Chizhik-Pyzhik, Saint Petersburg

Chizhik-Pyzhik, a bronze siskin about the size of your hand, perched on a stone ledge in the embankment wall by the First Engineer Bridge in Saint Petersburg, with coins scattered around his feet. The Georgian artist Rezo Gabriadze made him in 1994. He is a monument to a drinking song. Students of the old Imperial School of Jurisprudence wore green and yellow uniforms the color of a siskin, and their fondness for the bottle gave the city a folk song about the little bird. Land a coin on his ledge from the bank above and the luck is yours. He has been stolen several times, which is why spare copies are reportedly kept on hand.