If you, like some, find yourself hoping for the latest Pokemon craze to fade away, it doesn’t appear to be relenting. Case in point: someone clandestinely erected a Pokemon monument — a giant Pikachu, to be specific — last night in a non-working fountain in Coliseum Square in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District. According to the Coliseum Square Association (CSA), a collection of local residents dedicated to the protection and preservation of the neighborhood’s historic structures, they have no idea who erected the sculpture or what they intend to do with it now that it’s there. In a Facebook post this morning, the group wrote, “We have a new statue… though not sure for how long!”
According to the CSA, the fountain the monument sits in hasn’t been functional since the ’80s, though there’s been a recent push to raise money to get it and other fountains like it in the area working again. So there’s a chance the monument will stay in place for a while. As one CSA board member told Uproxx, “If this brings attention to the fountains and the fact that we’re in the process of raising funds for an endowment to flow the fountains and beautify our green spaces, then I’m perfectly fine with it.”
As of this writing, the artist who created and installed the monument remains a mystery, though it certainly appears that whoever did it is social media savvy, having inscribed the hashtag “#Pokemonument” in the concrete next to the sculpture.
Seeing as how there’s been heated debate in New Orleans of late over what to do with the city’s Civil War monuments, perhaps this offers a potential solution: replace them with monuments to pop culture phenomenons?