Watch a short documentary about the guy who built a giant wooden middle finger in his yard
Aux Features documentary
Spite ruins lives, sure, but it’s hard to deny the quiet catharsis of a bad deed returned in kind, even if it’s something you’ll end up regretting. The question, of course, is how hard you’ll commit to the bit. How deep does your rage run? And is a commitment to another’s misery really worth it? For Ted Pelkey, a working-class man in northern Vermont, the answer is an emphatic “hell yes.”
A few years back, Pelkey erected a 6-foot wooden middle finger atop a 16-foot pole in his lawn as a not-so-subtle “fuck you” to the Westford Town Development Review board, who, time and again, refused to grant him the permits needed to build an 8,000 square foot garage in his lawn. Pelkey’s middle finger went viral at the time, especially once it was revealed that local authorities couldn’t do anything about it.
But what appears on the surface to be an amusing and ephemeral news story pulses with nearly a decade’s worth of pent-up anger, serving as an illustration of how, in small towns, the personal often intermingles with the political. In a short, compelling documentary, filmmaker Garret Harkawik speaks with Pelkey about the origins of the middle of the middle finger and the classist attitudes that Pelkey says drove him to hire a local chainsaw sculptor to make it. Harkawik also shares some testy recordings in which Pelkey and the review board trade insults and hint towards the depth of animosity that exists between them.
“People don’t stick up for themselves enough,” says Pelkey. “I feel that whether the finger helps the case or hurts it, it makes me feel better.”
A good thing, too, as the middle finger’s become something of a tourist attraction for fellow spite-lovers and those who, like Kid Rock, just really love middle fingers. (Yes, Kid Rock ordered one. Yes, he still sucks.)
Watch the documentary in full below.
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11 Comments
This used to be a thing………………Love, Gramps.
I assumed it was the championship trophy from the Pull-My-Finger Olympics.
After listening to him talk, I assume this guy is a MAGA goblin. The worst part is how he got away with making death threats.
This seems like one of those situations in which everyone is an asshole.I poked around on Google Earth a bit, and the road on which he lives already has several other properties on it with large garages or outbuildings, including a business with a bunch of school buses and trailers and several properties that look like a contractor using a home property to store work vehicles and materials. They’re not attractive buildings, either. They’re just big prefab outbuildings. It’s not like he’s disrupting a virgin wilderness or rustic country road.He already has two other large outbuildings on his property, although they’re farther back from the road than this new one would be.
No he didn’t – he was denied constructing the garage and he blew thousands on fees/lawyers before he was denied. Now their “development review board” (aka a community planning group) is stuck with that finger in their town. They are at an impasse until the board changes membership (or at least the leadership) or Ted Pelkey dies. Planning groups can be great hangouts for the local snobs, and that seems to be the case here. That they would not speak to the documentarian speaks volumes.
Man you people are hateful.
It’s so positive – love it! Everytime I drive by it reminds me: I’m number one!
I’ll drive by it from time to time. It’s not completely in the sticks, but it’s a bit off the beaten path. And I always think “oh, right, that’s that middle finger guy”. I should watch this to find out wtf he’s so pissed about
Holy shit does this dude play Second Life? I’d swear it’s the dude that gets trolled by Daniel From Second Life
Al Goldstein, founder of Screw Magazine, did this to his neighbors decades ago. See picture below. I’m not going to say that Al Goldstein was a great example of a human being, but I guarantee that he was more interesting than this guy.
This is nothing.
Now that Killdozer guy. The fucking guy was a hero.