Had a crazy dream in which the Unisphere had gone missing from Central Park. That, of course, is not where it is in reality. The Unisphere is at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the centerpiece of my recent 15 mile walk from here to there and back. But that doesn’t matter in dreamland. In my dream that giant globe was supposed to be in a pool near the Model Boat Pond at Central Park. I looked at others for reactions but no one seemed concerned that it was gone. It must have been taken away for routine maintenance, I assumed, a prospect which would make no sense in reality.
I noticed a sheet of plywood spanning the distance from the center of the pool to its edge, thinking that must have been used to roll the Unisphere off its stand and out of the above ground pool.
After a few minutes some trucks and Parks dudes appeared, bringing with them what I assumed would be the Unisphere. Instead they brought the Rocket Thrower, a statue by Donald De Lue that in reality stands not far from the Unisphere. That statue fell down, causing the right arm of the Rocket Throw to come off. No one seemed concerned about this. There were several small satellite statues around the Rocket Thrower. These do not exist in reality. One of these smaller figures had an enormous cock. Someone standing nearby started working that stone cock until it shot a huge load of jizz all over the Rocket Thrower’s disconnected arm. Everyone standing around got a big laugh out of that.
That’s all I remember. It’s obvious that the Unisphere and Rocket Thrower came from having recently seen them, but the big stone schlong is lost on me. That was gross and weird.
I read somewhere that a fairly large steel sculpture once stood near the Unisphere, but it was stolen during the days of the scrap metal black market, when thieves were so brazen that it was not so far fetched to imagine them attempting to steel the enormous Unisphere itself. That would be hard to get away with but in 1970s New York you could probably have gotten away with sawing off pieces of it, accumulating a bit of tonnage before anyone noticed that one of the latitude lines was missing or that the mountainous looking object in central Australia was gone.
Unisphere
I forget where I read this but someone once commented that what makes the Unisphere distinct, what makes it not just another globe, is the three rings that circle it. Originally there were supposed to be 12 rings but that was deemed impractical. I’ve written and talked about the Unisphere often enough that it need not take my time now. It is intriguing to imagine someone stealing some of the steel, though, disassembling the globe piece by piece. How much of the world could you get away with before aficionados took notice?
Unisphere
