In the new film I Love Boosters, Keke Palmer is the ringleader of a shoplifting crew that squares off with an unethical fashion CEO played by Demi Moore. It’s from the bizarro visionary director Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You) and it may be his most delightfully unhinged project yet. 

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The snow was flying sideways and he had no jacket, but this lumberjack did not shiver. He stood about 25 feet tall, ax in hand, wearing a red hat and rictus grin. And he was made of fiberglass.

I stood at his feet on the Northern Arizona University campus in Flagstaff, full of the satisfaction that comes at having accomplished something truly trivial: At last, I was face to face with the original Muffler Man.

Stories, photos and travel recommendations from America’s Mother Road

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Easter Island has its stone-faced monoliths. China has its terra-cotta warriors. And we Americans have these roadside giants, also known as Paul Bunyans, Uniroyal Gals and most commonly, Muffler Men. Manufactured in Los Angeles, they first appeared on the highways of North America in the early 1960s as an advertising gimmick, often promoting car lots or car parts. Now they’re rising again, a battalion of restored and replica specimens, beloved by road-trippers, kitsch aficionados, artists, preservationists and savvy entrepreneurs.

“To me, they’re kind of instant friends,” said Amy Inouye, the designer and artist who rescued L.A.’s most iconic Muffler Man, Chicken Boy, a chicken-headed statue that stands atop her gallery in Highland Park. “They’re really tall and they just want to be accepted for who they are.”

The Northern Arizona University campus in Flagstaff includes the first oversize fiberglass Muffler Man, who has long been outfitted as a lumberjack.

These figures are especially plentiful along Route 66 this year as it turns 100 — there was a “pre-centennial frenzy” in the words of roadsideamerica.com, which coined the term “Muffler Men” and tracks them on a map. Nobody’s certain how many figures were made during the golden age of Muffler Men, but since 2020, the tally of giants has climbed above 250, including “a few dozen” rediscoveries since 2010, according to Doug Kirby, the co-founder and publisher of the site.

“Just in the last year or two, all these Muffler Men are being added,” he said. In addition, more than a dozen giants are currently in transition — that is, getting reconditioned or relocated.

1.) Cigars and Stripes BBQ in Berwyn, Ill., features a Muffler Man smoking a cigar and holding a jumbo bottle of barbecue sauce. 2.) The Gemini Giant stands along Route 66 in Wilmington, Ill.

On a recent westbound journey from Chicago on Route 66, I started seeing them almost immediately.

First, on Ogden Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn, there was the Cigars & Stripes Muffler Man. He stood on the roof of the Cigars & Stripes BBQ Lounge, brandishing a chicken wing and a fridge-size bottle of barbecue sauce while chewing on a stogie.

Next, in Wilmington, Ill., came the Gemini Giant, who stands 23 feet tall above a tiny park. Made for a Wilmington diner in 1965, he was auctioned off for $275,000 in early 2024 and placed in his current location later that year. He wears a clunky silver space helmet and holds a rocket in his hands.

I had come across a few Muffler Men before this trip, including Big Josh, who looks down upon Joshua Tree from the Station gift shop on State Route 62. But now I was paying more attention.

At first, I learned, these giants were all men, conceived around 1962 by a Lawndale entrepreneur named Bob Prewitt and made popular from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s by a company in Venice called International Fiberglass.

Made from a standard set of molds and held together by steel frames, most Muffler Men are assembled from three or four pieces. Besides those figures holding mufflers and tires, others were outfitted as cowboys, Indians, lumberjacks (often known as Paul Bunyans), astronauts, chefs, dentists, golfers, hot dog vendors, race-car drivers, pirates and service-station attendants. Then there were the jug-eared goofball characters, which some scholars of the art form call halfwits, while others prefer snerds.

As interest in this kind of advertising grew, female giants followed, including Uniroyal Gals and Rosie the Riveters. Oversized animals, including dinosaurs, bulls, roosters, hens and seals, also multiplied.

Juni Peraza, 25, works at the Meadow Gold Mack retail shop on 11th Street in Tulsa, Okla. She said she has only recently realized the possibilities that come with 11th Street being part of Route 66.

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All that action faded in the 1970s. But in about 1989, the seeds of a new Muffler Man era were sown.

