I was wandering around the Bay area and came across a remarkable statue.Even more amazingly, once I saw it, I realized that this bronze cat has a deep connection to that rum concoction known as the Mai Tai.
Given just the photos shown here, you should be able to figure out what the connection is. Can you? What possible connection can there be between this statue and a rum drink?
For extra credit, you should be able to easily determine the lat/long of the statue. Can you find an aerial image of the cat?Search on!
(For all you advanced searchers, note that I've altered the image just enough so that "Search By Image" won't work here. I thought I should tell you so you won't waste your time...)
HA! Found it. Took me roughly 7 minutes. And yes, I know where this now and some other details about the artwork itself. Interesting concept, this is my first time doing this. Loved it!
ReplyDeleteI researched Mai Tai on Wikipedia, read the history, discovered it was "invented" by Trader Vic's. Found two locations of Trader Vic's in the Bay Area (Emeryville and Palo Alto), did a Google Maps search of it, couldn't find any statue. Zoomed in on second statue, read the plaque, googled "Trader Vic's" and "California State Fossil", found this page:
ReplyDeletehttp://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html
The statue is the first picture on the right. Googled "McCone Hall berkeley" and clicked on the Google Maps result. Zoomed in until I saw the cat in front of the building and found these coordinates: 37.873763, -122.259545
I zoomed on the picture and did an image search for "bronze cat statue california state smilodon" and the rest was easy.
ReplyDeleteThis saber-toothed cat sculpture is situated at the southern entrance of the McCone Hall at UC Berkley. It was sculpted by Victor Bergeron (of Trader Vic's fame) who is more widely known around the globe for his Mai Tai than for his sculptures.
Started with a search for sabretoothed tiger AND california AND statue in Google Images. Third row had an image that looked an awful lot like your image. (http://baha-news.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html)
ReplyDelete"The smilodon statue in the photo above was created by Victor Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic’s, and can be found in the plaza south of McCone Hall on the U.C. campus, where it has been pouncing on passers-by for many years."
Then did a quick search for sabretoothed tiger AND mai tai. The third result was: http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html
Apparently the sculptor is well known for his Mai Tais.
Coordinates, according to Google Earth, being approximately: 37°52'25.24"N 122°15'33.99"W
Took me about 10 minutes to track everything down, open Google Earth, etc.
The artist who sculpted the Smilodon statue is Victor Bergeron.
ReplyDeleteThe Mai Tai was reportedly invented by "Trader Vic" at his Oakland California restaurant ("Trader Vic's") in 1944.
Trader Vic's real name is Victor Bergeron.
So, the inventor of the Mai Tai is also the sculptor of the statue!
Location of the statue: 37.873,-122.259
Image can be seen on google maps: http://goo.gl/Cs4fM
Pretty simple searches in this case... "Smilodon statue california" quickly yielded the location and sculptor.
"History mai tai" gave the inventor of the drink. The connection was obvious after that.
Thanks for a fun little diversion!
The sculpture was made by Victor Bergeron, the man who established Trader Vic's restaurants. ANd he also invented Mai Tai.
ReplyDeleteI had to find the name of the cat (Smilodon Californicus) and then googled (Smilodon Californicus and Mai Tai)
and found this page (http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html)
saber-toothed cat sculpture, done by Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron and donated to UCMP. Trader Vics Restaurant has the Mai Tai lounge.
ReplyDelete(37.87375500004616, -122.2595299999659)
the aerial photo is harder
I google searched "saber-tooth tiger and mai tai". It was sculpted by Victor Bergeron and is at McCone Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus. Then I googled Victor Bergeron - he had a restaurant "Trader Vic's" where he concocted the Mai Tai rum drink in 1944. I then went to google maps and found the location of McCone Hall, right clicked on the flag and selected "what's here": lat 37.874089, long -122.259223.
ReplyDeleteI zoomed in on the placard at the base of the statue in the photo and saw that "Trader Vic" (of Rum fame)did the sculpture of the sabre tooth tiger. A search of "sabre tooth tiger trader vic" lead me here.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php
A search of McCone Hall (from the article) zoomed in all the way lead me here.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=mccone+hall+berkeley&hl=en&ll=37.873934,-122.259429&spn=0.000609,0.000603&sqi=2&hnear=McCone+Hall,+Berkeley,+California+94709&t=h&z=21&iwloc=A
All in all it took about 5 minutes
I searched Google images for "saber toothed cat" and "saber toothed tiger" until I found an image of the statue above. The image led me to this page: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php, which says that the sculptor was Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron, which Wikipedia identifies as the creator of the Mai Tai: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mai_Tai
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this one! (like I enjoy Mai Tais!) The sculptor of this Smilodon is Victor Bergeron, who as the owner of Trader Vic's is one of the two people who claim to have invented the Mai Tai. I saw a guy once at Trader Vic's, drinking a pina colada. Great hair.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the statue is located outside of McCone Hall at UC Berkeley. Really specifically, it's located at 37.873766, -122.259544.
