I did not feel like going home after work on Friday so I caught a DART train downtown. Tonight was one of the Arts District’s Block Parties – with a whole bunch of activities going on in and between the three museums along Flora Street. I caught a train quickly and arrived early so I found a bench, sat down with my Kindle, and read while the organizers organized and the crowd slowly began to grow.
Food trucks at the Arts District Block Party. There were two lines like this.
The line of food trucks grows as they pull in and set up.
The Museum Tower Death Ray strikes.
I found a nice shady spot under the cypress trees along Flora and then I was struck by the solar death ray beamed down from the Museum Tower. I swear that thing raises the temperature ten degrees.
I ate some rolls from my favorite sushi food truck and then wandered around a bit, visiting the Nasher. The Nasher isn’t too much fun during these events – an invading horde of families charge down early and take over the whole garden, marking off their own private little Balkan squares of territory with blankets. The adults then plop down and proceed to get hammered on cheap bottles of wine concealed in Crate and Barrel wicker baskets received as gifts while their precious hell-spawn run around screaming and climbing on the Henry Moore sculpture until the museum guards shoo them away.
There was a band and later a movie but the scene was too depressing so I moved on.
I listened to a lecture in the Crow’s Jade Room on meditation and creativity which was interesting.
I headed out into the crowd again and was contemplating giving it all up and catching a train home when a woman walked by that looked familiar. It took a second for me to remember, but the sock-monkey tattoo on her right bicep gave it away – it was Madison King, a singer that I had heard perform at the first Patio Session earlier this year.
She must be scheduled on the outdoor plaza by the Museum of Art. I was up to staying for her performance, so I stuck around. Wandering down there, I found a band setting up. You don’t see this every day… a trombone quartet.
They called themselves The Maniacal 4… and I enjoyed them. Their between-song patter was the worst I have ever heard, but they could play the trombone. They played a number of their own compositions, which were a little sophisticated for that crowd and venue – but they pulled it off.
Then they brought out a rhythm section and launched into playing some 1970’s rock on the trombone. It worked better than it sounds – even though they picked some tunes that should not be brought into the future (Jane by Starship and Carry On my Wayward Son by Kansas… for example). All in all, they were by far the most entertaining trombone quartet I have heard at an Arts District evening show in a while.
It didn’t take them long to pack up and Madison King took over at ten. As before, I enjoyed hearing her and the crowd seemed into it. You can hear some of her work at this site.
I took some photos, but it’s tough under those lighting conditions (it’s way too dark). I have to use long exposures and brace my camera on a wall or something to minimize shaking. White balance is a bitch under the weird lighting color combinations and my camera isn’t as new as it used to be – it isn’t as fast as they make them nowadays. Still, it gives me something to do.
Went down to Deep Ellum for a while today to check out Filipino Fest. It was terribly hot, so I was only able to hang around for awhile. I took a few photos and then bailed – there was a recording studio that had a pop-up bar set up inside. The sign said, “A/C, Full Bar, Bathrooms,” which was hard to resist. Inside I found an old couch, some good music, comedians doing short sets, and Deep Ellum Wheat Beer on tap. This truly is the best of all possible worlds.
As it lurches wildly out of its Redneck Past, the City of Dallas – now completely strangled by its noose of suburbs – is forced to turn inward. It has to flip over its long-neglected flat rocks and deal with what scrambles out from underneath. It has to somehow transform its neglected barren shadowy hinterlands into fertile soil where it can grow shiny new developments for the future.
Few people in the city fully realize this yet, but the only successful path into the world of tomorrow leads directly and literally to the other side of the tracks and across the river. Success for the city will depend on how well this difficult process is done. It doesn’t have to (and can’t be) done perfectly… but it has to be done and has to be done thoughtfully and has to be done soon (faster, please).
One of the critical junctures in this process is a long-ignored wide spot in the road called Cedars West. If you look at an old aerial photograph of Cedars West from, say the 1930’s, you will see it was an island. The meandering Trinity River split into two branches forming the area that would become Cedars West, and then, only a short distance downstream, they joined back together. The Corinth Street Viaduct, a long, concrete structure joining Dallas North and South, gave access to this swampy little piece of land.
This cheap, almost useless, scrap of land quickly became home to the low-end forgotten businesses that none of the snootier residents wanted in their neighborhoods. Wrecking yards, scrap metal, wholesale auto parts, and oil and grease distributors settled in where they could be easily ignored and for decades thrived in that godforsaken tract.
Until now.
You see, the City of Dallas wants a developer to build a huge multi-use development nearby. The area was to be transformed into a hipster doofus haven (and I mean that in a good way, I really do) where the modern millennial could work, live, and play. Giant piles of scrap metal, reclaimed wood siding, and tanks of used grease were not considered good neighbors for such a cool crowd.
