In some parts of Tucson, the locals' neighborhood associations would have already passed out lit torches and been marching on the offending homeowner's property.
But in Dunbar/Spring, it would seem, the coming of a 17-foot-tall monkey is no big thing.
"It's a unique place," says Brenda Huettner, new adoptive owner of the famed "Poo Monkey" from the now-closed Magic Carpet Golf miniature golf course at 6125 E. Speedway. The red-eyed giant monkey, whose swinging tail was the hazard on one of the Magic Carpet's two courses, was scheduled to make its move today to Huettner's home in the quirky little neighborhood west of North Stone Avenue near West University Boulevard.
Dunbar/Spring — a mix of little adobe houses and row apartments, Craftsman homes and assorted other styles named and not — is already home to many artists, and art fans. There's a vivid half-block-long mural with marching skeletons, musicians and giant birds on the old auto-parts warehouse across the street from Huettner's home. Huettner said another neighbor is using the Ye Olde Lantern (originally the Green Lantern) restaurant's old sign as a fence. And that's just the beginning of the non-conventional kind of folksy art that would throw residents of many neighborhoods into a cease-and-desist fit.
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Still, even in Dunbar/Spring, you'd think the prospect of waking up to a monkey two stories tall peering over the neighbor's roof might get some attention. But Huettner says she's heard not a word, and doesn't expect any trouble.
Poo Monkey — with skin of concrete and bones of steel — was unofficially named by generations of giggling adolescent mini-golfers who noticed that, from the right angle, that the monkey's swinging tail … looked, well, like something else.
The miniature-golf course, which closed last year, was purchased by the Chapman Automotive Group. Chapman is allowing a Tucson group of art fans bent on preserving the course's giant figures to relocate them.
Huettner bid a few hundred dollars for Poo Monkey, but she says the real cost will be the $100-an-hour charges for expert crews that this morning are lined up to cut the monkey from its concrete base, lift it with a giant crane and move it to her home on a big truck.
She hopes to eventually make the monkey at home by building a single mini-golf hole in her yard.
Adoption program coordinator Charles Spillar, a Tucson artist and Dunbar/Spring resident, says he has commitments for most of the outsized and garish Magic Carpet characters of artist/builder Lee Koplin. But it's not always possible, never easy and usually expensive, says Spillar.
"You never know until you pick one up," Spillar says of the breath-holding moments when a giant boom crane first lifts one of the old concrete and steel objects. "They're all heavy as hell."
Spillar is working on a restoration project at Valley of the Moon, probably Tucson's weirdest acreage, a place — maybe the only place — where the displaced miniature-golf pieces won't look a bit out of place.
Five of the pieces are destined for the Valley of the Moon: Spider, Castle, Old Stump, the Pygmy Hut and Goop (an alien with huge antennae and a big tongue, the goal of the hole being to putt your golf ball in one end of Goop and have it come out the other and straight into the cup).
Spillar says proceeds from the donations made by the other creatures' adopters will go to the restoration fund for Valley of the Moon, a private fantasy park that was the dream of a kindly Tucson eccentric.
The old golf course's Easter Island-style "Tiki" head already lives outside The Hut, a North Fourth Avenue bar. It's lying outside, awaiting some fundraising for an expensive new base, which must be up to building codes before the Tiki head can take its rightful place there again, Spillar says.
The huge longhorn bull on the east course is destined for O'Shaughnessy's Steakhouse, 2200 N. Camino Principal
Spillar's own sculptures go a long way toward explaining his involvement in rescuing the Magic Carpet menagerie from trespassing vandals and a future wrecking ball. They are mostly large cartoonish birds, characters that might pass for residents of Wallace & Gromit's neighborhood.
But what moved Huettner — a technical writer — to spring for the cost of buying and moving Poo Monkey?
"A tough question," says Huettner. "When the opportunity to save the monkey came along, it seemed the right thing for us to have in this house in Dunbar/Spring.
"Before that opportunity came along, I can't say I ever dreamed of concrete monkeys — or 17-foot-tall anything, come to think of it.
"It's clearly a Tucson classic. I understand it's a public thing and part of the fabric of Tucson."
Where did they go?
For the fates of other pieces from the now-closed Magic Carpet Golf miniature golf course, see Page A4