The building used to house the paleontology department, but is now home to the geologic sciences.
I found it by enlarging the second picture and looking at the plaque on the statue's base. It said California State Fossil, Smilodon, and then some small words I couldn't make out. (Later, I looked closer, and found that it had the sculptor's name on it.)
Then I did a search for "California State Fossil Smilodon" on Google Images and found the photo from a different angle. That led me to a UC Berkeley web page that talked about McCone hall. It also mention Trader Vics and Mai Tai's.
I used Google Maps to show me a picture of McCone Hall and got the coordinates by using the "What Is Here?" tool on the statue (which is clearly visible on the image.)
* Image search: saber tooth tiger statue
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php
Epigraph:
The saber-toothed cat sculpture, done by Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron and donated to UCMP, is the only remaining indication that paleontology ever occupied the former Earth Sciences Building, now known as McCone Hall.
* Maps search: McCone Hall
http://g.co/maps/fev8b
* Search for: Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trader_Vic's
He (Victor J. Bergeron) was one of two people who claimed to have invented the Mai Tai.
(double check: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/11/WIG619OSAL1.DTL )
So:
The connection is Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr. (December 10, 1902, San Francisco, California - October 11, 1984, Hillsborough, California)
who claimed to have invented the Mai Tai and sculptor of saber-tooth tiger in the photo donated to the UCMP
Lat/Long: 37.873766/-122.259544
O sorry...
ReplyDeleteAbout 10 minutes (because I was lucky to find the image)
The sculpture is at McCone Hall outside the geology building on UC Berkeley.
ReplyDeleteThe Mai Tai connection is the artist is Victor Bergeron - the man behind Trader Vic's and the inventor of the Mai Tai. (Was just on Kauai having a few of those!)
(I've typed this whole thing twice but the comment box never properly posts...)
ReplyDeleteZoom in on the image, plaque says "California State Fossil". Search that, get that it is a saber toothed cat, image search "saber toothed cat California", 4th result is same stateu form different angle from this page: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php
Page mentioned statue was by Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron. Wikipedia names him as founder of SF tiki bar Trader Vic's and links to this article about the invention of the mai tai:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/11/WIG619OSAL1.DTL
Search time: 5 minutes. Type to type and retype, and retype: 15 minutes.
i searched for "saber-tooth cat statue california". this quickly led to images of the same statue at berkeley McCone Hall.
ReplyDeleteso i searched on "saber-tooth cat statue berkeley mai-tai" and found this page:
http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html
which suggests the statue "was sculpted by Victor Bergeron (of Trader Vic's fame) who is more widely known around the globe for his Mai Tai than for his sculptures."
searching google for "victor bergeron" has as its first suggested search "victor bergeron mai tai"
in addition the wikipedia page for "Trader Vic's", the restaurant he created, states he claims to have invented the mai tai. with a reference to the SF cronicle.
not sure how to post an image in here. but i found it easily by surfing overhead in google earth. (search for mccone hall, statue is out front) you can also see it reasonably well if you know what you are looking at in google maps...
Victor J. Bergeron
ReplyDelete37.873774, -122.259504
5 mins
I believe that answer is Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron created the sculpture who also owned Trader Vics which is credited with creating the Mai Tai. Position 37.874305 , -122.259158 Below are my searches
ReplyDeleteFirst I ran this impage search with cat + statue + bay area and found a picture of a statue but not this on pointing to uc berkeley
So then I ran a image search with saber toothed cat berkeley and the 6th image had the statue with the location McCone Hall
Then I ran a search with the following terms sabretooth statue UC Berkeley and the second link showed it was created by Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron
Then I did a google search on Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron and the first listing was his wiki that talked about his bar and the it was credited with creating the Mai Tai,
I got the location from google maps by searching
McCone Hall but I am not sure if the are 100% dead on.
