The Incredible Story of PBR’s Gotham City Trophy

The bearded artist in the French beret who appeared to have been plucked from Central Casting worked on the sculpture for two years, starting with wood and metal then pouring clay into molds. He invested more than $350,000 from his own pocketinto the project. Finally, a defiant, fearsome bull who always appears to be in motion was cast in bronze at a foundry across the river in the largely Polish enclave of Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

This bull needed to be set free.

In the dead of a cold night in mid-December 1989, Arturo and a group of friends put the 11’ x 16’, 7,000-pound bronze beast on a flatbed truck and hauled him down to the New York Stock Exchange. The market had finally fully recovered from the October 1987 crash two months earlier, but that was irrelevant to his intentions.

They left the bull under a Christmas tree on Wall Street. There was no better place for an epic gift to the city.

The next day, when the artist was having lunch, the outsized unauthorized present was hauled away by the authorities.

For the city’s soulless, grim-faced bureaucrats, however, it was too late. The bull already had been given a name, and Charging Bull was on the cover of that morning’s New York Post.

Hearing that the “illegal” bull was being removed from Wall Street, the tabloid masses who had instantly fallen in love with the beautiful beast went berserk. The resulting uproar matched the brassy, loud, emotional era of Mayor Ed Koch.

Arthur Piccolo, head of the Bowling Green Association, was listening to the populist explosion while envisioning the larger promise of Charging Bull. He navigated the city’s bureaucracy to bring the statue a few blocks west of the stock exchange to the North Plaza of Bowling Green, the site of a cattle market in the mid 1600’s. The financial district’s main artery would be the bull’s home. He’s stood on a small triangle-shaped plot of land off Broadway for more than 30 years, becoming one of Gotham City’s most popular tourist attractions.

“Charging Bull represents the strength of America and optimism for its future; it’s for all of America,” Piccolo said. “The bull makes people think of strength and power, but it is also an animal everyone adores. They touch it. They photograph it. For children, it’s a magical creature they’re endlessly drawn to.”

Charging Bull has delighted millions of visitors of all ages. It’s as much an irreplaceable part of the cityscape as the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. Visitors line up to pose for a photo, the most popular vantage point at the rear of the bull, smiling amid two big bronze ones – the enduring spirit of the grand gift from di Modica, who displayed a giant pair, thumbing his nose at silly rules of authority.

The bull sculpture drew on di Modica’s own experience of scratching and scraping to make it in the big city along with his encouragement for an ever-resilient metropolis to rebound from crisis. Another one, bringing unimaginable horror, would happen mere blocks from Bowling Green on September 11, 2001. And again, gut punched New Yorkers stood back up. When things get bad, they unite, work harder, get stronger, bear down, regroup, and make it better.

That plucky resilience was exactly what di Modica has immortalized in 7,000 pounds of brass bovine bravado. The generous outlaw spirit in which his daring gift was created, its rebel-Robin Hoodish dead-of-night delivery, and everything Charging Bull represents feels ripped from a PBR brand brief.

So, when reading in the New York Post that a deranged man from Texas muttering nonsensically about Donald Trump had attacked Charging Bull with a steel-reinforced banjo, opening a gash in the bull’s head the size of a cantaloupe, what could I as one the sport’s publicists possibly do but call the Post’s reporter with an offer to di Modica from PBR to pay for the damages to help repair the bull?

Arturo would read about the offer in The Post, and we would discuss the matter over lunch at the only joint he ate at – Cipriano’s, where once a year the tab was settled with a sculpture. Sicilian pride precluded di Modica from allowing anyone to pay for the repairs, estimated in the low five figures.

However, we agreed on other measures to consummate what was becoming a beautiful new friendship.

To open the 2020 season, the Sicilian artist — now an American citizen— would be acknowledged on the dirt at Madison Square Garden three-and-a-half miles north of Charging Bull. Even better, the artist created a trophy exclusively for this tentpole event – a mini replica of Charging Bull. The new trophy for the annual PBR New York event winner debuted at the 2020 season opener.

While di Modica is world renowned for his stunning bull statue, he had never seen the planet’s top bucking bulls in action, an experience he’d now get. His life was celebrated at the season-opening press conference and then on the dirt at the Garden during a break. The 79-year-old artist, walking slowly as he fought cancer, was as excited to tour the locker room and meet the badly mismatched cowboys as he was to get up close to the snorting bull athletes in the back pen.

“I have always appreciated those who understand and value the power and the majesty of bulls. In my entire career as a sculptor, nothing has given me more pleasure than creating Charging Bull,” di Modica said in his thick Sicilian accent. “I have a deep appreciation for the talented athletes who ride bulls. They experience and embody the power of bulls in ways I have tried to express in Charging Bull.”

After that weekend, PBR’s next scheduled stop at The Garden would be canceled due to COVID-19. The arena stood empty and locked in January 2021, and the season began in an outdoor rodeo arena in horse country in Central Florida. A few weeks later Arturo di Modica passed away at his home in Sicily.

As a young artist pursuing his passion in the hopes of developing a career that could sustain him, Arturo di Modica had to run away from his home in Sicily and hop a steam train to Florence to defy his father’s wishes and become sculptor. He had an unstoppable dream. He went for it. No compromises. No excuses. No regrets.

To end the memorable weekend starting the 2020 PBR season, when di Modica was honored by a sport he had just been introduced to, on a grey, chilly Sunday afternoon in a city that has taken tremendous body blows, always rising stronger, after a punishing three-day event, Joao Ricardo Vieira, who had been born and raised on a farm outside of Itatinga, São Paulo, triumphantly raised a silver Charging Bull over his head, right about where Joe Frazier broke Muhammad Ali’s jaw, the Pope once led Mass, and Marilyn sang Happy Birthday to JFK. The exhausted Brazilian cowboy had a lot common with the defiant, uncompromising, grateful, and giving man who created the special trophy he held, a gift to all of us and a tribute to the world’s most famous bull, who will live forever.