DINOTOWN!

Hi friends! As many of you are aware, for the past year or so I’ve taken inspiration from dinosaursfuckingrobots.com to create my own ongoing series of illustrations.

Cute, charming, hilarious, disturbing; these pieces are many things that everyone can enjoy. And despite possible future repercussions to my plans for creating a series of children’s books, I have a long way to go before I tire of this theme. Expect to see several new additions later this Fall.

The purpose of this post is actually to bring attention to a related side project.

Several months ago while my good friend Kristof was visiting from the exotic nation of Europe, he had the idea to visit DinoTown (North America’s only cartoon themed dinosaur park) dressed in robot costumes and go to town (DinoTown) on those unsuspecting dinosaur statues while photographing the whole shameful spectacle.

Unfortunately, Kristof’s trip was cut short and we never made it to DinoTown before he had to return home for prestigious hereditary duties.

Shortly after Kristof left Vancouver, I learned that coming September, DinoTown will be closing its doors forever! Shock and alarm over the economic crisis this will mean for the Fraser Valley being my first reaction. My second thought was; we couldn’t wait for Kristof’s next visit to Vancouver, we would have to go defile a children’s amusement park in his honor.

This all brings us to last Sunday. Jordan came over around noon and we constructed some amazing/ half-assed robot costumes. Then Jordan, Aman and I drove out to DinoTown to put the plan into action. After a long but luxurious drive out to Chilliwack in Aman’s Cadillac, all our hopes and dreams seemed crushed as we pulled into the DinoTown parking lot to see a “closed due to power outage” sign.

Few people can relate to the sense of crushing hopelessness that comes from driving for 90 minutes in a luxury sedan, only to turn around empty-handed.

We decided to take a walk around the outer grounds to clear our heads and figure out our next move. The park looked abandoned. We couldn’t find any staff or sign of guard dog, despite many warning signs. Through a chain link fence we spied a clearing of dinosaur statues. It was infuriating to have come so far for our objective and be denied. This situation was made particularly dire since Jordan’s moving to Arizona in less than 2 weeks.

With the park closing in a couple of weeks and little opportunity to make a return trip we debated the options of leaving in defeat or scaling a perimeter wall.

By an act of providence, just as we were mulling over our dilemma, we saw a truck drive up a side path and park at the caretaker’s home.

Over walks Gérard, the property caretaker, who explains the situation with the power outage. Gérard couldn’t have been a nicer guy. We told him about how we just wanted to get some photos with the dinosaur statues in our robot costumes before Jordan moved away and the park closed forever, and he let us into the park, explained how to follow the trail to more statues, and told us to take as much time as we needed. Everything really worked out as well as it possibly could have: The rain held off; we got into the park for free without any ethical compromise; we didn’t need to conceal what we were doing for fear of scarring children or offending parents; and we took all the time we needed to explore the park.

Yup, it was a great day. I know we made Kristof proud. It’s only a shame he couldn’t be there to live out his dream with us. But don’t worry Kristof, there’s plenty more dinosaur statues around the world that could use a little robot love. God willing, we’ll get to them.

Aman, Jordan and I would like to personally thank Gérard for letting us go ahead with our ridiculous plan.

Goodbye DinoTown! You’ll be missed. But thankfully we were able to defile one more childhood memory before saying goodbye forever.