I did a search for: bronze saber-toothed tiger statue plaque "california state"
ReplyDeleteWhich yielded as a first result this link: http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!siartinventories&uri=full=3100001~!329260~!0
Which gave me the following information: "University of California, Berkeley, Earth Science Building 94720"
To search for in google maps... A little zooming yields these coordinates: 37.873763,-122.259542
...and this overhead: http://g.co/maps/xap3k
I searched For "saber-toothed tiger mai tai" which yielded a link mentioning a "Trader Vic's Original Mai Tai". I remembered from the siris page that the sculptor's name was Bergeron, V. (quickly expanded to Victor Bergeron).
Another search for Victor Bergeron Mai Tai yields a wikipedia article that states that Viktor Bergeron (Born December 10, 1902 in San Fancisco, CA) is one of two people who claims to have invented the Mai Tai.
Solved.
If I may :) can I correct my lat and longitude postion. I believe it is 37.873765 , -122.259158
ReplyDeleteBegan with a image search for [saber toothed statue] found a similar image that mentioned McCone Hall.
ReplyDeleteDid an everything search for [mccone hall] and then maps search to the Berkley campus.
[saber toothed statue mccone] gave me something about the smilodon statue by Victor Bergeron.
[Victor Bergeron] let me know he claimed to have invented the Mai Tai also of Trader's Vics fame.
Still working on the extra credit. Time so far was 10 minutes.
How/where do I submit my solution?
ReplyDeleteThe statue is found in front of McCone Hall University of California, Berkeley. It is a satue of a sabertooth cat (Smilodon Californicus), which is the state fossil of California. The statue was sculpted by Victor Bergeron, better known for founding "Trader Vic's" and who is claimed to have invented the Mai Tai.
ReplyDeleteLat/Long: 37.873775,-122.259539
Here's an arial image of the statue: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=McCone+Hall,+Berkeley,+CA&hl=en&ll=http://maps.google.com/maps?q=McCone+Hall,+Berkeley,+CA&hl=en&ll=37.873745,-122.259488&spn=0.000386,0.00061&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.547176,79.892578&oq=mccone+hall&hnear=McCone+Hall,+Berkeley,+California+94709&t=h&z=21&spn=0.000386,0.00061&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.547176,79.892578&oq=mccone+hall&hnear=McCone+Hall,+Berkeley,+California+94709&t=h&z=21
"Smilodon californicus, commonly known as the sabretoothed cat or sabretoothed tiger, is the official California State Fossil. The smilodon statue in the photo above was created by Victor Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic’s, and can be found in the plaza south of McCone Hall on the U.C. campus, where it has been pouncing on passers-by for many years."
ReplyDeletehttp://baha-news.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html
Victor Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic’s, is also credited with creating the Mai Tai at his Trader Vic's restaurant in Oakland in 1944.
I read about Mai Tais on Wikipedia to learn that they were created by Victor Bergeron so I searched "Trader Vic's Statute" in Google Images and found the image in the blog above that explained the link. Took maybe 5 minutes to put it all together.
Latitude and Longitude:
37.873764, -122.259545
One aerial image:
http://www-laep.ced.berkeley.edu/classes/old_labs/C188/labs/lab7/imageN6L.JPG
I found a couple of other aerial photos, and the Google Maps image too, but none that shows a good close-up of the statue.
couldn't find an aerial, but did find the State Fossil walled off...
ReplyDeletelooked for bay area sculpture, then saber tooth tiger bronze sculture -
found the Berkeley match and saw there were Flickr images, so searched those and ran across a shot of the plaque. Looked up Mai Tai and confirmed the T Vic connection. ≈ 50 minutes.
Trader Vic
Mai Tai Wiki
walled off
37.871441,-122.262021
addendum: overhead/aerial - compliments of Flickr comments -
ReplyDeleteaerial
The sculpture was sculpted by Victor Bergeron (of Trader Vic's fame) who also invented the Mai Tai.
ReplyDeleteSearch time, maybe 30 seconds. Search strategy:
1) Enlarge photo enough to read the plaque: "California State Fossil Smilodon" (this was the hardest part!)
2) Search on ["mai tai" smilodon]
3) Read the snippet of the first hit: "smilodon sculpture in front of McCone Hall ... Bergeron (of Trader Vic's fame) who is more widely known around the globe for his Mai Tai than for his sculptures."
4) Click the link to ensure nothing significant is hidden by the ellipsis.
The sculpture was created by Victor Bergeron of Trader Vic's fame. Bergeron is one of two people who claimed to have invented the Mai Tai cocktail.
