To get to the Carrollton Festival at the Switchyard I rode my bike to the Arapaho Red Line DART station – hung my bike on the transit hook and rode downtown (as always, I was a minute late, missed my train, and was twenty minutes late downtown – I need to cut that crap out), met a friend, and we then rode the Green line out to Carrollton. It would have been quicker to drive my car down Beltline (to get anywhere in Dallas you start out driving down Beltline Road) – but then I would have had to find a place to park, plus there is a lot of freedom and flexibility in having a bicycle. With a bicycle and a DART pass – I can go anywhere.
At any rate, heading back downtown, waiting for the train, I had the time to look around at the artwork on the Carrollton station. To my uneducated, ignorant, and untrained eye, DART has done an admirable job of adding artwork to its train stations – at least as far as a giant government bureaucracy can be expected to go. Maybe I should do some blog entries on some of my favorites….
At the Carrollton station – elevated high in the air (cool view from up there) over where I suppose the old switching yard might have been, I noticed all these little windows cut into the concrete pillars supporting the roof structure. In each window was an old photograph combined with, or framed by, pieces of found metal. It made for a series of interesting and entertaining collages. The time spent waiting for the train was reduced by me dashing up and down, looking into the little windows at the parade of aged faces and arranged fragments of history.
Later, at home, an internet search led me quickly to the artist, James Michael Starr. Although, he seems to be unhappy with the initial installation – everything seems to have worked out and his collages are there for the enjoyment of the unwashed masses. The bits of metal seem to be mostly artifacts that the artist was able to dig up around the area, now on display, high in the air… forever waiting for the next train.
Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.
Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.
Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.
Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.
As always, I futzed and dutzed and spent too much time packing my bike and getting ready. Still, I had a few minutes to spare as I rode up to the Arapaho train station. Unfortunately, it was a beautiful day… and the last day of the State Fair of Texas… and only one ticket machine was working. I have bought a thousand tickets from those machines – I know what buttons to push by heart and know that a credit card is the quickest way to go. Unfortunately, the folks in line ahead of me (damn rookies) had no clue. I stood stoically in line, clutching my already-out method of payment, while they fumbled and bumbled with the confusing buttons and hard-to-see screen. I kept hearing, “OK, push that and we’ll start over again” and other such time-wasting phrases.
So the God of mass transit strikes again and as I rode up the ramp to the platform, my Red Train was pulling out. I had to wait for the next, which was an orange line, which meant I had to ride a bit farther to get to Oak Cliff, which meant I would probably be late, which meant I had to haul ass and sweat like a pig to try and get where I was going in time.
Which I did. We met up in Bishop Arts with enough time for me to catch my breath and then ride across the Jefferson Viaduct back into downtown in amazingly beautiful weather. There is nothing better than that.
Riding my bike to the sculptures is appropriate. The panel constantly referred to Dallas as a giant car-choked metropolis – which isn’t untrue… but it isn’t the whole story. You can get around the city without a car… you have to simply want to do it.
There was a lot going on at the museum. It is the Nasher’s ten year anniversary. I couldn’t help but think of the excitement when the museum first arrived.
It hadn’t been open very long when I took Lee down there and shot some photographs of him with the sculptures. Then we went back six years later and took the shots again. I’ve put these up before, but I wanted to see them again.
Eve, by Rodin, 2004
Eve, by Rodin, 2011
My Curves are Not Mad – Richard Serra, 2004
Richard Serra – My Curves are Not Mad – 2011 Look at how much the trees in the garden have grown.
Lee sitting by Night, 2004
Night (La Nuit) – 2011 (they had moved the sculpture)
Lee standing in Tending (blue) in 2004.
The opening in the ceiling if the installation Tending (blue). A photograph does not do justice.
It’s sad that the sculpture/installation Tending(Blue) by James Turrell is gone – closed off because of the condo tower next door. It was always one of my favorite spots in the city and is sorely missed.
The sun began to set quickly so we took off across downtown. I knew the train would be crowded with folks coming back from the State Fair so I boarded at the Union Station, hanging my bike up on the little hook and sitting back behind it. I had the car to myself through downtown but, sure enough, at the Pearl/Arts District Station the crowd coming from the fair (via the Green Line) packed their way onto the train. About a third of the folks couldn’t get on.
I sat there, steadying my bike against the surge of the crowd. I was pinned and couldn’t even give up my seat. One woman, leaning against my bicycle, was obviously very drunk and exhausted and came close to collapsing – only the press of the thick crowd kept her upright all the way to her stop.
It was a relief to get off the train and pump my pedals the last few miles to my house. A very good day.
