The Watts Towers

One of the things that I undoubtedly find fascinating is people who develop some kind of singular, obsessive vision that they insist on carrying out.  Maybe I find this fascinating because I don't have any kind of single coherent idea of something I want to produce in my life.  I definitely want to finish my dissertation, but the scale is a bit different and the result will be,um, less than riveting (except to me, of course).  Anyway, I am especially interested in these kinds of grand endeavors when they are taken on by people who are kind of outside normal society- I'm not talking about Donald Trump building a giant casino or whatever.  Basically, I guess I am interested in passionate and dedicated weirdos.  In December, I took a drive up to see the Watts towers, which are my current favorite example of the kind of endeavor I am describing.

The guy who made them, Sam Rodia, was an immigrant.  He built them over 30 years or something like that.  To erect the towers, he used steel rods that he bent using the railroad track close by, then covered them in mortar.  He used broken glass, pottery, bottlecaps, toys, shells, and whatever other junk he collected to decorate the towers.

I think they are absolutely amazing.  They remind me of Gaudi, but spindlier.  They look like an idea of how architecture could be in a dream.  I find it interesting that he built it like a little town, not like a house or an art piece but a real imaginary place where he thought of people living.  I also found it funny that they are right in the middle of a pretty regular, working-class neighborhood in Watts- people walk their dogs around them and the house across the street was playing Mexican music at top volume.  They tried to tear them down at some point, but people rallied to save them, and now this normal neighborhood just has this fantastical weirdo's creation right in the middle of their normal everyday existence.  It seems like some grand weirdo creators create things in secret not really worried about whether anyone will ever see the thing they are doing and some weirdo creators, like Sam Rodia, are like goddamnit, I'm gonna make a thing for everyone to see and it's going to LAST.