Flamingo House

Featured in “Weird California”

He’s not really much of a flamingo guy, but you’d be hard pressed to have guessed that if you drive by John Curren’s Pescadero Creek Road home in Loma Mar.

   Originally Currens placed a few of the pink plastic birds outside his home because it had been abandoned for a number of years before he bought it, and it had become something of a beer-drinking hangout for the local high school and college kids.

   “I just wanted to send a message that someone was moving in, and so I put up a few flamingos, that my sister gave me as a gag gift” said Currens, a data processing consultant and flamingo non-enthusiast.

    The young drinkers took the hint, but somehow the flamingos started to multiply. “I haven’t actually bought too many of these things myself.” Currens maintains, “Friends bring them by, strangers leave them at my front door. One guy gave me a whole truckload of them once.”

   Currens estimates there are now over 500 of the gaudy pale red lawn ornaments loitering on his property. They perch on his lush-green ferny front yard. They have made themselves comfortable in his backyard. Up and down his driveway, on his front porch and atop of his house, They vary sometimes slightly in size, some even differ in pinks (a few due to weathering, a few more due to factory paint) There are even a number of flamingo wind chimes, flamingo reflectors and flamingo flags. That’s a lot of flamingos for even a bona fide flamingo aficionado, which Currens certainly is not.  

   “One person had a problem with them. So I pointed all the birds towards her house, and it worked. She moved out.” chuckled the owner of the flamingos. (But not a devotee of them.)

   Everyone else it turns out loves Currens collection, especially elderly women and children. “I definitely get more compliments from old ladies and little kids than anyone else, but everybody I talk to seems to like them.”

   If you are a legitimate admirer of plastic pink flamingos, and would like to own a set of 500 for yourself, now is the time to act. Currens is putting his handsome 3-acre home up for sale and he’s not taking the flamingos with him.

   “I prefer eagles.” Said the current owner of the residence. (Who is, as it turns out, not much of a flamingo guy.)