What I learned this week, October 21, 2017

Pond at Fair Park

A pond in Fair Park. The red paths are part of a massive sculpture by Patricia Johanson – http://patriciajohanson.com/fairpark/ I have always loved those red paths running through the water, weeds, and turtles. A neglected jewel in the city.

Mapping Dallas: 7 neighborhoods for food and fun

Spirit of the Centennial, Woman’s Building, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas


I usually am fine with being poor, and I have a nice Bose bluetooth speaker that I am perfectly happy with. But, still, I wish I had a spare three grand to drop on this bad boy.


25 Best Film Directors of the 21st Century (So Far)

20 Worst Film Directors of the 21st Century (So Far)


KINGWOOD BIKE MOM RESPONDS TO ONLINE CRITICISM


‘Walking to the Sky,’ a Dallas treasure, prepares for return almost eight years after it vanished


Complete Streets Come to Life in Dallas

Tempt Us To Destroy

“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”
― Milan Kundera

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

A Great Nerve Vibrating

“Is it a fact – or have I dreamt it – that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

(click to enlarge)
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Not the Invisible

“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
― Oscar Wilde

Mural, Samo Gonzales, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

(click to enlarge)
Mural, Samo Gonzales, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Samo G. Instagram

The Life of a Ghost

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

(click to enlarge)
Frank Campagna mural, Hickory Street, Dallas, Texas

I took the above photo(s) during the last Hidden Art Bicycle Tour. The mural is along Hickory Street, between The Cedars and Fair Park. Frank Campagna painted it – he has done a series of murals in this spot. It’s always sad to see an old one go – but that’s the transient nature of murals – they come and then they go.

Obviously, I took two shots, one with cyclists, one without – and layered them in Photoshop.

Ignorance the Hard Way

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle

Waxahachie, Texas

Confusing Messages

“Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Two Kinds of People

I guess there’s just two kinds of people, Miss Sandstone, my kind of people, and assholes. It’s rather obvious which category you fit into.
—-Connie Marble, Pink Flamingos

The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

My 1986 Cannondale and Fergie

“Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
― Woody Allen

My 30 year old touring bike in The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

On the hidden art bicycle tour, everyone else was looking at a mural behind a building, but I found this ad for a new album. Art is where you find it.

Robots on the Walls

“You mean old books?”
“Stories written before space travel but about space travel.”
“How could there have been stories about space travel before –”
“The writers,” Pris said, “made it up.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Hickory and Trunk Streets, Dallas, Texas

On our Hidden Art Bicycle Ride today we came across a building with robots painted on it. A very large building, but one on a street you don’t drive on very often. I had been there before, many times, on a bicycle, but the robots weren’t there. It was cool to see.