Sunday, June 3 Austin American-Statesman

Sand fantasies

By Mark Babineck Sunday, June 3, 2001

GALVESTON -- For one day each year, the Texas architects who regularly deal in steel, wood, glass and cloth turn their attention to piles of sand along Galveston's East Beach.

Most of the creations that emerged from Saturday's 15th annual American Institute of Architects Sandcastle Competition won't ever be drafted or constructed in real life, and come to think of it, maybe that's a good thing.

"If the gas prices don't kill you, the tires will," a bikini-clad woman yelled as she tried to draw sun-drenched passers-by to booth No. 4, an upside-down Ford Explorer with a blown tire courtesy of B2HK Architecture.

The 3,000 architects, designers, engineers, contractors, students and others on the 80 teams dreamed up myriad sand-borne takes on pop culture, entertainment, politics and their own profession. A few even built castles.

"This is awesome. They are so creative," said Trish Carroll, who surveyed the looniness with Donna Wixon and a group of friends visiting from Baxter Springs, Kan.

Teams have five hours to transform about 10 cubic feet of sand into pretty much anything they want. Anything can be used to build, but the result must consist of only sand and water pumped from the nearby Gulf of Mexico.

Creations were judged on originality of concept, artistic execution, technical difficulty, carving techniques and overall use of the sculpting site.

The top prize, called "The Golden Bucket," went to the firm of Page Southerland Page for "Scooby's Doom," a ghoulish take on the popular cartoon.

The second prize, called the "Silver Shovel," went to CLR for "Crouching Tiger, Hungry Dragon." Among the humor highlights:

* Worst pun of the day went to Murphy Mears Architects and "1 Foot Above Sea Level," a giant foot planted on a letter "C" carved in the sand.

* Anna Nicole Smith didn't escape designers' notice. Ziegler Cooper Architects built a giant bust of the model, with her bosom pinning late nonagenarian multimillionaire husband J. Howard Marshall II face-first in the sand.

* "Curious George Goes to Washington, D.C." placed the cuddly primate in his little wagon, surrounded by the White House, the Capitol and the Jefferson Memorial.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), June 03, 2001

Answers

This recalls magic days from my childhood at Jones Beach LI and at the Jersey shore. Our primary tools were our hands and a sand bucket.

A challenge was to create moats that would protect the sand castle from the advancing tide. Of course this never worked.

A pleasure was to sabatage other kid's castles. Psychologists have recently determined that ravaging a kid's sand castles can permantly cripple his/her growth. Shirley, I am so sorry (you little twerp).

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), June 03, 2001.

Some of my fondest recollections of childhood were of times at the beach. Whether it was Manhattan Beach (in Brooklyn) or a private beach, also in Brooklyn, or Jones Beach, it was always the "pail and shovel" that got me going.

The moats, as it turned out, probably helped to destroy the castles faster. Or maybe it just seemed that way. But the tide seemed to take them away as fast as we could build them at times.

Every time I go into a store and I see the "beach toys", it brings me right back to being a kid at the beach.

Thanks for posting this, Lars :-)

-- (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), June 03, 2001.

Larsie, you POS,

I remember you jumping on my sand castle; I remember you kicking sand in my weakling brother's face. You ruined my life and now I will ruin your's. Die, mofo.

Shirley

-- (Shirley@Ship_Bottom. NJ), June 03, 2001.