About Giant Frying Pan and Spitting Clam
Long Beach has managed to turn a piece of cookware and a shellfish into neighboring roadside monuments. At the corner of Fifth Street and Pacific Avenue stand a giant frying pan and an enormous razor clam that can spit water.
The frying-pan tradition began with the town’s Razor Clam Festival. After borrowing a giant pan for the 1940 event, local organizers commissioned their own in 1941. The oversized cookware was used to prepare enormous clam fritters and later traveled around Washington promoting the festival.
The landmark standing today continues that history even though claims that it is literally the world’s largest frying pan have been surpassed elsewhere. It remains about fourteen feet tall with its handle and still carries the gloriously oversized visual joke.
Nearby is a roughly five-foot razor clam built with a working water spout. The clam has traditionally spit water automatically at intervals or on demand when its mechanism is operating. Long Beach could have settled for one giant object, but apparently an enormous frying pan makes more sense when an oversized mollusk is standing nearby.