ReplyDeleteThe sculpture is located at the South entrance to McCone Hall on the UC Berkeley campus at coordinates 37.873767,-122.259543.
Aerial view: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=37.873767,-122.259543&z=21
Search method:
Initial query [saber tooth tiger statue bay area] lead to
http://www.meetup.com/SF-Bay-Area-Geology-Hiking/events/48259652/
which provided the connection to UC Berkeley.
Next query [UC Berkeley sabre tooth tiger sculpture] lead to
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php
which provided a photo for confirmation and the connection to Victor Bergeron and Trader Vic's.
Query [saber-toothed cat sculpture Victor Bergeron] lead to
http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html
which lead to the precise location at the southern entrance to McCone Hall and also made the Mai Tai connection.
The Wikipedia entry for Trader Vic's clarified the Mai Tai connection.
This statue of a saber-toothed tiger was sculpted by Victor Bergeron, founder of the famous Trader Vic's. He is credited with inventing the Mai Tai.
ReplyDeleteI searched for "saber tooth mai tai" and the first link was the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory (http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html) with information about the statue.
About one minute with the following search on Google:
ReplyDelete"Mai Tai" history sabre tooth
Which yielded the following link:
http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html
Here is a quote from that link, "The saber-toothed cat, Smilodon californicus, whose likeness menaces the southern entrance to the building, is the official California State Fossil. It was sculpted by Victor Bergeron (of Trader Vic's fame) who is more widely known around the globe for his Mai Tai than for his sculptures."
I then went to Google Map and found it sitting in the middle of the courtyard and got the following location:
37.873769,-122.259539
I tried street view, but it's a little high and there seems to be a truck blocking the view.
The sculptor was Victor Bergeron, owner of Trader Vics. He also claimed to have invented the Mai Tai. That particular statue is on the UC Berkeley campus by the southern entrance of McCone Hall. I think this image shows it by the entrance: http://g.co/maps/b6xgu
ReplyDeleteThe latitude/longitude being: 37.873765, -122.259544
Time to find: 10-15 Minutes
Method: First I zoomed in on the pic above to read the inscription on the base. It said "California State Fossil" "Smilodon" & "Saber Tooth Tiger". I tried to search for various combinations of California, Fossil, Smilodon, Bronze, Statue, etc. and really didn't get much of anywhere. Eventually I went to Google images and searched for "california state fossil saber tooth cat" and scrolled down to page 8. That image was on this page: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php. Then I searched for "uc berkeley saber tooth cat sculpture" which got this page: http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html that mentioned it's on the southern entrance. The rest I did with google maps.
This is the Saber tooth tiger statue located just south of McCone Hall on the Berkley Campus. It was created by Victor "Trader Vic" Bergerone, who also was the creator of the mai tai cocktail.
ReplyDeleteTo discover this, I zoomed in on the image and read the plaque, then search for "California State Fossil Statue" which led me to the BAHA News blog mentioning the statue, its creator and its current location.
Trader Vic (the supposed inventor of the Mai Tai) was the sculptor. It's in front of McCune Hall at UC Berkeley (37.87376,-122.25954).
ReplyDeleteI downloaded the second image and enlarged it to see the words "California State Fossil" but that turned out to be unhelpful. The Sabre-tooth cat is the official state fossil, but I already knew this was a Sabre-tooth cat. I searched for Sabre-tooth cat statue to find out the statue is at UC Berkely (turns out google maps has a location for it http://g.co/maps/2n5ej) Then I searched for Mai Tai history to find that the drink was invented by Trader Vic, and I connected the two ends of the puzzle to find this page http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php Which states this statue was sculpted by none other than Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron. Total search time was about 10 minutes.
ReplyDeleteThis surprised me. I had no idea that a local Maps search for [ Sabre Toothed Cat, University Drive, Berkeley, CA ] would work! Excellent.
DeleteFirst time here, so I don't know the rules or where to answer.
ReplyDeleteApproximately: 37.874472;-122.259378
Outside of: McCone Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94709
Found info here:
http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html
From website above:
The saber-toothed cat, Smilodon californicus, whose likeness menaces the southern entrance to the building, is the official California State Fossil. It was sculpted by Victor Bergeron (of Trader Vic's fame) who is more widely known around the globe for his Mai Tai than for his sculptures.
http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html i guess im a little late to thee party but it was pretty easy - google->sabertooth cat and mai tai
ReplyDelete"sabre tooth Cat statue and Mai Tai"
ReplyDeleteAnswers were in the first result
if you look at the second photo, it states saber tooth tiger.