So, in typical heavy-handed corrupt government style, the City Council simply voted to change the zoning in Cedars West, and give all those ugly, smelly, and un-hip squatters five years to vamoose. This was going to force the present stewards of the land, who had been working their asses off trying to build their businesses, employing the otherwise unemployable, and making use of a part of the city that few others even knew existed (I sure didn’t) for several generations now, into oblivion to make way for the wave of the future.
But, in a surprising move, the businesses of Cedars West decided to fight back… and in a very cool and interesting way.
They organized and went to the council to point out that a new urban development that consisted of all shiny, fancy, clean, pre-planned white-bread construction was doomed to fail. Residents of such an area want to live in an urban environment, not in a high-rise version of Plano. Otherwise, they would live in Plano.
They offered to simply clean up their act. They would put up new, attractive fencing and metal walls to hide the ugly portions of their business and to actively encourage artistic uses of their products and to promote the “Green” aspects of their business. Yesterday’s scrap iron and wrecking yards ares tomorrow’s sustainable recycling.
So they did. And the council, in a shocking bit of intelligence, agreed. They gave the businesses of the area two years to clean up their act. Anyone that succeeded in pulling off a transformation from an ugly old low-tech business to a modern artistic vintage funky sort of urban oasis could stay. Anyone that didn’t… had to go.
A fascinating story… and one, I’m afraid, that I missed totally.
Until, looking through the web for something to do over the weekend, I came across mention of the First Annual Cedars West Arts Festival. At first, I was lukewarm to the idea… another Arts Festival? Haven’t I seen enough of these things? But then I heard that one of my favorite food trucks, The Bomb Fried Pies was going to be there, and I took another look.
It threw me when I pulled up the address (2021 Rock Island) in Google Maps and took a look at the aerial photo. There were the swampy Trinity River Bottoms and a little stretch of road that ran through the most awful stretch of industrial wasteland you will see anywhere. It looked like the last place on earth you would hold an arts festival. So I began to read the history of the area and the reason behind the festival. They were throwing this shindig to show off the work they had done to spruce up their area and to demonstrate to the city at large how these types of businesses can contribute to the cultural life of the city.
And I knew I had to be there.
So Candy and I made our plans. We knew it was going to be a hot day and Candy doesn’t like to be out in the Texas blast furnace heat any more than necessary so we wanted to go right when it opened at eleven. We didn’t want to drive and the festival advertised that it had blocked off a lane of the Corinth Street Viaduct so you could take the DART train to Oak Cliff and walk across. I wondered why they didn’t have folks walking from the Cedars Station which looked a little closer, but that was what they planned, so that is what we did.
It was a long walk; the Corinth Street Viaduct is about a mile long. Sure enough, they had barriers up the entire length, blocking off an entire lane. They went to a lot of expense for us – we didn’t see anyone else using the viaduct to walk in. I enjoyed the trek across and over the trackless wilderness of the Trinity River bottoms, with a view of Downtown on one side and the DART trains/Testle Trail and manmade river rapids on the other – but it was already too hot for Candy.
The Arts Festival was really a lot of fun. The local businesses went all out in making everyone welcome and showing off the work they had done in beautifying, hipster-ing, and funkifying their places. OKON Scrap Metals had a big pile of used iron which their employees were picking from and creating sculptures behind clear yellow welding screens.
I was really impressed with Orr-Reed Wrecking Company. Their business is in tearing down old buildings and homes and preserving as much as they can. Their place in Cedars West is a big, long shed full of salvaged materials. From hardwood flooring, to bathroom fixtures, from vintage lighting to stained-glass windows… they had it all. If you are in the DFW Metroplex and are remodeling a home, be sure and go down there and see what they have to offer. It truly was an amazing place.
Beyond simply saving, preserving, and selling – Orr-Reed Wrecking was touting itself as a home and source for artists. There were rooms full of furniture and sculptures made with materials culled from their vintage collections for sale. They even offer low-cost studio space for anyone wanting to work with what they have to offer. Walking around was an eclectic crowd of relaxed artsy-looking young folks that worked there, both providing labor for the company and providing their inspiration for the aesthetic of their products.
Candy and I wandered around the place for a while, but it soon became too hot and we decided to head home. We were both really hungry and I wanted to find a local place that I had never tried before. Candy dreaded crossing that bridge again in the blistering afternoon sun so I suggested we walk the opposite direction to the Cedars DART station and get something to eat in that area.
Big mistake.
