About Randyland

The blank screen presents a challenge: electrocute black and white letters into neon colors in a reader’s imagination to describe Randyland, a must-see-to-believe destination in Pittsburgh, PA.  

I stare.  The white page blinks back as a spectacularly unhelpful void.

I venture into the void; I type: yellow, orange, pink, blue, green, purple

I designate brushstrokes to the colors: dots, dashes, swirls, smears, spatters 

I add objects to slather in color and stroke: flamingoes, rocking chairs, bicycles, telephones, mirrors, fence posts, walls, stairs, alligators, rats

The challenge of Randyland is that it defies pithy description.  Just tune in to someone attempting to explain:

“Randy is an artist who collects…things.  He’s eclectic…super friendly…and…artistic?”

“Randyland is a house…but all outside.”

“Randyland is like color threw up in a junk yard.”

“Bring lunch to Randyland and eat next to succulents in chicken planters, snakes in a pit, and Tibetan prayer flags.”

“Randyland is…You just have to go see it.”

The explainer finally stalls and resorts to a series of hand gestures that may or may not approximate painting a flock of flamingoes purple with green dots.

Just go see it.  That’s where we all land, we who have been to Randyland and have been drawn back to the Wonderland of colorfully vomited junk, checking to see how items have been rearranged, repositioned, repainted, or replaced by new…treasures.  We take our friends, first time visitors to Pittsburgh.  We assure them, “You just have to see Randyland.”  Because black and white words cannot electrocute color.

Randyland enlivens the slack-jawed who wander through.  Adults revert to childhood.  College students kneel in the sand pile to arrange and rearrange plastic tarantulas.  Randy had to tape a sign to a line-up of rocking horses: “Please No Adults,” thanks to the clear and present danger of a largish body determined to cavort with the abandon of a three-year-old.  

All ages hold phones aloft at selfie angles beside Randy’s quotes of equality, love, acceptance, and joy.  Propelled by hashtags and ats, the neon messages invade black and white screens of worldwide social media networks.

“What’s your favorite color?” I ask my two daughters.  Their mutual answer: “black and white.”  Gone are the pinks and purples of their pre-K years.  Black and white are the choices of moody teenagers, colors selected to antagonize the adult asking.  The calculating teen rages against the machine and selects the very colors that equal a lack of color or a presence of all colors.  

My daughters are actually not teenagers.  They are eight and eleven.  They do not yet know how to spell angst.  They do not choose black and white out of defiance but rather a certainty that radiates self-confidence.  I remember being their ages and panicking over the favorite color question.  Is there a “correct” answer?  I usually defaulted to blue, but I wondered if I’d somehow miscalculated the color wheel smorgasbord.  Color choice revealed my lack of confidence.

I find myself now at an age of firmer resolve.  I still land on blue.  But I’ve done the therapeutic work of defining why I stand by that one adjective.

Randyland is not all bright colors effervescing at surface level.  Randy lost his life partner to cancer a few years ago, so black laces the riot of color.  Through grief and the darker truths of life, Randy colors love, life, and joy, but he insists on treating these intangible values with black and white seriousness: We must be people who love people well.  

Randy’s answer on how to love people well?  Pick up a paintbrush and electrocute a telephone, or a bell, or a chair.  See the potential for love.  Color the blanks between black and white.  Then invite people to come and see.

On visits to Randyland, I find myself exhausted by the colorful potential for love.  So I look up.  Randy’s paintbrush reaches far, stretching two, then three stories up the sides of surrounding houses, but even Randy cannot retouch the sky.  My eyes rest on the dot-less, dash-less, swirl-less, smear-less, spatter-less, expanse of blue that is always the same blue ceiling of Randyland.

My favorite color is blue.  And Randyland?  You just have to go see it.

Visit Randyland: 

1501 Arch St., Pittsburgh, PA 15212