EDITOR’S VIEWPOINT/Cows are a curious way for New York to tout itself

This is what I think of when I think of New York: the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Museum of Modern Art, Carmine’s Italian restaurant, Broadway, Central Park, Fifth Avenue, Il Vagabondo Italian restaurant, Bloomingdale’s, the Russian Tea Room, the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, Carnegie Hall, Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, Yankee Stadium, Greenwich Village, Tony’s Ristorante Italiano, Grand Central Station, Madison Square Garden, Tavern on the Green, the American Museum of Natural History, Little Italy, the Guggenheim, the Verrazano Narrows bridge, the Rose Center’s new planetarium and Rudy Giuliani.

This is what I do not think of when I think of New York: cows. But two lawyers from the New York suburb of Connecticut apparently do. They have organized a “Cow Parade” for the Big Apple along the lines of Chicago’s wildly successful “Cows on Parade.” That 1999 project, which drew thousands of visitors to the city, featured more than 300 whimsically painted fiberglass cows placed throughout the city’s downtown loop.

Cows in Chicago make perfect sense – the city’s stockyards are tightly woven into its history, as is Mrs. O’Leary’s wrongly accused bovine. But New York?

Anyway, the people organizing the event ordered 500 fiberglass cows from a Swiss cow-making firm. (Actually, Zurich, Switzerland, was the birthplace of the cow parade idea.)

But a preliminary shipment arrived and was promptly rejected for two reasons, according to the organizers. Reason 1: The cows were prone to catch fire (this one puzzles me too much to even deal with it). Reason 2: The cows were “poorly made,” according to one lawyer, who accused the Swiss of sending New York Bosnian-made cows. (Nice to know one industry survived that war.) Organizers now say they will buy American cows, which will be painted and placed around the city this summer.

Other cities (and at least one state) are getting on the bandwagon. Cincinnati and Peoria, Ill., are doing a public art event featuring pigs; Orlando is doing lizards; Bloomington, Ind., corn; Atlanta, baseballs (for the All-Star Game); and, probably the most original, Rhode Island has placed giant Mr. Potato Heads around the state to coincide with its “Rhode Island – Birthplace of Fun” marketing campaign.

But, back to New York … . The city has always prided itself on its originality. Copying Chicago’s cows should be beneath it, especially when there were so many fine alternatives: apples, dollar bills, bagels and my personal favorite – pigeons.