PLEASE DO NOT PARK ON THE PERIMETER HIGHWAY, PTH-7, OR ANY OF THE ON-RAMPS CONNECTING THE TWO! USE THE PARKING WAYPOINT ON THE SERVICE ROAD FOR A SAFER AND HAPPIER CACHING EXPERIENCE!
The camo-taped top half of the container is tied to the host. Please do not try to move it. Instead, simply give a gentle twist clockwise on the purple bottom half to open, and then counterclockwise to close.
As everyone knows, November of 2024 was a pretty slow news month. Few things of consequence happened worldwide. The most notable exception came on the 20th, when Sotheby's New York announced its successful sale at auction of "Comedian", a work by renowned visual artist Maurizio Cattelan. The piece consists of a banana, duct taped to a wall, and... well, that's it. The winning bid? 6.2 million dollars. Of that, 5.2 mil was earned by the seller, a private art collector who had paid $120,000 for it five years earlier. A pretty good return on investment, I must say. Although he or she didn't do as well (at least proportionally) as the artist, who had purchased the banana for 35 cents. The other million went to Sotheby's themselves for conducting the auction.
Any discussion of what $6.2 million gets you these days has to start with what it DOESN'T get you. Sotheby's made clear from the outset that three elements were NOT included in the purchase price:
1. The banana.
2. The duct tape.
3. The wall.
The first two items were excluded for being perishable: the expectation is that the owner will need to replace them at regular intervals anyway. Sotheby's declined to sell the wall on the grounds that it was also being used to support the auction house's ceiling. I guess you have to bite the bullet and use one of your own.
So what exactly did the successful bidder receive? A Certificate of Authenticity, of course. Plus detailed instructions from the artist himself on how to display the work. As a generous bonus, the seller also agreed to supply a complimentary roll of tape and selection of fruit to facilitate the new owner's entry into the world of high-end art. The essence of the purchase, though, was the right to call a banana duct-taped to a wall "Comedian", and to publicly represent it as a Cattelan original. Not an exclusive original, mind you. Apparently, there are two other bananas whose existence is also certified as authentic, one in a private collection and one donated to the Guggenheim Museum.
Well, these events have inspired us to give back to geocaching, a pastime that has offered us so much, by donating a work of art. Just like Comedian, the onion, the string, and the tree are not included in the deal, at least not physically. They will remain at the posted coordinates, along with a logbook for future art appreciators to sign. However, the FTF prize is the abstract concept of tying an onion to a tree and referring to it as a geocache. Enjoy!