Cakeway to the West

I love public art!  The randomness of coming upon a piece of art in a surprising location always delights me.  Sometimes the piece is not inspiring, but I appreciate the intent.  Back in my yarn bombing days, I hoped my little knitted things delighted those who saw poles wrapped with bits color. I know when I find public installations, I am like, "Yay, ART!"

Lyons Park, the first cake I found

Back in the 90s (remember those days?) everyone was inspired by the cows on parade.  Cities everywhere jumped on that bandwagon with their version of "whatever" on parade.  St. Louis even did a similar thing with people on parade, it was kind of lame to be honest.  With this year being the quarter-millennial anniversary of my home town, St. Louis city planners decided to revise this idea with four foot fiberglass birthday cakes.  The goal is to have 250 cakes placed in the St Louis metro area.

Chatillon Demenil Mansion Wedding Cake

I have seen several of these cakes popping up all over town.  I gave them some thought, but not much.  Last week I was having lunch with a friend and she mentioned the cakes and how she wanted to see them.  I felt I would help her by taking some photos of the cakes in my neighborhood.  I am up to 13 cakes, if I were to continue I would have 237 more to go.  I am doubtful that I will be that committed to cake hunting, but you never know.

Cherokee Street Cake, Beautifully Decorated Cake

I actually met other cake hunters today, so I am not the only one looking for these installations.  I actually, talked to a mother and daughter today who were up to 80 cakes.  I told them I really loved the crazy cake at Venice Café in Benton Park.  This cake has a slice out of it and you can see it is made of BRAINS!  So cool.  They looked at me like I was weird and moved quickly away to their car.  Takes all kinds, I guess.

St Louis Silly Hall Cake (see this one 5 days a week)

I found a website with information about the cakes (http://www.stl250.org/cake.aspx).  The site is very helpful and advertises an app.  The app looks like a fun way to keep track of the cakes you have found.  Looks is the key word, in practice the app sucked and did not work.  It does help finding the cakes, but the game function doesn't.   I tied 4 times to capture a cake and it never worked, GRRR...  Once I stopped fooling with the app, I enjoyed just taking photos of the cakes and posting the photos on my social medias (facebook, twitter, instagram).  I even used hashtags for the first time, #stl250. 

Venice Café Cake, My Favorite

As you can imagine some cakes are better executed than others.  I am posting a few of my favorites.  The Venice Café cake is my favorite so far.  Venice Café is known for their crazy decorations, on first sighting the cake looked rather bland, but once I walked around it, I knew it was the perfect cake for them.  It was awesomely oozing blood.  Anyway, love them or hate them, looking for cakes is a fun way to spend a day.