Death Cult, they get the almost deliberately insulting depictions of Ashe

and Bojangles. And before I get bum-rushed , I dont mean to even suggest that

these men are not deserved of honor--they certainly are. But its way past time

young black people were encouraged to do something other than dance or hit balls

for the entertainment of white people.

NEXT! O.K., heres a hard one. Its fun to ridicule

people youll probably never meet, but when you

actually know somebody that created a piece of

art that screams "vandalize me", things can get a

little sticky. So I dive in. Im sorry, Ed Trask!

I respect your work and the time and effort that

goes into it. Its very gratifying to see one of your

peers do well. But that painting of Lady Di is

HORRIBLE, and the nose is even worse.



I hope he got paid money, and a lot of it, and he painted that

nose as a silent protest against this perversion of

his God-given gift. I can understand that, I mean

one time I got paid 300 dollars to wrestle

Dirtwoman (local infamous fat as shit transvestite/retard thing). Seeing this painting almost caused me to wreck my car. I mean, is that her before

or after the accident? Or after her split decision with Mike Tyson? And why do we

feel the need to honor foreign royalty--I mean what was that whole revolution thing

about? When the Royal Suckle-Mother of Upper Togoland loses her hangnail, do

we spackle the floodwall? Oh, thats right, were a Commonweath. That whole

Lady-Di-Getting-Smashed-and-I-Cant-Find-a-Decent-Picture-of-it-on-the-Internet

thing pissed me off anyway. People who get in drunken car wrecks are generally

reviled in the press, whether they deserve it or not. But just because Lady Di is

Princess, she gets treated like royalty! And I have to be reminded of it every time I

go to Shockoe Bottom. As if I needed another reason to stay away from that shithole.

Richmond is simply awash in mediocre painters that make Ed look like freakin

Van Eyck. These shambling horrors have polluted our psyche to the point that the

General Assembly is actually debating banning all forms of expression except for

macreme. Because of the efforts of these pointless yet demanding air-takers, the

definition of the word "art" is being changed to "whatever meaningless drivel I can

slop onto a canvas (or maybe a shit-smeared piece of rotten plywood) in order to

justify my meaningless existence and maybe get a scrap of pot, a cup of coffee, or

into your pants."

Its gonna end soon. I know its bitter, but Im always looking for a way to lash out

at this town. Maybe its because they ran Howard Stern off the air, or the fact that

my band, GWAR, hasnt been able to play a decent-sized club in years because of

the local ABC Nazis. Maybe its because Richmond sucks. Forgive me, but Im

trying to be honest. When I see something I hate I have the right to hate it out loud.

I do love, but this article isnt about love. Its about hate, my hate, and what to do

with it so I dont go nut-log. When I see shit being tolerated, or even worse praised,

that is blatantly offensive CRAP I simply have to take one. And on the subject of

crap, we are led to our last and greatest piece of really bad public art. Drum roll

please....and the winner is...The Office Supply Rental mural over there at Broad

and Belvedere! YUCK.

To say that this work is a piece of garbage is to give it more credit than it deserves.

To say that it is shit is to imply it actually qualifies as shit. First off, they ruined a

perfectly cool piece of art that had been on the side of that building for a couple

years, and probably arrested those responsible (Im sorry, your art isnt bad enough

to be viewed by the Richmond public). But what the hell is that thing? What are

those blobs? A tribute to excrement? What is this, the Crapple-Dumpling Gang?

And then there are the portraits along the sides. They are so poorly rendered that it

is impossible to recognize the faces, even with the aid of the arrogant message

painted next to it. And the selection of people--Im sorry, Im just a little confused.

Robert E. Lee and Harriet Tubman? Edgar Allen Poe and Bruce Lee?

Afrika Bambatta and Freddy Mercury ?



Didnt anybody check out the rough sketch?Can I please run screaming

down the street now? Or can we just burn the building down?

Please somebody explain, or help, or send money, because it hurts me to look at

it, and I have to look at it every day. In a town of really bad public art, it

crawls shins and toenails beneath them all. And what can I do to fight

back in the name of goodness and light? Crouch in my sunless bunker,

hunkered down behind my malevolent mouse, ready to pour forth in vicious

diatribe against that which would offend mine eye. This is my right, my

quest--let there be consequence to the application and execution of bad art,

let it be attacked, and defiled, and for those guilty, let them be punished, in

public, ridiculed, and chastised! All in the name of evolution. Farewell, or not

at all.

Thanks to Kristen Walsh for photographs