We soon discovered why the Arts Festival closed off the lane and suggested folks walk across from Oak Cliff. The stretch along Corinth to Lamar was the most awful, neglected, and scary war zone of urban decay you will ever see. It’s amazing how the city could even think of forcing out the businesses of Cedar’s West while they could let their own streets and sidewalks run down into a horrible condition like that.
Intrepid and idiotic as we are, we made it through, hungry and dehydrated. We ate at The Cedars Social bar and restaurant, a really nice cool oasis in the urban wasteland. It felt like stepping into the set of Mad Men… with a brunch menu.
I’m going to be keeping an eye on Cedar’s West going forward. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, there are surprising things happening in places you don’t expect, and I think this may be one of them.
Although the Trinity River Channel has been redirected to the bottom of the photo, the Cedars West is still pretty much an island in the river bottoms. The Arts Festival was on Rock Island, the part colored in yellow.
Two employees/artists at Orr-Reed Wrecking. Her T-Shirt says, “Show Us Your Junk,” which is their motto.
Reclaimed hardwood flooring from Orr-Reed. They had acres of the stuff.
Before and After. Recycled bathroom fixtures.
Using vintage products as art and architecture. The exterior of Orr-Reed Wrecking.
The King of Junk. Surveying his kingdom.
The Arts Festival had a nice, downhome, neighborhood feel to it. Here is a smoking grill a food vendor was using to make burgers and a little trailer selling refreshments.
The route we walked out along is so God-Awful that there is a proposal for a pedestrial bridge to skip over the whole thing. I doubt it will get built – but wouldn’t this be cool?
When I walked around the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Arboretum… here, here, here, here, here, here, and here – I heard one questions several times. People asked, “What happens when it hails.”
This is Texas, and they don’t say “if” it hails, they say, “when.” Even the Arboretum literature addresses that. It said that the glass is tougher than you think, and that Chihuly has capacity standing by to replace anything that breaks. When it hails.
Well, it hailed. It looks like the only damange is to the white blossoms in the Persian garden pool, the ones I saw the second time I visited the exhibition. They said the works will be replaced and the rest of the glass is unscathed.
The Chihuly glass in the Persian Garden Pool that was damaged by hail at the Dallas Arboretum. This photo was taken before the storm.
For those of you from places where the weather isn’t quite so… Texas-like, here’s some homespun video of what we live with here. All from Thursday afternoon.
Piano says that because the Nasher is a privately held collection, it is free to leave its Flora Street museum and go elsewhere — although he noted that this is not something the Nasher family wants to do, that it was the dream of founder Raymond Nasher to put his collection in the Dallas Arts District at that location. Were Nasher alive today, Piano says, he would “mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.”
I agree, I think the Nasher is playing way too nice with this. If it were my collection I would be in talks with, say New York City and see if the colection could be relocated to… maybe a nice site in Central Park. They would leap at the chance. I know the city of Dallas would be hurt by the move, but to make it up they could use the Nasher site for low income housing and maybe a homeless shelter. I’m sure the Museum Tower next door would enjoy that.
The Museum Tower Condominiums tower over Tony Cragg’s “Lost in Thought”
For generations, government policies have been geared toward creating endless landscapes of strip malls like the one Bentivolio looks at with such fondness. In the process we have gutted our traditional downtowns. We have eaten up farmland and forest. We have, …, endangered the lives of our senior citizens. We have engineered a world where children cannot walk or bike to school without risking their lives. We have created countless places devoid of any real social value.
An interesting article, but one that, for me at least, is ultimately useless. You might as well send a heroin addict an piece of paper listing the inconvieniences of shooting up.
Well, on Friday, there’s the Arts District Summer Block Party. These are always a lot of fun. I might do Late Night at the DMA. The Nasher has been showing kid’s movies on an inflatable screen in the garden, but this week it’s 500 Days of Summer. I’m getting a little tired of Zooey Deshanel’s Goofy Quirky Zany Adorkable Hipster Doofus persona… but still…
The other day Candy and I were walking through Uptown Dallas on our way to the DART station at Citiplace when we passed by an old cemetery. It’s Greenwood Cemetery. Like most old cemeteries it’s a peaceful historic place.
As we walked by, I turned and shot a simple photo of a simple veteran’s tombstone.
Everybody is used to seeing old cemeteries and everybody is used to seeing veteran’s graves. But unless you live in the southern states you aren’t used to seeing tombstones marked CSA.
Here, of course, Confederate graves are all too common.
There was a lot going on Saturday, so I pulled myself out of bed and headed out for the first stop – Don Johle’s Bike world in Garland for a Vintage Bicycle Swap Meet.