I have an early meeting at work on Monday, so I’ll drive my car in. That’s a good idea – but it seems like a shame.
What a great looking bunch of folks.
(click to enlarge)
October in Texas is a special time. With the killer summer heat broken – we have a short time of pleasant, comfortable weather… no more than a few weeks before the violent swings of winter set in. There is so much crammed into this sliver of time – there is a desperate feeling of having to gulp it all down – do everything possible before it is too late.
That’s especially true of bicycling events. October is Bicycle Friendly Oak Cliff’s Cyclesomatic – a month long series of rides and events. I’m trying to do as many as I can.
So on Saturday I loaded my bike onto the DART line and headed downtown – then wound through the traffic under I35 and on to the Community Beer Company for a Mosaic IPA and a swap meet. Thinking about it, I’ve never driven a car to Community – but have been there for a couple of brewery bike rides… in February and a couple weeks ago.
I am a sucker for bicycle swap meets. I’ve been to a few, here, here and here. Sometimes you find something beautiful. My combination of a lack of pride and dire poverty means that I’m able to get by with old gear that is too worn out for the original owner.
Today, I didn’t buy too much – two dollars for a seat bag for my Technium and ten bucks for a new mini frame pump…. Still, it was cool seeing the bike stuff, talking to folks, and having a bit of brew. A nice day… getting while the getting is good.
I first heard about Aurora last time it happened, but was out of town that weekend and couldn’t make it. Then, on the way to a play at the Wyly theater, I saw a preview of Aurora – specifically an installation of giant red floating jellyfish.
The last few weeks have been very busy and stressful for me and I didn’t have time (or money) to properly decorate my bike. This sort of thing is, especially right now, beyond my abilities or resources. It was stressing me out a little bit. The only thing I could do is to go to the Dollar Store with a five and a one clutched in my sweaty fist. I bought a couple LED lightsabers, a little lighted pumpkin, and some packages of glowy bracelets.
I gathered up everything in my house with a battery powered light and roll of duct tape, and, after work rode down to Lee Harvey’s – where I taped everything to my bike in a pretty much random fashion. I felt like an idiot – but it worked. Especially the lightsabers. I might try and find a way to more permanently hold those on my bike – they would be useful to increase the visibility for night rides.
Nothing like big, glowing, flashing, green cylinders to get the attention of motorists after dark.
Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia
Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia
Everybody met up and we set off in a glowing, flashing mass – down around downtown
Dallas, into Deep Ellum, then back into the Arts District.
I was immediately surprised and shocked by the crowds. The original idea was to ride through Aurora as a group, but the streets were packed with thick throngs of people and we were immediately split up. I locked my bike up and began to explore.
Aurora was amazing. I kept thinking, “Is this really Dallas?” There were hundreds of artists and installations covering the entire spectrum spread across the vast area from One Arts Plaza, down Flora Street past and including the concert halls and museums, across to Klyde Warren Park and even down towards the Perot. That’s about two square miles of area.
Aurora Dallas 2013
Klyde Warren Park, Aurora Dallas 2013
Aurora Dallas 2013
Aurora Dallas 2013
Not all the exhibits were big – tiny men climbing a column at the Symphony Hall
The crowd was huge. I was so glad I had ridden in on a bike and had a DART pass in my pocket. People were calling in on cell phones – the traffic across the city was at a standstill and there was no parking to be found anywhere.
I spent hours walking around. There is no way to see even a fraction of everything that was offered up, but there were a few items I really wanted to take in.
First, the dancers that I had seen at the Patio Sessions on Thursday were performing on a little grass patch between the Opera House and the Symphony Hall. Through dumb luck I arrived a couple minutes before they started and talked to a parent of one – I told him of their enthusiasm and skill that I had seen the evening before.
The description of their performance:
Ruddy Udder Dance by Claire Ashley
This performance uses a large-scale, painted inflatable sculpture as a prop worn by twelve dancers. A choreographed sequence unfolds. Ashley is interested in both the high-brow aesthetic pleasure found in the painterly abstraction and monumentality of the object itself, and the absurdly low-brow, playful, high-energy, ecstatic dancing experience and pop culture references that ensue as the object moves in space. Directed by Linda James and Kate Walker and performed by the Repertory Dance Company II from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Dancers and Inflatable Cow.
The dancers were arranged as the “feet” or maybe the “udders” of a stylized giant inflatable cow-balloon and danced to a country music tune – throwing the enormous bovine around as handlers held guy ropes and a bank of black lights made the scene glow. It was pretty cool.