Kirby, Mike Wilkins and Ken Smith, who had worked together on the 1985 book “Roadside America,” were building a database for a follow-up project when they realized, “Hey, wait, this configuration of statue we’re seeing in a lot of places,” Kirby said. “We decided we’d better start keeping track.”

The first few they saw were holding mufflers. Thinking of the old nursery rhyme “Muffin Man,” and a Frank Zappa song of the same name, Kirby decided to call them Muffler Men.

When the roadsideamerica.com website launched in 1996, Muffler Men were part of it. By 2000, Roadside America had uncovered their origin story and interviewed Steve Dashew, former president of International Fiberglass. And readers had embraced the giants in a big way.

This fiberglass Rosie the Riveter figure went up on 11th Street in Tulsa in 2025.

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“It was like a religious epiphany for some people. For years, they were driving past these things,” Kirby said. “As soon as they realized it was part of an uncharted network across the country … it’s like your third eye has been opened.”

Ken Bernstein, principal city planner for Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources, calls Muffler Men “monumental and distinctive representations of midcentury car culture, especially along auto-centric corridors where it was important to catch the eye of passing motorists.”

New giants, known as custom jobs, are being steadily manufactured now. There’s an entire economic community emerging around their restoration, replication, sales, transport and display, including companies like (Re)Giant and sculptor Mark Cline’s Enchanted Castle Studios. (To confuse matters, many Southern California mechanics woo customers by welding together mufflers to make human figures. Those creations, too, are often called Muffler Men.)

The American Giants Museum in Atlanta, Ill., created in 2024 by Bill Thomas of the Atlanta Betterment Fund and collector-historian Joel Baker, is devoted to the fiberglass figures. The museum, open April through October, includes four standing Muffler Men, with two more expected around Memorial Day.

Because the giants stand in the open air, visitors who show up after hours — as I did — can ogle them any time.

Atlanta, Ill., is home to the American Giants Museum, which celebrates the Muffler Men and Uniroyal Gals that were common roadside advertising features in the middle 20th century.

“I love history. I love anything to do with cars and old advertisements. I think it just takes people back,” said Lee Woods, 55, who jumped on the Muffler Men bandwagon about five years ago and owns the museum.

Woods and his wife, Diane, who have a fleet of tow trucks in Hot Springs, Ark., were collecting old porcelain gas station signs, gas pumps and old cars in 2021 when, on a drive through Illinois, they laid eyes on the Gemini Giant.

“I told my wife I would love to have one of them things to represent our tow company,” Woods recalled.

Before long, they had hired someone to build a custom tow-truck-operator Muffler Man. And before that Muffler Man was done, Lee Woods had bought another one — a Paul Bunyan in Oklahoma. Then in 2023 he got a hold of a Muffler Man Mr. Spock from Rainbow Neon in Salt Lake City. Now Woods has eight Muffler Men in Arkansas.

“Sometimes I get carried away, my wife says,” Woods said.

Last fall, he bought the museum, where he collaborates with Baker, who is founder of the American Giants website, creator of a Giants YouTube series and serves as a Muffler Man broker, consultant and transportation specialist.

“When people see these things, they think they’re the coolest thing out there,” Woods said. “Today we’ve had people from six different countries here.”

1.) Cowboy Bob, who is about 20 feet tall, plays guitar and wears a bolo tie, is one of several oversize fiberglass mascots along 11th Street in the Meadow Gold District of Tulsa. 2.) Meadow Gold Mack, a friendly lumberjack, is mascot for a shop of the same name on 11th Street in Tulsa. 3.) A Muffler Man near Gearhead Curios in Galena, Kan. 4.) The 2nd Amendment Cowboy is a fiberglass giant that stands at the entrance to a trailer park near the art installation Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.

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From here, the giants seemed to come fast and furious. One in Galena, Kan. Two in Vinita, Okla. (which has since added a third). Five in Tulsa’s Meadow Gold District (including one with an 8-foot-long guitar).

Then in Weatherford, Okla., came a 30-foot astronaut. In Amarillo, a “2nd Amendment Cowboy” with a pair of big pistols at his feet. In Gallup, N.M., a giant on the roof of a used car lot.

