Local Heroes

The other day, as I was driving through the town of Red Bank, NJ, I ran into the Cluck-U chicken on his way to work.

I didn't actually run into him, although he frequently rushes into oncoming traffic, begging the classic riddle.*

We waved to each to other like the old friends we are. Once, at my prompting, he had rushed into oncoming traffic to answer my question on where to rent a chicken costume. (At the time, I was working for Successful Meetings, and we always needed stuff like that.)

At the moment, Cluck-U is the only business around here that believes in sending people in costumes out onto the street as brand magnets, but the man in the chicken outfit is part of a long line of mascots that used to patrol their own patch of sidewalk. Baby boomers who visited New York and Atlantic City in the 60s may still remember Mr. Peanut, the legume manque who worked Times Square and the Boardwalk. For those who don't, the humorist S.J. Perelman has immortalized his encounters with the Planters Peanut mascot.

Nowadays, when we think of costumed mascots, we think "Disney." However, Mickey Mouse & Co. tend to stay close to home (and why not, when your home is as a big as a state). Still, I do recall a chance encounter in 2002 between Mickey and the Cremaster Cycle of avant-garde artist, Matthew Barney. It was ugly: Confronted with crashed and mangled cars, baby shoes covered in Vaseline, and a looped film involving grapes being pushed through a slot cut into a Latex sheet (I think), Mickey preferred to stay in a corner - perhaps the only corner in New York's famously cyllindrical Guggenheim Museum. And I think he made the right choice.

The local heroes, like the Cluck-U chicken, also tend to stay close to home - our homes - exhorting us to wave, honk, and accept coupons for discounts from their sponsors.

Next to sports mascots (of which I know next to nothing), they tend to be comestibles. In fact, the last remarkable mascot encounter I remember was a showdown between then-Yankee Tino Martinez and the Hormel Hot Dog, back in the summer of 2001. It was "Tino Martinez Day" at what was then the new Yankee Stadium, and Tino Martinez was accepting an award from the president of Hormel Meat Products. Standing by, as the color guard, was the Hormel Hot Dog mascot. Martinez accepted the award and shook the president's hand, but when the Hot Dog offered his hand, Martinez turned his back and walked away.

"Oh, s**t!" the man in front of me opined. "He dissed the salami!"

A decade later, Martinez is retired, while the Hormel Hot Dog is still at it, putting on his Hot Dog hose one leg at the time.

*In the Cluck-U version, a chicken crosses the road because he is paid by the hour.