'Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit'

[Popular Front of Judea]

Just in time for the IRL bankruptcy. Damn reality is getting so recursive these days...

Detroit, Michigan, is finally getting its monument to RoboCop.

Last May, photos began circulating online of a giant statue made in honor of the legendary cyborg law enforcer. It's the result of a Kickstarter campaign by the Imagination Station, a Detroit nonprofit specializing in art and renovation. Three months later, the statue has finally reached Detroit soil.

The model, assembled at Across the Board Creations in British Columbia, arrived Wednesday afternoon in a crate. "Slow and steady wins the race," Brandon Walley, director of development at the Imagination Station, wrote me earlier this week. But the statue's journey began long before this summer. The story of how this RoboCop duplicate came into being is a complex two-year saga involving Hollywood executives, political division, gonzo art—and the actual star of RoboCop.

Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit | Mother Jones (http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/08/detroit-robocop-statue-kickstarter-arrives)

[Consistent.Surprise]

Ok, Imagination Station began their discussion of this back in late 2010. In 2012 they lost Lefty (a house) to a fire. Since then, they started a Put-Putt (putt putt is copy written) course in front of Michigan Central Station

2.5 years after it hitting the press, IS is fulfilling their kickstarter; this isn't anything of major import to the city or to it's current financial issues or the dictatorship that is taking place IMO.

[Red Commissar]

I didn't know they had at least contributed to a food bank. Still, it does say a lot when more people are willing to contribute to a kickstarter project for a statue of a fictional character, as opposed to some other ways to bring more immediate relief to that city. I'm a robocop fan but I can see how this could come off as very tasteless to residents of the city who'll see the creators as irreverent.

[Consistent.Surprise]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imaginationstation/detroit-needs-a-statue-of-robocop

Notice the date. March 2011. Before IS lost Lefty & before the shit hit the fan between the city & state (Belle Isle lease, receivership, etc).

Also, kickstarters are funded by people everywhere, so city folks weren't the only folks shelling out money.

In this city, there are a lot of Richard Florida fans. & honesty, we have a large arts community. Assistance in this city comes through charity. We have a day where a group hands out book bags with supplies for the new school year. Grace Lee Boggs will have a young child educational center that is currently building a library based on donations. This statue is just an icon that a small population of the city cares about. If this was something new, I could get behind questioning the use of funds but this is just a pointless thing to bring up about the city of interest (which is now fading) to the voyeuristic US