Come, London. Let's dance.
Today we have more baby elephants than you can shake a stick at! But don't. Because shaking sticks at baby elephants is wrong. Didn't you see Dumbo as a child? Baby elephants need lots of love or else they'll drink champagne and wake up in a tree with crows of questionable and jaw-dropping stereotypical origins. (The head crow was named Jim Crow. Yeah.)
Also? Hallucinations of pink elephants. But! You needn't drink champagne, you lucky Flâneur reader, because I've your pink elephants right here! Racism-free elephants to boot! (Flâneur in the City: 100% less racist than Disney.)
The Elephant Parade of London is a charity art installation of 260 life-sized baby elephants hand-painted by famous artists, designers and Londoners.
The Telegraph had this to say:
The highly collectable artworks will pop up at a host of London landmarks including Buckingham Palace, Parliament Square and the South Bank over the next few months, before being auctioned off to raise £2 million for charity.Our dear London is crawling with beautiful baby elephants! And your favorite flâneur hoofed it all over our fair city with a pair of mates to capture some on film.
The money will help The Elephant Family charity and more than 15 UK conservation charities working in Asia.
We walked from Waterloo Station to South Bank, South Bank to Parliament Square, down pass all the hung Parliament news crews and cameras and protesters (the UK is seeing its first hung Parliament since 1974 -- and here comes Natalie right in the thick of it, taking pictures of the news crews and bobbies), down to Trafalgar Square, looped around to Piccadilly Circus, swung down to Hamleys Toy Shop, backtracked to Regent Street, and ended up in Green Park by Buckingham Palace. All that walking and we only saw about 30 of the 260 elephants!
(The elephants were everywhere!)
First up: South Bank!
Next: Parliament!
Trafalgar Square:
Top left: James Bond elephant by actress Lucy Fleming, niece of Ian Fleming. Top right: Utopia
and Bottom: My mates Nik and Ash play with a clear elephant while a dude in a tutu scares tourists.
Next: Parliament!
The question mark on the top elephant is fitting: Who's in charge of Parliament? Who knows?
Trafalgar Square:
I really like the kid that climbed up on the blue and gold ellie! How fun!
En route to Hamleys Toy Shop:
The green fellow was named Cupcake. And our forest friend was called: Oak, Chestnut, Plane and Elm. I'll stick with Cupcake!
Inside Hamleys Top Shop:
The Monopoly ellie was very elaborate! Check out his (her?) back:
En route to Green Park, including Regent Street:
Whew! Getting sick of elephants yet? Oh, but there's more!
Green Park, entrance:
To check out the ellies for yourself (or, if you are so inclined, to buy one), visit: http://www.elephantparadelondon.org/
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