101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [47]
Manneken Pis will likely fulfill most tourists’ quota for urinating statues. But if you still want more, check out his sister—her name is Jeanneke Pis, and she lives just up the street. Created in the mid-1980s by Denis-Adrien Debouvrie, the pig-tailed Jeanneke is cuter than her brother but no less naughty. Naked and smiling, she squats on top of a limestone pedestal and gazes blissfully toward the sky, as water drips from between her legs in a realistic tinkle.
Manneken Pis
Walter Vermeir/Wikipedia Commons
Jeanneke Pis
Wikipedia Commons
Chapter 73
An Old Firm Derby While Wearing the Wrong Color T-Shirt
In the contentious world of international football, one of the oldest and most passionate rivalries is that between Scotland’s Celtic and Rangers football clubs. When the teams faced off in the first Old Firm derby—a game where the two teams go head-to-head—the press described the match as a “friendly encounter.” That hospitality, however, didn’t last long.
Part of the problem is the deep differences between Celtic and Rangers fans. Both teams are Scottish, but Celtic was founded in 1887 by a Catholic monk whose specific goal was to create a charity to help alleviate poverty in Glasgow’s Irish community. Rangers were the preferred team of the relatively comfortable Scottish Protestant majority; they didn’t even allow Catholics on the team till 1989. Adding to the conflict, Celtic fans tend to be Irish nationalists, whereas Rangers are unionists.
These differences can be explosive. On Old Firm weekends, admission rates for local hospitals increase ninefold, and the cumulative total for arrests at Old Firm derbies is the highest of any game in the world. After Celtic beat the Rangers 1–0 in the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden in 1980, more than nine thousand angry fans stormed the field in one of the largest on-field battles ever reported.
Which brings me to my point. Celtic’s color is green. Rangers’ is blue. If you don’t feel passionately about either side, you’d be wise to pick an outfit in a more neutral hue.
Chapter 74
The Annual Poison Oak Show
If evil were a plant, it would be poison oak. Prevalent up and down the United States’ Pacific coast, poison oak produces an oil called urushiol that causes a dermatologic version of hell—a weeping, itchy rash that can last for more than a month. About 85 percent of people are susceptible to urushiol, and as little as a billionth of a gram can cause a reaction, which means that a quarter of an ounce, judiciously applied, could cause a rash on every person on earth.
Given urushiol’s power, the idea of hosting a poison oak festival sounds stupid, if not sadistic. And yet every September for the past twenty-five years, the town of Columbia, California, has done exactly that. With categories based on a traditional flower show, it encourages people to bring in their finest specimens of poison oak to be judged in contests like Best Arrangement of Poison Oak, Best Poison Oak Accessory or Jewelry, and Most Potent Looking Red Leaves. There’s even a competition for the Best Photo of Poison Oak Rash and—I shudder to even mention this—the Most Original Poison Oak Dish.
Before you rush to enter, keep in mind that urushiol, being oil, doesn’t evaporate, so it can stay on your shoes or gloves or bouquet-making tools for years. If you accidentally burn the stuff, you can get a reaction in your lungs. Think you’re too smart to make that kind of mistake? Consider this: poison oak changes appearance depending on whether it’s in sun or shade—it can be a dense shrub or a climbing vine—so it’s not always easy to identify. Even worse, the plant doesn’t need its leaves to give you a rash: it has urushiol in its roots. If you’re unlucky enough to come in contact with any part of poison oak, your only hope is to slather yourself in Tecnu, a special cleanser whose original purpose gives a sense of how insidious urushiol is—Tecnu was originally designed to remove radiation fallout dust from skin.
Chapter 75
The Inside of a Chinese Coal Mine
There are two classes of coal