I confess I had no plans to buy anything (which is not surprising, I have no money) and was simply going over there to gawk. And gawk I did.
Rows of vintage bicycles. Vintage means many things. It can mean classic and valuable…. But mostly it means old, useless, rusty and overpriced… which is how I feel… so I suppose that gave me something in common with these bikes.
There were a few that had been restored, but mostly we were looking at raw materials here. There were some oddities too, and that was way cool.
Here’s an old moped-style that you don’t see every day. Beautifully restored.
A cool looking old thing… not sure if it was worth the smoke.
The bike looks broken, but it isn’t… well not as much as it looks. It is a folding bicycle, the seat tube holds it straight when it is working.
A heavy, crude, but still pretty cool mechanism.
Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette. Enough wrappers and you can get a folding bike, courtesy of Marlboro.
Here’s a drivetrain you don’t see every day – a shaft-driven bicycle. I guess it would be good in the mud. I did spent a good part of a day cleaning my chain – this would get around that.
A 1970 or so Raleigh Record. I may be an old fart, but I think that bicycles of this era are among the most beautiful things on earth. I need to get out more.
The classic old bikes made me think of the Raleigh Technium I have hanging in the garage. It needs new tires, handlebar tape, and a good going over… but maybe I should give it a try. The engine is still old and worn out though, I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.
I had been reading that the recommendation was to see the Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum at least twice – once during the day and once at night. I was happy when Candy and I were able to go to the concert in the evening – I’d get to see it at night.
During the band’s second set I sneaked away (I could hear “Sympathy for the Devil” filtering through the greenery) as the sun dipped below the far shore of White Rock Lake. During the crepuscular “magic hour” the lit glass seemed to jump out of the landscape. It was a lot easier to find the Chihuly glass amongst the maze of gardens because they were colorful and glowing as if lit from within (everything actually had spotlights trained on them… but the translucent glass appeared incandescent).
I walked around and then returned in the darkness for the end of the concert. Then many folks headed out to stumble around and marvel at the sculptures in the dark. It was magical. Probably the most entertaining (and crowded) spot was the infinity pool in A Woman’s Garden with the two glass-filled boats. The night was dead calm and the water was a horizontal mirror.
Finally the staff came out in golf carts and powerful lights and herded everyone off the grounds. I now have my little membership card so I can go again… and again.
As the sun set the sculptures began to glow. This one is one of the largest (about 20 feet tall) and most dramatic works… called “The Sun.” When I first saw it, I thought it was all yellow and red glass, but some kids were looking closer and you can see that there are actually many colors in there.
The boat on the infinity pool. This is taken from the steps that lead down below the water leve.
Red glass shapes with the dramatic Icicle Tower in the distance. The open grassy areas became haunting, lined with the glowing glass.
The thirty foot tall Icicle Tower was even more dramatic at night.
The boat on the infinity pool, taken from the other side.
I’m doing more editing now than writing. The worst part of editing is trying to decide if something you wrote some time ago is worth rescuing… or finishing… or should be plopped in the digital dumper.
Here’s a piece of text that I was enthusiastic about when I wrote it… but now, not so much.
I don’t know, there might be something here or there might not.
Benjamin
With a resigned expression and a clumsy attempt at a dramatic flourish, Beauregard Evans slapped a crisp new bill down on the linoleum table. The small motley group that had gathered around leaned over for a good look. There was a collective sigh followed by a sucking in of breath as the implications began to sink in. Sam pushed between Sally Pumpernickel and Joshua Jones to get a better view of the fat aging hairy hippy, Beauregard, leaning over the table so far his belly pushed out under his dirty tie died T-shirt onto the table, almost touching the bill itself.
“Benjamin,” Sam mumbled to himself.
“A brand spankin’ new one hundred dolla bill,” Beauregard began his spiel, “Raught ‘dere. It goes to the first one to try the thing out. I needs ah test pilot. I need someone with the balls to ride da wild horse. Come on ya pussies! Who’s gonna give ‘er a shot.”
“Man, a hundred dollars won’t buy enough beer to wipe the horror of ridin’ that thing out ‘yer brain, that’s for sure,” said Jimbo. He stood off to the side, smelling of grease and ozone, still wearing his thick leather gloves, his welding helmet tipped up on top of his head, like some sort of degenerate knight, resting after a joust that had gone terrible bad.
Sally Pumpernickel said, “Well a hundred dollars will buy something more powerful than a sinkful of that cheap horse piss you call beer… that’s for sure too.” She blurted out a dizzy giggle at the thought of whatever she could plunk the c-note down on. She wriggled a bit as she imagined it hitting her bloodstream.
