Giant Rats in the Marina!

By Matt Mason
June 26th, 2008 @ 7:23 PM ICME, West Side

img_0945-custom.JPGThere are two rats.  One is about fifteen feet tall, and the other is considerably larger.  They’re grey and inflatable.  I drove by them today, and snapped this picture as best as I could.

 The rats were part of a protest.  I’ll have to follow up and find out what the protest was about.  Since the list of rats is pretty big nowadays, I couldn’t even guess. 

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  3. Marina Development Continues Apace
  4. Giant Robot Silverlake Closing Sale: now 30% off storewide
  5. Marina del Whale

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8 Comments so far

  1. Spencer Cross (spencercross) on June 26th, 2008 @ 8:43 pm

    These are usually used in labor protests.


  2. tornadoes28 on June 26th, 2008 @ 9:01 pm

    Ahh, they’re not as big as the ones I see downtown.


  3. frazgo on June 26th, 2008 @ 9:07 pm

    Damn and here I was hoping LA would get its own disneyland and save me the trip to the OC.


  4. doran on June 26th, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

    They appear to be scabhunters. Aren’t they adorable?


  5. Matt Mason (mason) on June 26th, 2008 @ 11:42 pm

    Spencer, Doran — usually the protests in the Marina involve development, but I agree that this one is probably a labor dispute.

    Frazgo — good one! Not only would we save the trip, we could blog about it too, heh heh.


  6. marshall on June 27th, 2008 @ 5:59 am

    These rats belong to various construction unions. They use them all the time around LA as part of their protests against non-Union projects, or projects where the developer has violated their promises to use union labor. I’ve never seen two of them in one place before. They either must have a shortage of things to protest about, or they have a real beef with the developer of this project.


  7. bustard on June 27th, 2008 @ 8:10 am

    Marshall is correct. In NY, they are used by the unions to send a signal to scabs. There are approximately seven or nine inflatable rats in all owned by the unions, and they are manufactured in Chicago, if I recall. I have never seen more than one in one place, either. Before this photo I have never seen one outside of the five boros.


  8. evan on June 27th, 2008 @ 9:51 am

    Of course I don’t have one photo of the two of them, but a few years back I saw two of the rats in San Pedro:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/evang/27364991/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/evang/27364990/



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