Originally Published – Worldsurface.com, 1 July 2003
I was worried. I had bought a bus ticket from Seattle to Portland Oregon without reading the guidebook. When I finally ran down the list of Top 10 Things to do in the city and saw that a luggage shop made it in at number seven, I was faced with two choices; keep on going without stopping, or hope that I had timed my visit to coincide with a unique local festival.
Portland is the type of town that defies the old saying. It is a great place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit. Up the hill from the train station and the Columbia River are leafy suburbs with great hidden restaurants and local bars stacked with strong microbrews. There was plenty to occupy my time at night, but what about daylight hours?
I wasn’t expecting much from the centre of town. As fate would have it, I needed a new luggage strap, so after ticking the 80-year-old Portland Luggage Company of my Top 10 list, I walked towards the information centre in Pioneer Square. On the way, passing the fourth Starbucks, I came across a brightly painted replica cow in the middle of the footpath. I thought nothing of it. Strange, modern, public art is common in the area.
Rounding another corner, I was faced with another cow. This one was painted gold, lying in a wooden pergola with cows’ feet. Bewildered office workers, muttering and asking questions, surrounded it.
“Where did it come from?” What IS that?” “I saw another one not far from here.”
Something was going on. Around the next corner was another bovine creation, this one painted with the snarling dogs snapping at parts of the cow’s body. More locals in suits bumped into each other, spilling their Starbucks, as they turned their head to see what the fuss was about. Another block, another decorated bull complete with city folk muttering to strangers they would normally pass by, humming to their personal stereos.
I got to Pioneer Square. Dotted around the space, sharing the limelight with the usual fountain, were more hoofed statues. One had been sawn in half and put back together the wrong way, one was dedicated to Lewis and Clark, famous local explorers and all had puns for names. ‘Cow-moo-flage’, ‘Beau-vine,’ and ‘Cowppuccino’ stood out as particularly clever ideas.
Inside the information centre, under the fountain, the answers were revealed. The Cow Parade had come to town. This novel combination of charity event and public art installation had given 108 blank cows to the city’s artists and asked them to let their imooginations run riot. Then on the night that I arrived in town with nothing to do, they placed them all over town so that it looked like a futuristic Hindu ritual.
After walking around for a few hours, watching people stop in their tracks to look at ‘Cash Cow’ and ‘I love Moo York’, I got on a MAX light rail and headed up to one of Portland’s more traditional attractions, Forest Park. Through the huge Douglas fir trees I looked over Portland to the imposing Mt Hood and was glad I had stopped. No matter what the guidebooks say, there is always something for a traveller with an open mind to do.
Several months later, the Cow Parade came to London. The UK event was delayed a year due to concerns over the suitability of hundreds of decorated cows walking the streets during the foot and mouth outbreak, but in June cows with names like ‘Art Mooveau’, ‘Beef Wellington’, and ‘Cow-bernet Sauvignon’ started taking their place alongside more well known London attractions.
Walking around London though, I could not find cows on every corner. Instead of all arriving in one Dali-like stampede, the London cows meandered into the capital over three months. To my knowledge, nobody spilt any designer coffee over it or removed their headphones to talk to a stranger on the Gloucester Road tube platform.
The Cow Parade is headed for San Antonio Texas, just in case you bought a ticket without reading the guidebook.
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