By the time I’d reached Flagstaff, my count was 18.

Then came my snowy moment with the original Muffler Man, whose nickname is Louie. Experts agree that he was produced in about 1963 and sent to a Flagstaff cafe with a lumberjack theme (and yes, that cafe stood along Route 66).

Louie stood there until the cafe closed more than 10 years later. Then he was donated to NAU and stationed by the ticket office of the university’s Walkup Skydome. Another lumberjack stands inside.

But after Louie, I hit a drought — no more giant sightings in Arizona and none on the Route 66 alignment I followed into Southern California.

This seemed wrong, because there are so many giants along the byways of Southern California and because this is the land of their birth. Besides Big Josh, there’s the Paul Bunyan in Mentone, the empty-handed Muffler Man known as Kevin on Sherman Way in Van Nuys. There’s the flag-wielding Porsche Muffler Man in Carson (who previously served in the same spot as a club-brandishing Golf Man). And there are plenty of others.

It didn’t seem right to end the journey without another sighting. So I made my way to Highland Park to meet the one who rules the roost.

More specifically, I headed for 5558 N. Figueroa St., which was on the path of Route 66 for several years in the 1930s and which is the home of Chicken Boy.

Blessed with the customized head of a chicken, the body of a Muffler Man and a bucket in his hands (for eating chicken?), Chicken Boy stood for years atop the Chicken Boy fried-chicken restaurant on Broadway downtown, inspiring writer Art Fein to label him “L.A.’s Statue of Liberty.”

After the restaurant was shuttered in 1984, Inouye swooped in to rescue Chicken Boy and place him in protective storage — for years, as it turned out.

The fiberglass statue known as Chicken Boy stands on the roof of artist, designer and gallerist Amy Inouye’s studio on Figueroa Street in Highland Park.

In October 2007, after she and longtime partner Stuart Rapeport had bought the Highland Park studio space and pulled permits, Inouye put Chicken Boy back together again and set him up on the roof. There he remains, sharing space with a billboard, visible up and down the block between Avenue 55 and Avenue 56.

If a nomination by L.A. preservationist Charles J. Fisher goes through, Chicken Boy could become the first Muffler Man declared a city historic-cultural monument. And if you drop by the Future Studio Gallery on a Saturday between noon and 3 p.m. or 4 p.m., you’ll likely find Inouye, now 74, along with a trove of Chicken Boy T-shirts, patches, pencils and ceramic treasure boxes.

But seeing Chicken Boy is its own reward, especially after seeing so many of his fiberglass cousins. I got there on a balmy afternoon, beheld Chicken Boy’s beak gleaming in the sun, and knew my mission was complete.

Humorist David Sedaris has spent more than three decades writing about the absurdities of modern life and sharing his work in front of live audiences.

“I love attention,” he says of going on tour. “I love going on stage and I love people applauding, love people laughing.”

But reading out loud isn’t just about adoration. Sedaris says he’s always listening for reactions from the crowd and tweaking his work in response.

“The audience is my first editor,” he says. “When they cough, they tell me that I need to cut whatever it is that I’m reading. Of course, when they laugh, that’s fantastic. But I don’t mind a groan. A collective groan is fine with me.”

Sedaris’ daily routine is oriented around getting his steps in (at least 10 miles) and learning German, Japanese, Spanish and French on Duolingo. That’s in addition to his rigorous travel and writing regimen. For Sedaris, it’s all about growing and improving.

“That’s the promise: that you can be better, that you can write better, that you understand better, that you [can] speak a language better, that you can be a better person,” he says. “But it’s not going to happen by accident. You have to work at it. And so that’s what puts me at my desk, and that’s what gets me out of bed every day.”

His latest essay collection, The Land and Its People, casts Sedaris in several roles, including devout brother, itinerant traveler, grieving friend and reluctant caretaker.