ReplyDeletea google search for "mai tai saber tooth tiger" brings me to this site:
http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html
the site states:
"The saber-toothed cat, Smilodon californicus, whose likeness menaces the southern entrance to the building, is the official California State Fossil. It was sculpted by Victor Bergeron (of Trader Vic's fame) who is more widely known around the globe for his Mai Tai than for his sculptures."
once that connection was found, I looked up a searched google for "U.C. Berkeley map" and found where McCone Hall was.
That brought me to this page:
http://berkeley.edu/map/a-z/g.shtml which has Geography listed for McCone Hall
It is one of the buildings on the north side of the campus. Now you can switch to satellite view. I zoomed in on google maps to see the saber tooth tiger statue, and right clicked on google maps to center the map on it.
google maps returned these coordinates:
+37° 52' 26.74", -122° 15' 33.07"
This one was easy: on the image you could barely see the text. Searching for that I got to a Flickr photo which showed the same statue.
ReplyDeleteIn the comments they mentioned the location.
Then I searched for SMILODON and "Mai Tai" and got a page (http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/geotour/mccone.html) that said that it was sculpted by Victor Bergeron who apparently is more widely known around the globe for his Mai Tai than for his sculptures
Victor "Trader Vic" J. Bergeron sculpted the piece, which resides at ~(37.873761,-122.259538) -- http://g.co/maps/yfbh5. He is also noted to be the inventor of the Mai Tai drink (though there is some debate - a rival Tiki enthusiast with a very different recipie claimed to have originated the drink 10 years earlier).
ReplyDeleteThe statue was done by Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron and donated to the UCMP and resides in front of McCone Hall.Vic Bergeron originated the Mai Tai in 1944 in San Francisco's East Bay.
ReplyDeleteThe Lat/Long are:
37.873765,-122.259541
I noticed the statue said California state fossil, so I did a search for California state Mai tai. This led me to an article on Vic Bergeron and the controversy of him originating the mai tai. I then did a search on traders vic sabertooth, which led me to the UCMP page which had an image caption that mentioned he sculpted the statue.
The sculptor, Victor Bergeron, reportedly invented the Mai Tai (although that's disputed by Don the Beachcomber).
ReplyDeleteThis was a surprisingly easy search: "mai tai sabertooth cat", and the top result mentions Victor Bergeron sculpting cats and inventing the Mai Tai.
A further search of "Victor Bergeron sabertooth cat" for images turns up the image, which is right outside UC Berkeley's McCone Hall (37.873768,-122.259546), aerial photo available on Google Maps.
I found this using a google image search for saber tooth tiger statue. I found the image on the first page of my search.
ReplyDeleteThe image took me to the University of California at Berkeley Museum of Paleontology website.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php
That statue is located at McCone hall, formerly known as the Earth Sciences Building.
The caption under the photo of the statue says it was donated by Victor J. Bergeron.
A wikipedia search reveals Victor J. Bergeron (aka Trader Vic) is the founder of the restaurant chain Trader Vic's. Wikipedia says he is one of two people to claim to have invented the Mai Tai.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trader_Vic's
The Mai Tai is also the name of a laser developed at UC berkeley. First google image search for "bay area" sabertooth returned this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/10179628@N06/943223140/
glanced around the campus for overhead shot but couldn't find it before I had to leave.
McCone Hall at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley. The mai tai connection is that it was sculpted by Victor Bergeron, aka, Trader Vic. Coordinates should be close to 37.8016, -122.2638
ReplyDeleteThat was an easy one! I identified the statue even before noticing that I could zoom into the image and read the placard. ["San Francisco" statue sabre tooth] in Google images, page 8, took me here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/18/BAG9JJG0S71.DTL
ReplyDeleteOnce I read the placard, I searched for ["california state fossil" statue smilodon] in Images and the answer was right there in the first result: http://baha-news.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html
"The smilodon statue in the photo above was created by Victor Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic’s, and can be found in the plaza south of McCone Hall on the U.C. campus." And why did I know that was the answer? Because I had never in my life heard of a Mai Tai before! So the very first thing I did (before identifying the statue) was to look it up in Wikipedia, where I read that "It was purportedly invented at the Trader Vic's restaurant in Oakland, California in 1944."
Now for the extra credit, aeasy with the info above, just input "McCone Hall, Berkeley" into Google Maps and it's easy to find, approximate coordinates being 37.873764,-122.259544. Obviously Google Maps gives an aerial image, I'm not sure if you mean another one?
