NYT p.1 on a question I've wondered about -- stuffed toys stuck on trucks.

They're Soft and Cuddly, So Why Lash Them to the Front of a Truck?
By ANDY NEWMAN
Published: November 13, 2005


James Estrin/The New York Times
Just one of the stuffed toys that are fastened to the grilles of delivery trucks, garbage haulers and personal vehicles across Brooklyn.


A bear with a prominent grease spot on his little beige nose spends his days wedged behind the bumper guard of an ironworker's pickup in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. A fuzzy rabbit and a clown, garroted by a bungee cord, slump from the front of a Dodge van in Park Slope. Stewie, the evil baby from "Family Guy," scowls from the grille of a Pepperidge Farm delivery truck in Brooklyn Heights, mold occasionally sprouting from his forehead.

All are soldiers in the tattered, scattered army of the stuffed: mostly discarded toys plucked from the trash and given new if punishing lives on the prows of large motor vehicles, their fluffy white guts flapping from burst seams and going gray in the soot-stream of a thousand exhaust pipes.

Grille-mounted stuffed animals form a compelling yet little-studied aspect of the urban streetscape, a traveling gallery of baldly transgressive public art. The time has come not just to praise them but to ask the big question. Why?...

***

Don't expect an easy answer.

Interviews with half a dozen truckers as well as folklorists, art historians and anthropologists revealed the grille-mounted plush toy to be a product of a tangle of physical circumstance, proximate and indirect influence, ethnic tradition, occupational mindset and Jungian archetype....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/nyregion/13stuffed.html

me of the sneakers up on the phone lines. i think it's one of those social things, decorating the pubkic space.

is a truck with at least 14 stuffed animals strapped to it. It's hilarious.

Most of the garbage co's here have rules barring the practice. :(

Garbage guys do have strange senses of humor - my favorite slogan
"satisfaction guaranteed, or twice your garbage back"

:rofl:

Football teams have mascots. It's also a talisman thing. Sort of like finding a lucky penny. Then you have to think of the drivers (trucks and otherwise) who put Christmas wreaths and other decorations on their vehicles. Kinda a weird way to celebrate the season if you ask me.

In the end, it might just be: Look at me, I'm unique. I'm not just one of the herd.

I think this is one of the funniest OP subject lines I've ever seen.

Although I HAVE wondered about this phenomenon -- and the writing is good. I guess it's a break from a spate of very serious news -- or maybe a far, far distance from WMDs!

I saw one truck where the driver had hooked up Christmas lights to the front of his truck.