Oh Cardiff

When I lived in Cardiff by the Sea, I passed this statue ALL the time. One of my friends from the area recently alerted me to an article about it. I always thought it looked a little bit cheesy, but apparently real surfers had cause to be truly pissed off about it and this is how they let the people know. They dressed up the statue to look ridiculous. It's better than actual vandalism though and, after reading this article from Surfing magazine, I can certainly see why they would be upset. The reasons for hating the statue aesthetically are many; most pertaining to the fact that the surfer doesn't have the classic surfer physic, bad form, weird posture for the move he is supposedly doing, inaccurate sea spray, etc. Being a non-surfer myself, I have to say I go along with the other reasons outlined in the article. First and foremost, this bronze sculpture cost the city of Cardiff $120,000; a massive load of money that could have been put to better use.
To quote the article:

We don’t want to see statues erected to celebrate the sport of surfing; we don’t want more parking lots paved near our favorite spots. We want clean beaches; we want the environment to stay entact; we want our good waves in our favorite spots to stay good. Surfers are probably mostly upset at the fact that they paid $120,000 for that piece of crap metal. They could have done a mass cleaning of the Cardiff water; or a huge beach sweep of pollution; or maybe use that money to stop companies along the coast from putting pollutants into the water.