This is only the second search challenge I do and it was so much easier than last week! I think I spent close to an hour before giving up last week (most of it researching kite fishing, though, before your clarification). This time, writing this comment took longer that doing the search!
ok...able to get back to it a little more thoroughly.
ReplyDeleteWhat you're probably looking for rather than the name of a laser being developed there is the fact that Victor Bergeron developed the Mai Tai drink in Oakland at his restaurant.
Victor Bergeron sculted the Cat.
The cat is located at the entrance to Mccone hall.
Both were brought to us from Trader Vic's restaurant by Victor J. Bergeron. He created the Mai Tai and donated this statue that was at his restaurant to berkley where it is today at this location 37.873771, -122.259537 where you can see it on google maps.
ReplyDeleteThis took about 3 minutes and I searched "saber tooth sculpture college" in google images because I saw bike racks and thought it was likely a campus. It tied me to a berkley website that has some of the info in the caption. I also searched mai tai and found the connection to vic's just on wikipedia.
I like the search challenges:
ReplyDeleteIt was pretty easy this time. If you zoom in on picture you can see the text "California State Fossil" and "The Sabre Tooth Tiger". Searching this in Google Images was successful, and the image is under a URL starting with "www.cs.berkeley.edu".
Now search again for "uc berkeley saber tooth tiger statue" and the actually the very first link leads here http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php. The image on the left says it all:
1) The statue was donated Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron, who (after a quick check with Wikipedia) claims to have invented the Mai Tai.
2) The statue is located at McCone Hall. The only way I found to get the lat/long is to center the place in google maps and copy the values from the link (37.874066,-122.259242).
Looking at the picture I could make out California State Loan, so I google imaged "california sabretooth tiger statue" and found the match on the first page with mention of McCone Hall - Coordinates (37.873775725055864, -122.25951924920082) after zooming right in to the statue.
ReplyDeleteThe image result of the statue (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php) actually reveals plenty about the origin of the sculpture - done by Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron, whose wikipedia entry reveals more about his restaurant chain, and his claim as one of the two people who invented Mai Tai - a drink I've never heard of till now!
Time to get drunk!
Dan - today's challenge showed there is more than one way to skin a smilodon... Mr. Bergeron had a creative 2nd life.
ReplyDeleteyou may be interested in these, could be a treasure trove of search challenge ideas? Being slow and wandering while looking/searching occasionally pays off.
Embrace the Tiki, drink more Mai Tais. This took 94.043 nano seconds. nplex time.
flickr
flickr ca.
Trader Vic created the statue and claims to have created Mai Tais.
ReplyDeleteFrom the UCMP phot caption..."The saber-toothed cat sculpture, done by Victor J. "Trader Vic" Bergeron and donated to UCMP, is the only remaining indication that paleontology ever occupied the former Earth Sciences Building, now known as McCone Hall."
Lat/Long is approximately 37.873762, -122.259543
Took me about 10 minutes. I tried many different image searches such as "san francisco bronze saber tooth statue" to no avail. I started over and used your Bay area reference to mean San Francisco, CA. And I know rum drinks and and Mai Tai are associated with Trader Vics. I searched Google for "trader vics headquarters" and found the wikipedia article. Then I thought maybe it was visible using Street View. But was unsuccessful. Then I went back to the image and zoomed in enough to see the plaque and was just able to make out "Victor." Having just read the name Victor J Bergeron in the Trader Joe article, I started a new Google search using "Victor Bergeron donated sabertooth statue" guessing he gave it to a zoo or other semi-public place. The first link is http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/ucmpnews/07_05/history07_05.php for University of California Museum of Paleontology's site with the statue on that page. The I used Google Maps to get the aerial view of McCone Hall and "Drop a LatLng" marker.
Found this sculpture using the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS).
ReplyDeleteUsing the Outdoor Sculpture database base, I narrowed the search to "California" and "tiger"
Took about ten minutes. Initially I searched "San Francisco" then broadened the search to "California".
Eventually I landed here: http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!siartinventories&uri=full=3100001~!329260~!0#focus
Took me 15 seconds or less. I recognized that as the Smilodon next to McCone Hall at UC Berkeley (because my ex-gf worked in that building). I knew that the Mai Tai was invented at Trader Vic's (because I know lots of alcohol-related trivia). I already suspected the answer. So I googled "berkeley smilodon trader vic" and didn't even have to click the first link to see that I was right!
ReplyDeleteSearch technique: know lots of random, utterly useless trivia!