by Dot Cannon

A rubber duck that weighs eleven tons, and has been traveling around the world since 2007?

That’s exactly what showed up in Los Angeles Harbor just after sunrise, this past Wednesday morning, on its West Coast debut.

According to the Rubber Duck in China site, Netherlands artist Florentijn Hofman created his six-story-tall rubber duck in 2007 with a dual purpose: bringing his art into public spaces, and making art more accessible to the general public.

The world’s largest rubber duck has become a gone-viral celebrity.  Just this year, its tour stops have included appearances at Australia’s Sydney Festival this past January, as well as Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.   And on Wednesday afternoon, the sixty-one-foot-tall duck led off the opening “Grand Parade of Sail”  for Tall Ships® Festival Los Angeles 2014.   Los Angeles is the first West Coast city to welcome Rubber Duck–and one of only three North American cities to host the giant rubber bath toy.

But seven years of world travel haven’t all been bright lights and glamour for Rubber Duck.  According to Time Magazine, during a stay in Hong Kong in 2013, the duck deflated overnight–flattening into what resembled a yellow rubber pancake.  The same article references a 2009 vandalism incident in Belgium–when someone stabbed the installation forty-two times.

On Friday, no one was thinking of these past episodes.

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