Next, I wanted to see the Wyly Theater. I had seen a preview and knew I had to check out the real thing. Several banks of incredibly powerful video projectors were trained on the wall of the Borg Cube – shaped Wyly. The genius is that the program started with an image of the Wyly projected on itself, which then was moved, shifted, deconstructed, and modified until the thing was transformed into a giant 2001-style cube monolith – “It’s full of Stars.”
I found a spot and sat and watched the cycle. Then I realized that viewing it at an oblique angle was even better, so I watched it again. Really cool stuff.
Finally, I wanted to see something inside the Dallas City Performance Hall. Shane Pennington is a local artist that I have been a huge fan of ever since I spent a few days going down to the arts district to watch his ice sculptural exhibition melt into nothingness, releasing the stones contained within. I had read about the screen, a transparent curtain, he made for the Performance Hall – with consists of a grid of computer controlled lights that illustrate shapes moving across the mouth of the theater.
Inside the theater they had the screen up and running. People walking, riding bikes, or pushing carts moved across the screen in a ghostly crowd. Behind the screen a jazz trio performed retro music – a beautiful contrast to the high-tech images they were immersed in.
Shane Pennington’s screen inside the Dallas City Performance Hall, with Jazz Trio.
Midnight approached, and I had to leave – I was a long way from home and I didn’t want to miss the last train.
I did have one last discovery. I didn’t do enough research before Aurora about the nature of the Ciclovia that I was a part of. I didn’t realize that the lighted bike ride was actually a part of the Aurora itself and the ride even had a plaque that spelled that out.
Seeing Aurora, I wondered what it would be like… how cool would that be?.. to actually be a part of it – to be an artist in the event itself, no matter how small or insignificant. Until I found that plaque, I didn’t realize that for the small effort of six bucks and a trip to the dollar store – I was one.
Bike Friendly Cedars and Aurora Ciclovia
Aurora Dallas 2013
Aurora Dallas 2013
The reflecting pool by the Winspear. Aurora Dallas 2013
My bicycle parked next to “Tomorrow’s Legacy” by Jerry Sanders, Richardson, Texas (click to enlarge)
“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by ten food steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but in knowing constant in the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like black tears.”
― William Faulkner, Light in August
My bicycle parked next to “Tomorrow’s Legacy” by Jerry Sanders, Richardson, Texas
“Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!”
– Herman Melville, Moby Dick
“Tomorrow’s Legacy” by Jerry Sanders, Richardson, Texas
I’m working on DIY solutions for storage on my bicycle. Looking around at useful stuff I see, one of the most common, hipster, useful, cheap, and crunchy things to do is to simply bungee a plastic milk crate on to your rear rack.
Milk Crate Bike in the reading area in Klyde Warren Park.
(click to enlarge)
The Dallas Morning News Reading & Games Room area in Klyde Warren Park is one of my favorite spots in the city. It is a quiet, leafy, relaxing spot, with games and stuff to look at. I was there for a few minutes to catch my breath. The powers that be came by and made this woman move her bike (it was leaning against a tree) – but she didn’t seem to be too bothered by it all. I’m afraid that I had already given in to The Man and had my bike locked up on the official bike racks.
Congratulations to Alice Munro. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this week.
I’ve always said she is the unquestioned master of the short story. Glad to see someone working exclusively in the underrated form and genre of the literatry short story (pretty much) get this recognition. The only problem with reading Munro, as a short story writer, is that when you finish one of hers you realize that you will never be that good – that she has done something you will never be able to pull off.
There’s a new Pynchon novel out, Bleeding Edge. I’m not as excited as I have been in the past… (I have a lot to read) but still… I have to go read it.
Crazy Fish Sushi and a book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings (Click to Enlarge)
It was way too hot. The mercury was rising well past the century mark and the Texas sun was beating down, roasting the world with its searing incandescence – still, I wanted to get out and do a bike ride – get some mobile urban photography done – for fun and fodder for blog entries. I packed up, rode to the station, took the DART train downtown and started wandering around.
The night before I had ridden some similar streets with a lot of other folks – the Critical Mass Dallas last-friday-of-the-month ride. I had a blast. We rode from Main Street Garden Park, through downtown, past the Hyatt Regency and across into Oak Cliff, down to Bishop Arts, and then on to a Cuban-Themed party on a rooftop along Jefferson Street (a few doors down from the Texas Theater).
A lot of cool folks, a good time. We rode back across the Jefferson Street Viaduct bike lane – which was spectacular at night. I’m going to have to repeat some of that ride with a camera and a bit of time.
At any rate – one nice thing about a night ride is the cool air.
