It looks like Stahly stopped brainstorming for this project after thinking, "Man, I could really go for some asparagus right now." 

Whatever Stahly was thinking, it struck a chord with the folks holding the purse strings at the Golden Gateway Center. This project was Stahly's entry for a competition held by Golden Gateway's joint venture partners Perini and Alcoa, who also chose the Four Seasons theme, to find the most magnificent statue to become the park's signature centerpiece. If the names Perini and Alcoa sound familiar, that's because they are separate construction companies that have equally left a YUGE impact on the look of San Francisco above and below ground. Perini's recent work involves winning a nearly $1 billion bid a couple years ago to bring MUNI from Chinatown to near AT&T Park. Alcoa might not immediately ring a bell, unless you consider that San Francisco's waterfront behemoth One Maritime Plaza was once known as the Alcoa Building.  

Perini-Alcoa's competition would decide how exactly to spend the $1 million in funding mandated by the city's redevelopment committee, and to litter art across Sydney G. Walton Square, the park Golden Gateway set up between its living communities. At eighteen feet tall, Stahly's Four Seasons is far and away the largest representations of asparagus in the park. Shoot, maybe the tallest asparagus stalks in the entire city. The lumpy spouts are so tall that folks in the surrounding office spaces and apartments use their shadows as a kind of sundial throughout the day. Although, for real, if you're living or working in that part of the city you can afford a watch. The fountain was cast in an Italian foundry before being installed, just in case you ever doubted it was fancy as hell. It may not be the strangest or most infamous sculpture along Embarcadero, but it holds its own against other oversized food sculptures we know.