Big Fucking Things

To start the ball rolling, I thought I’d write a post about something close to home (which is North Carolina in the US for me, right now). A little research revealed that the town of Rose Hill, NC, claims to be home to the world’s largest frying pan, and damn proud of it they are, too! Situated in the town square under a pavilion roof, this functional Big Fucking Frying Pan measures an impressive 15 feet in diameter and is used to fry up to 365 chickens at once during festivals. However, when it isn’t in use (which, let’s face it, is 99% of the time) it really isn’t much to look at, lying down in there with its protective cover on:

It’s hard to get a photo that gives a true impression of its size in relation to your Uncle Bert when it’s parallel to the ground. It doesn’t really look much like your regular-sized kitchenware either, with that stubby handle. I personally believe that a Big Fucking Thing like this needs to resemble the not-so-fucking-big item that it claims to be a Big Fucking version of (although, having seen an image of it before it was last renovated, it seems that they’ve at least made an effort in terms of aesthetics now – it previously resembled more of a hot plate on top of cinder blocks). I think Rose Hill needs to learn a thing or two about presentation in order to really capitalize on their Big Fucking Thing.

For example, let’s take a look at a former contender for the prestigous title of World’s Largest Frying Pan: the town of Long Beach, Washington. Their original Big Fucking Frying Pan, forged from iron in 1941 for the town’s annual Razor Clam Festival and measuring in at just 9.6 feet in diameter (with a 5 foot handle) no longer exists, but that didn’t stop them from creating a 10 by 20 foot replica in fiberglass and mounting it vertically to create a true photo-opportunity kinda tourist attraction.

So what if it’s smaller than Rose Hill’s and you can’t use it to fry up a couple of cows? At least you can get a decent Big Fucking Thing family portrait in front of it!

It looks like we may be able to cobble together some general Big Fucking Thing guidelines as we go. It’s important that – if you’re going to attempt to prop up your local tourist industry by implementing the Big Fucking Thing strategy – you take a look at all the other Big Fucking things in the world and learn from their mistakes. To start, I’d like to propose the following entries to the Big Fucking Thing Book of Strategy:

1. Presentation of your Big Fucking Thing is key. People need to be able to show photos of themselves grinning like morons in front of the Big Fucking Thing to their friends to prove just how fucking big it is.
2. If your Big Fucking Thing is supposed to be a scaled up version of an everyday object that people are very familiar with then it really needs to look like that thing, otherwise it really doesn’t count for much.

Okay, that’s all for now. More Big Fucking stuff to come soon.