There's No Bear Statue On Wall Street

You probably know that in terms of market trends, the Bull is the symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity, and the Bear stands for the lean times. There’s a charging bull at the foot of Broadway on Wall Street, a couple of blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. This puppy weighs 7,000 pounds and is made out of bronze. That’s a lot of beef – uh.. figuratively speaking. The Wall Street Bull was a Christmas gift from a guy named Arturo Di Modica to the people of New York City following Black Monday in 1987.

But Wall Street has no bear! True story. It turns out the bear is on the opposite side of the country on a lonely stretch of Highway 101 about 300 miles north of San Francisco. But more on that in a minute.

The bull was Di Modica’s idea, not New York City’s. Though it cost the guy some $360K, it wasn’t exactly appreciated at the time. He called the gift “guerilla art” and trucked this tonnage to the foot of the Stock Exchange without permission. The cops impounded it, but the public wouldn’t tolerate the seizure of this outlandish civic donation. The Police released it and parked it downtown once more. Now it looks like Wall Street is bullish for good – hunched down, head lowered, ready to charge.

The Bull is one of New York City's most photographed works of art – a real tourist attraction in the Financial District. And what are the tourists photographing? Well, uh… it ain’t the head. I am NOT making this up. It seems that the Apples of Fortitude on the back end of this beast are keenly polished and much lighter than the rest of the hapless bull’s anatomy from the many hands of travelers seeking auspicious blessings. Who knew?

Bearish on Timber

Meanwhile in a land far, far away, where Paul Bunyon strides the Trinity Alps with his blue pal Babe, a pair of golden Bears demark the entrance to Del Norte County, California. Little could be more fitting for a quadrant of the Golden State so forgotten by time.

Once the home of the logging industry that built the mansions of San Francisco, the giant redwoods still stand. Well, a couple of ‘em, anyway. This emerald region once teemed with trees so huge, you could build a house out of one tree, merely by hollowing it out. John Muir trekked these woods when cowboys still roamed the Great Plains, and a boom followed his naturalist footsteps, to his own chagrin. Railcars loaded with redwood rolled day and night to bring their fat cargo to a hungry new West with an unquenchable appetite for burl wood clocks and slab coffee tables.

But Captain Industry was cavalier to this Queen of the Forest – it seems he bought her a nice dinner and never called her again. When her looks were all but gone, he left her for good. And I think maybe that’s okay. Maybe she doesn't need him anyway.

The Golden Bears of Klamath guard the bridge that links Del Norte County to the busy world to the south, apologetically but not the less lovely. The town of Klamath itself is on the Yurok Indian Reservation. The last census figures put the population at 651 people, 264 households, and 177 families. The salmon live there, and a herd of Roosevelt elk graze in a glade next to the road. Fog catches in the branches of the shaggy redwoods, ferns thriving at their feet amid the perennial drips. You’ll be hard pressed to find a market here, let alone a stock exchange. If you listen closely you can hear the traffic – no, wait: that’s the ocean. In the early morning, just before dawn, the lights come on in the local diner as a trucker pulls in for a cup of coffee. Nobody saw the stock report or heard anything about a stimulus package. (Isn’t that something you get at the adult bookstore in Town, anyway?)

The Bear came here to Klamath sometime ago. It’s typical of the moribund Redwood Empire, stretching hundreds of miles north from San Francisco Bay, not far off the beaten track from middle America, and a long… long way from Wall Street. You know, it’s not such a bad place for a bear to be.

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Until next time, Jack Schmidt
Spokesman

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