Foreign Friends: An Unfriendly Welcome

It was not exactly the Statue of Liberty, but in the 1980s, Palo Alto was given a statue in friendship from its sister city, Linkoping, Sweden.  Known as “Foreign Friends” — Fjareen Vanner in Swedish — it was installed at the grassy corner of Waverley and Embarcadero in September of 1989 as a tribute to the bond between the two cities. The 11-foot wood plank statue depicted a couple sitting on a bench accompanied by a dog at their feet and a bird perched above on a street lamp.  Opinions differed greatly on the statue — some saw it as grotesquely ugly, others as charmingly original.  But the tale of Foreign Friends would be a sad one  — in ten years time, Foreign Friends would be nowhere in sight, rotting away and buried in a Palo Alto landfill.

Foreign Friends was a favorite picture-taking spot and a curious attraction when it was first installed.  Around holiday time one year, some jolly yuletider dressed the pair in Santa hats and on another occasion, apparently imbibed with the spirit of a neighborhood wedding, the couple appeared dressed as a bride and groom.  One year, city boosters put the couple in a tux and party dress to advertise the city’s fund-raising gala, the Black and White Ball.  And on particularly cold mornings, neighborhood care-takers would sometimes wrap the statue in blankets.  

Corny?  Sure, but also rather charming.

But the statue also had a legion of critics.  Some of the statue’s new neighbors were anything but welcoming, calling it a public eyesore and vowing to have it removed.
And the oversized wooden couple would soon become a sitting duck for area bullies, helplessly picked on for more than five years. On several occasions the statue was spray-painted or defaced with graffiti.  One morning the couple was found holding an enormous envelope inscribed with the words “Return to Sender.”  And in a story almost too weird to be a true, Foreign Friends was once doused with gasoline and nearly incinerated by a Stanford professor.  And it would get worse…

On Halloween night 1993, the statue was decapitated.  Rallying to the statue’s defense, the Palo Alto’s Public Art Commission asked Hungarian artist Tamas Ortutay to reattach the heads and restore the work — thanks to the help of an anonymous $3,000 donation. The “Friends” were again looking their best for a picture taken with the Gunn High School Band departing for Linkoping on a foreign exchange trip. But on February 10th, 1994, Foreign Friends was again the target of vandalism.  The heads were sawed off for a second time  — and this time carted away  — leaving the eerie specter of a headless statue to welcome newcomers driving into the city.  As the statue was transferred to the city’s maintenance yard, Ralph White of Neighbors Abroad found a sculptor to redesign the heads in redwood.  When finished, the new heads were again attached by the indulgent Mr. Ortutay.  But everyone seemed to agree that these new California heads were a poor match to the statue’s Swedish bodies.  If Foreign Friends was unpopular before, it now lost the last of its well-wishers.  The Palo Alto Arts Commission voted to remove the statue completely from its collection, saying it was “no longer art.”

Foreign Friends had nowhere left to go.  Obviously not safe at its Embarcadero post, the city’s leaders debated what to do with the wooden couple.  A plan to give it permanent watchdogs by placing it in front of Fire Station #3 was nixed by Fire Captain Jerry Davis (he said firemen already dealt with “enough vandalism”).  The Secret Garden behind the Children's Library seemed an ideal fantasyland spot, but the 11 foot statue was deemed too bulky for that locale.  City officials then tried to put the statue in Briones Park on Arrastradero Road, but local residents wanted nothing to do with it.

By 1998, the statue had reappeared, this time in Werry Park in College Terrace.  But neighbors there were not pleased either. Sixteen College Terrace residents had soon signed a petition signed to get the statue removed and one reader of the Palo Alto Weekly wrote in to say that the "Foreign Friends statue should be relocated to the Palo Alto city dump…I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”

If was almost enough to make a wooden statue cry.

Having lost all its allies, Foreign Friends began to rot and was removed from Werry Park.  Soon the statue had seriously deteriorated and was finally buried unceremoniously in landfill out in the Baylands. A sad end for a couple that just wanted to make friends. 

Foreign Friends, ready for the Black & White Ball. (Courtesy Palo Alto Historical Assocation)

Foreign Friends under attack. ( Courtesy Palo Alto Historical Assocation)

This photo gives a sense of the size of the statue. (Courtesy Palo Alto Historical Assocation)

A group of youngsters posing with the Foreign Friends. (Courtesy Palo Alto Historical Assocation)