The elderly Chinese immigrant taking on an affluent American town over her ‘Flintstone house’
- For Florence Fang, a retired San Francisco media magnate, her home is her happy place, but local residents disagree
- In the exclusive California town of Hillsborough, Fang’s eye-catching residence has led to a lawsuit
When Florence Fang bought a new house in Hillsborough, California, in 2017, her first thought was to landscape the property with cherry trees. But cherry trees did not “fit” with the look of the house, so she kept thinking. Her next idea, not uncommon among wealthy Californians, was to plant a vineyard and make her own wine. A friend warned her off, however, advising that grape vines would attract animals.
Then, inspiration struck.
“I was watching the Flintstones, and the first episode is Fred with Dino,” Fang recalled during a recent visit to her house. “And I said, ‘Dino should be here! Fred should be here!’”
Fred and Dino are indeed here now, as are Wilma, Barney and Betty Rubble, giant letters reading “Yabba dabba do”, a backyard posse of 15-ft tall metal dinosaurs, and a second, larger Fred. There’s also an astronaut, a moon rover, a spaceship and the Great Gazoo (that’s the name of the alien who crashed to Earth during the final season of the classic 1960s cartoon).
“I wanted to decorate with the past and the future combined together in harmony,” Fang explains. “I call that ‘over the rainbow’, and that’s why I put the rainbow there.”
Oh yes, there’s a rainbow, too. There’s also a giraffe, a woolly mammoth, Bigfoot, several dozen concrete mushrooms, a handful of ornamental pigs, and a pair of expectant pterodactyls keeping watch over some dinosaur eggs nesting in a juniper bush.