Monday, June 27, 2011

RoboCop Statue Hits Detroit

Believe it or not, it seems Detroit wants the RoboCop statue.




Detroit residents in favor of the statue have banded together and raised enough money to build a statue honoring the city's fictional hero RoboCop.

The people of Motor City rallied around the cause and found $US50,000 from private funding when Mayor Dave Bing nixed the idea.

Bing had asked citizens online for ideas on how to revitalize the city but shot down a suggestion that a statue of RoboCop, the titular hero of the 1987 sci-fi satire set in Detroit, would do the job.

"There are not any plans to erect a statue to RoboCop," he tweeted on February 7. "Thank you for your suggestion."

Bing's rejection sent RoboCop fans into a Twitter frenzy. "RoboCop would never turn his back on Detroit," one user tweeted at the mayor. "So why turn your back on RoboCop?" Detroit resident John Leonard started a Facebook group called "Build a statue of RoboCop in Detroit", which led to a fund being started on the "crowd-raising" website Kickstarter.com.

Imagination Station, a Detroit nonprofit organization that cleans up run-down areas of the city, has pledged a spot for the statue in a park it owns if the funds are raised. As of today, $US51,359 had been raised for the project - the initial goal was $US50,000.

"We're currently discussing how to branch this project and fundraising into bigger and bigger things with a better and better impact on Detroit," the project's homepage creator Brandon Walley wrote.
He said no one in the group had ever made a "giant solid metal permanent sculpture before", but have struck a deal with ironworks company Casey V. Westbrook to take a small figure of RoboCop, have it 3D scanned by lasers and scale its up to a 240cm tall statue.

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