Interview highlights

Little, Brown and Company

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On whether he’d use AI for writing prompts 

A friend of mine … asked ChatGPT to write something in my voice … and she sent it to me. And it was so lame, and then I rewrote it and it was the biggest laugh in the entire book. The audience howls with laughter. I would never have thought to write about this had ChatGPT not written it first. And I thought, well, that’s fair. That’s not plagiarism or anything. If a machine comes up with it and then I rewrite it, that’s perfectly within my rights, right?
Right now I feel like it can’t be dirty in an interesting way. So much of successful comedy is just surprising people, by surprising people with a word they didn’t expect to hear, or an image they didn’t expect. And right now I feel it’s not capable of that, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be capable of it in a year or two. But me personally, if you told me that here was a short story written by ChatGPT, or a book, I do not believe I would want to read it because I want someone on the other end. I want someone who I can write to and I can say, “Wow, I loved your book. I loved your story,” and I want a human to think, “Oh, I just sold a book.”

On why he resisted getting married to his longtime boyfriend Hugh (and eventually got married in secret)

At first we were boyfriends and then people started calling him “your partner.” … Well-meaning straight people thought it was respectful to use the word “partner,” like the same way now that a lot of people think they’re supposed to use the word “queer,” and I can’t stand that word, but they’ve been told that this is the appropriate word now and the word that they should be using. Then gay marriage came along, and then everyone just assumed that Hugh and I were married. …

We got married. I don’t even know when it was. I know it was before the pandemic. It was a shotgun wedding arranged by my banker. And I never told anybody about it. And I told Hugh he couldn’t tell anybody about it, because I don’t like when a man says the word, “my husband.” It’s like “my unicycle.” I met a woman at a book signing once, and she used the phrase, “my son-in-law’s unicycle.” And I thought, “Oh, that must pain you every time you have to say, my son-in-law’s unicycle.” I wanted gay people to get the right to marry, and then I wanted not a one of us to do it. I thought that would have been perfect. To say … “We spit on your marriage. We just want the right to do it.”

On writing up a contract for two of his sisters to not get married — Sedaris is one of six siblings

I drew up contracts all the time when I was a kid. … I made [my sisters] sign a contract swearing they’d never get married. But I didn’t want to lose them. I was just afraid because I didn’t have a word for what I was at that time, but I just knew that I wasn’t like the other boys. And I just thought, “Well, I’m gonna be alone for the rest of my life, and I want my sisters to be with me.” I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone without them, so I got them to sign contracts, swearing they’d never get married. But only Amy and Gretchen. … Neither Amy nor Gretchen got married.

On why good people are often not great characters 

If you’re on the page, you’re a character. When you’re in real life, you are a person. Hugh is a good character. My sister Gretchen, I adore my sister Gretchen. She’s not a good character. She is a great person. I have friends who are great people, but not great characters. And it doesn’t have anything to do with being dynamic. Maybe it’s a degree of confidence that makes somebody a good character. …

Confident people always have my ear, even if I don’t agree with them or even if I think their confidence is unearned or that they’re fooling themselves. It doesn’t matter. It gets me to sit up straight and it gets me to listen. … I love the combination of somebody who’s just a horrible person, but just brimming with confidence and just certain that they’re right in all situations. I mean, my dad was like that. Never, never, ever showed any doubt in regard to anything. I didn’t agree with him and I didn’t wanna be him, but it made him a good character.

On whether writing is cathartic for him

I’ve never felt it to be cathartic. It helps me make sense of the world. And it helps me see myself. … I never really wrote about my feelings in my diary. Like, that’s really embarrassing if you look through an old diary and it’s all about your feelings. If it’s about a conversation you had at the barber shop, that’s not embarrassing, right? I could put out a whole book of haircuts, just haircuts I’ve had over the years and conversations with different barbers. Every one of them is recounted in my diary. I don’t recall ever getting a haircut and not writing about it afterwards.

On why he keeps up his rigorous book tour schedule 

I don’t know how much of it is about the money. … It’s earning it. Earning those laughs. I mean, it’s going to happen to everybody and then you wind up in a nursing home and you’re talking to a spatula, you know? And hopefully when I’m in that condition, I won’t remember how wonderful it was to have this career. I won’t even know my own name, hopefully, because to be there and to remember joy and know that you’ll never experience it again will be pretty ugly. I said that like somebody who has stage four cancer. There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t foresee any end to this, as long as people come. Maybe toward the end, I’ll have to pay people to come, and the money will flow in the other direction.

Monique Nazareth and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.