Know Before You Go
At the intersection of Brookline and Franklin Street
Peter offers classes in Electromagnetic Kung-Fu for a small fee, and sign-up forms are generally available, along with a host of esoteric literature, on his front porch.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bear’s Ville
One man's psychedelic fence is painted with his cacophonous folk art musings on the world.
Most fences are simply put up to keep people out, but Cambridge, Massachusetts resident Peter Valentine has turned his home’s perimeter into a sounding board message board for all of his cosmic musings on life and the universe.
Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bear’s Ville is the name of Valentine’s Cambridge home, which he has turned into his own oasis of spiritual peace. Valentine’s entire three-story home was relocated to its current location in the 1980s to make room for the expanding campus of MIT. Rooted in a belief of Electromagnetic Kung-Fu, Peter Valentine requested the house be placed caddy-corner to the adjacent intersection. Once it was planted on its new corner location, he took the opportunity to create a living piece of art that was available for everyone to appreciate. He built the irregular fence at differing heights, with some sections even created in a jagged pattern that look like something giant and toothy took bites out of it.
Painting the whole thing purple, Valentine began writing any stray thought or musing that inspired him, right on the fence. In the years since he began his unique kind of ambient proselytizing, the entirety of the fence became almost completely covered in little koans, bits of wisdom, and psychedelic designs. He took the name from the animal symbols of a moose and bear to represent nature, fear, and the vastness of the world, which, to him, the beasts help exemplify. Some of the bits of wisdom that have been scrawled on the fence include, “Product first, love second,” and “If you need to cause suffering, be courageous. Cause it to yourself.”
The whole fence has become a constantly evolving piece of art in and of itself as Valentine continues to update the slats with new brainstorms and colloquial visions. His unstoppable will to create has even extended his visionary art onto the entryway to his home. Valentine’s singular messages are a burst of inventive punk rock spirituality in an otherwise bland neighborhood landscape.
