Call it a sign o' the times.
Prince's iconic symbol rises high on the rock bluffs over Red Wing again.
A city work crew with a bucket of black paint blotted out a tribute that fans had painted after the singer's death. But after pleas from the Minneapolis-born artist's fans — including a Red Wing City Council member — the glyph is back.
Both tributes were the work of Joe Gibart and his friend Brian Paton, who hiked 400 feet up Barn Bluff, twice, and spent two chilly evenings spray-painting a farewell to Prince on a stretch of city land that generations of Red Wing residents have used to scrawl messages that are too big to fit on a page or in a Facebook post.
They started painting their latest farewell at 1 a.m. the day after his death and by dawn the swooping lines of Prince's symbol stood out in purple contrast against the bluff again, along with a big red "16" to mark the year of his death, and a "1999" to commemorate one of his biggest hits.
It took a ladder, $50 to $60 worth of paint and a cold night's work to bring "Red Wing back to [its] former glory," Gibart said Thursday on Facebook.
"It feels great," he said in a phone interview later that morning. "When we got approval, we took it and ran with it. We were not going to wait another minute."
The men created their original mural overnight last Thursday on the rock that for the past 60 years has served as the town's unofficial billboard and has featured everything from flags to smiley faces, graduation years and memorials. But somebody called the city to complain that Gibart and Paton's handiwork was offensive, so the city sent crews to paint over the mural that hundreds from the area had come to see.