By noon the next day – cool air was only found inside.
I locked up my bike in Deep Ellum and started walking around, but the heat was getting to me. I was feeling dizzy and my mind was fuzzing up like an old slice of bread. So I thought about bailing and heading home to flop around in the air conditioning, but I had brought two liters of iced water in the cooler that straps to the back of my commuter bike. I’ve learned that I can take the heat pretty well as long as I keep moving and drink as much cold water as possible.
I drank some water, rode a bit, drank some more, found some shade… and felt a lot better.
A week ago, I had been in Klyde Warren park, killing a few minutes, and had thumbed through a book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings that was set out in the reading room in the park. One quote from the book was still rattling around in my head – but I couldn’t remember it exactly and without the exact words couldn’t find it on the Internet. I wanted to use the quotation for a bit of writing/photography. The mystery quote was bothering me like an unscratched itch so I decided to ride back there and take another look at the book.
While I was there I bought a sushi roll from the Crazy Fish Truck (plus more cold water and a diet coke ). Then I was able to get a little green table in some dappled shade and sit down with the paintings and my food and hang.
Oh, I did misremember the quote a little bit. I am happy to set the record straight – but I’m thinking that my misremembered version might be… if not better, more useful for my purposes.
I never noticed the Yosemite engraved on the seat tube until I removed the old paint.
So, the other day I was riding my commuter bike. This is the ancient Yokota mountain bike I bought in a pawn shop in 1994 for sixty dollars and then converted last year to a commuter. I stripped the bike, repainted it and added racks, lights, and fenders (and more). It was a workable commuter bike, the frame was a little small for my size – but otherwise fine. Well, like I said, I was riding it around the city and I kept feeling something wrong. It felt like the seat was broken – when I pushed on the pedals the seat would shift side to side. I slowed down, rode carefully, and made it back home.
I took the seat apart and looked at it carefully – couldn’t find anything wrong. Then I gave the whole thing a once-over and discovered that I had broken the seat tube. The weld where the tube joined the bottom bracket had cracked – that was what was flopping back and forth. I’m lucky that was the weld that broke – most others would have sent me for a tumble.
The crack in the seat tube at the bottom bracket.
It’s not a surprise that it broke – I’ve been riding the bike for almost twenty years (and it was used before that). That’s a lot of flexing on that weld.
Now I needed to figure out what to do. I need a commuter bike. Plus I need two bikes anyway – my Technium road bike is even older than this one and one bike is always under repair of one kind or another.
A friend of mine tried to weld the crack – but the tubing is too thin and the weld wouldn’t hold.
A new bike is out of the question – we are so broke right now.
So I looked at new frames. There are some very affordable generic mountain bike frames available. The problem is that I would have to buy a lot of new parts (threadless headset, fork for same, stem, top-pull derailleur, cables….) because so many parts from my old bike are obsolete – even if they are still working.
Another option is a used bike. I spent a day touring pawn shops (I’m wary of this – I don’t want a hot bike – but at least I could look at some options) but their prices were high. I was working on putting together the funds for a new frame and components when I spotted a bike on Craigslist.
My old bike was a little small – so I wanted to get the size right – but this one was spot on. It was an older, well-used mountain bike, a Giant Rincon SE, for a hundred bucks. That seemed like the ticket to me – the thing should convert into a good commuter – I could mix and match parts from it and my old bike to put together something nice.
So I met the seller at a warehouse (she said it belonged to her son who rode it “all over Southern California”) and bought the thing.
I spent most of a day cleaning, adjusting, and lubricating – then adding my racks, bags, and lights. I swapped the lugged mountain tires and wheels with the slicks on my commuter. The bike has twist-grip shifters, which I’ve never used before – but maybe it’s time to try something new.
Another difference is that it has a front shock adsorbing fork. I’ve never used one of these before. It’s a cheap one, but does seem to make the city riding a bit more comfortable. The problem is that I can’t mount fenders on the fork – so the bike won’t be as good commuting in the rain.
I’ve been thinking about this and I think I’ll buy a steel rigid fork and an extra headset. I can mount a spare brake and my front rack and fenders on that – and use it for commuting. Meanwhile, I can keep the shock fork and the lugged wheels – if I want to ride off-road I can swap them out in a few minutes.
Two bikes for one.
It rides nice. The Giant aluminum frame is rock-solid and it does fit me perfectly. The components are cheap – but they are running fine right now. They should be good enough for commuting. I’ll keep my old parts and swap them out if anything wears out.
The timing is good – it looks like I’ll be short a car for a while – and have to ride to work.
Bill Chance 