[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

In his first postings to aSquared, Frank talked about aspects of San Francisco he would and would not miss:

Things I’ll miss, #1

Claes von Oldenburg (another friggin’ SWEDE!) and Coosje van Bruggen’s “Cupid’s Span” at Rincon Park. You either love it or you hate it. I happen to love it.

I glanced at it a lot on my way in to work over the Bay Bridge. It added a lot of (well-needed) whimsy to the Embarcadero.

Von Oldenburg is now apparently adding a sculpture of a gigantic banana to the sterile Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford campus (van Bruggen riffs: “The banana is a fruit with many interpretations; it’s a flower, it’s a phallus . . . the banana is kind of a wit”), which, in my opinion, is an absolutely transcendent touch.

—Posted by Frank at 11:45:21 | 1-Aug-03