Sam broke away from the others as they were beginning to get restless, churning and murmuring, and crossed the room to the open porch, feeling the rough floorboards give with an aching creak as he walked. He looked out over the porch to the slopes beyond. Bits of the morning mist was still tumbling down the mountain, giving the park a surreal, blurred look. But the mist couldn’t hide it – there it was, blue as blue could be… right in front of his nose. The bright artificial blue of fresh paint, still giving off the soybean and solvent smell of drying enamel – the brushes tilted up from drying pools of leftover paint at the bottom of the abandoned open cans.
It was basically a huge iron tube, running down the side of the mountain. A sluice gate had been installed at the top, diverting a strong stream of the ice-cold water from the high spring-fed pool they called “The Dragon’s Cave” into the top of the steep metal pipe.
Sam tried to think it through. Really it was only an enclosed water ride, nothing much more. They had a half dozen just like it already. Jimbo and his crew had taught themselves how to weld the surplus plate steel, boiler iron, and ancient drill pipe they had scrapped and salvaged together into twisting and turning water-courses. The drunk, high, and poverty-stricken customers that on hot summer weekends enjoyed the cut-rate aqueous entertainment the park offered would throw themselves with abandon into the dark sewers – the longer, faster, twistier, scarier… the better.
The most popular enclosed slide was a real piece of work called, “The Devil’s Backbone.” It ended right behind the crude cabin that served as a workshop. The crew liked to hang out on the porch, drink, pass the bong and watch the customers tumble into the pool at the end of the ride. A particularly violent and unexpected isosceles twist right at the end tended to yank suit bottoms down and dislodge all but the most tightly secured bikini tops. It was great. Everybody, even the customers… especially the customers… loved it.
It had taken Jimbo a year to get the proper hang of the welding, and a lot of customers had been sent down the mountain to the emergency room while he was learning. He had been showing signs of mellowing… but now, this.
They had not named the new ride, the one that Sam was staring at, the one they were offering all the cash for the first one stupid and desperate enough to leap into. It was so simple. A simple tube running straight down the mountain at a very steep angle for about three hundred feet. It needed the run, it needed the speed, for at the bottom was a simple, elegant, round loop in the tube, shooting up about thirty feet in the air before looping back down and discharging into a generous pool at the bottom.
“Are you thinking about taking that thing?” asked Joshua Jones. He and Sally had followed Sam out on to the porch and leaned on the railing beside him.
“Yup.”
“You know what happened to the test dummies that the ran down there?”
“Yup.”
Jimbo had gone into Trinidad for a salvage sale at the “Platform Fashion Boutique” bankruptcy and bought their entire stock of realistic mannequins to use in testing out new rides. The water would wash them out of the bottom of the looping tube with their arms and legs detached, their necks bent at unnatural angles.
“Not a good test,” Beauregard Evans had said. “Those dummies don’t have no brains, no muscles, no reflexes. A human bean can wiggle through no problema. We’ll grease ’em up with Crisco to get em over the hump and make sure they keep their arms crossed over their chests.”
Now Sam, Joshua, and Sally leaned on the rail, looked at the tube, and thought of the crisp currency on the table and on the pieces of old mannequin stacked up behind some bushes.
“You still thinkin’?” Joshua asked Sam again.
“Yup.”
“You’ll never ride that thing,” Sally Pumpernickel said. “You don’t have the guts.”
Sam let out a sigh. No use thinking any more; now he had no choice. There was no way he could live the rest of his years… no matter how short, with Sally Pumpernickel thinking and saying he was a chicken. He pushed away from the railing, turned and walked briskly into the maintenance shed. He had to push the crowd aside – but he didn’t have to say anything – just reach out onto the table and snatch up the hundred dollar bill.
For father’s day, Candy bought me a year-long membership to the Dallas Arboretum – so I can go as often as I want, sit around, and maybe stare at strangers. We were talking the other day when we had gone to the Zoo to see A Hard Night’s Day – a Beatles Tribute Band – about the fact that there weren’t any Rolling Stones tribute bands. So she also bought tickets to a concert at the Arboretum by Satisfaction… a Stones tribute band.
The Dallas Arboretum is massive and maze-like. When we were there, I wondered if we had missed any of Chihuly’s stuff. In the interim, I was able to learn the layout a bit better and I slipped away from the concert several times to walk the grounds, both in the evening light and the darkness (nighttime Chihluly photographs to come).
It turns out we did pretty well, only missing one Chihuly piece. It was a beautiful one though. In the second phase of the Woman’s Garden there is a little pond full of water plants (the Pool in the Genesis Garden). The artist had placed some white glass sculptures in amongst the green lily pads and colorful blooms.
Bill Chance 