The Barbie dolls waved from a miniature Yellow Brick Road beside an Emerald City skyline and below a rainbow. Surrounding them were green-skinned witches holding brooms and little rainbow flags that read “Friend of Dorothy,” a coded phrase gay people have used to identify each other.
The owner and curator of the exhibit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is a government employee, has spent the past decade working with friends to transform this part of his front yard into an eccentric oddity for passersby to ogle. His signature Barbies have helped the neighborhood celebrate Valentine’s Day, the inauguration of Kamala D. Harris as the nation’s first female vice president and the recent arrival of what some are calling “Hot Vax Summer.” (Yes, Barbie was vaxxed and waxed.)
But now, on the last weekend of Pride Month, someone had destroyed his art. The curator turned to Instagram to inform Barbie Pond’s 23,500 followers.
“It takes a special kind of crazy to steal Dorothy and trash the Emerald City on Pride Weekend,” he wrote, posting security camera footage of the culprit who, in broad daylight, snatched Dorothy and knocked over all her friends.
He added: #SaveDorothy.
By Sunday morning, news had spread of Dorothy’s kidnapping. Hundreds offered condolences in the comments. Some wished for a house to fall on the thief. Others speculated that perhaps this was the same snatcher who had stolen waxed-and-vaxxed Barbie in mid-May.
On Q Street, neighbors were equally perturbed.
Halime Hodson, a frequent visitor to Barbie Pond who has lived in the neighborhood since 1985, walked by the installation Sunday morning.
“I think it’s totally disrespectful,” Hodson said. “This is something everyone in the community takes pride in.”
Coincidentally, she had brought a Barbie to donate to the curator, a ritual fans have done for years as a way to give back. Her doll wore a golden crop top and matching skirt.
Francis Andrade, who lives in Woodbridge, Va., had planned to use the Barbie Pond display as a visual aid for her students, who are deaf children learning to communicate with their Hispanic parents through phonetics. She was going to record a lesson on her YouTube channel — but arrived to find the “Wizard of Oz” display destroyed.
She salvaged the lesson as best she could, teaching the word “muñeca,” which is Spanish for doll, as she took videos of the little green witches who were still intact.
And while Internet sleuths were trying to identify the kidnapping culprit online, the mystery quickly solved itself, right at the scene of the crime.
As the curator spoke to a Washington Post reporter Sunday morning, a neighbor walking his dog passed by. The neighbor chuckled. Then he admitted to being the vandal.
The man, who is 43, claimed he was a protest artist. He told the curator he felt the “Wizard of Oz” display was “minimizing and insulting to females” and that it looked like “some sort of fetishized cult thing” and that it “minimized gay people.” The Post is withholding his name as well, for privacy reasons.
Standing on the sidewalk, the curator listened patiently. He said that he respectfully disagreed and that as a gay man himself, his intention with the art installations had always been to create community and have a little fun.
“I see this as empowering,” the curator said. “A lot of people have reached out to me because they’re very upset. … They find this uplifting.”
The vandal apologized and admitted to disrupting the display in the past. The two men agreed that next time, the vandal would vocalize his disagreement to the curator directly — rather than taking it out on the Barbie dolls.
Before they parted ways, the curator had a final request: Would the vandal please return Dorothy to her Yellow Brick Road?
No, the vandal said, because he had tossed her into a neighbor’s yard. Hours later, Dorothy was recovered from some bushes.
On the Barbie Pond’s Instagram, the curator gave the fans the rundown — including a video of the vandal’s “confession.”
“CASE CLOSED,” he wrote. “And not to worry — the pond will go on!”
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The mystery that solved itself: Who vandalized D.C.’s beloved Barbie Pond? - The Washington Post
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