My old commuter bicycle with Reunion Tower in the background
(click to enlarge)
I remember the first time I saw it – in 1979 (it was only a year old) and driving from Kansas to Padre Island. We took the I35 Route through Dallas (instead of I35W through Fort Worth) and there was Reunion Tower, looming up next to the highway. Unexpected, it was pretty impressive.
Not long after, I saw the tower in a little seen science fiction film on PBS – The Lathe of Heaven. Reunion Tower was part of an enormous “dream machine” that warped reality. Then, after I moved here – every now and then I’d take people up to the bar in the ball. The view from up there is pretty cool.
Now they have rebuilt and remodeled the Observation Deck on the tower. After I drove my bike downtown and watched the video show on the side of the Omni Hotel, I moved over to watch the fireworks show that was supposed to go down. I chatted with the photographers, cops, and general gawkers up there – nobody knew any details. We all assumed the fireworks would be fired from the big empty field that sits where Reunion Arena used to be.
Finally, the show started. The fireworks were fired directly from the tower itself. It was amazing – probably the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen.
I had my camera set up on a tripod. I stood there with the infrared remote, clicking the shutter open and closed. Here’s what came up.
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
October is a good month in Dallas. The killer summer heat is ending and there are a lot of events scheduled in the, if not always pleasant, at least not toxic weather.
Only about a day or so ahead of time, I heard about something going on in downtown Dallas that looked interesting.
There is a relatively new hotel attached to the convention center – the Omni – that is skinned with four miles of light bars and more than a million LED lights. It’s an enormous computer controlled light show that’s only limited by the quality of the images. They say it’s like a low quality printer.
Looking at a map of downtown I realized I could take the DART train downtown and then ride my bike onto the Jefferson Street Viaduct Bike Lane – there was a good view of the Omni Hotel from there.
Bicycle Lanes on the Jefferson Viaduct from Oak Cliff into downtown, Dallas.
When work ended I almost didn’t go. It was a tough week and I was exhausted. At home I stretched out on the bed and felt my motivation draining out. I wanted to stay home and watch television. It took all my motivation to get up, change, load up my bicycle, and ride out to the train station.
I knew I had to have my tripod with me if I wanted to take any photographs. For a long time I’ve been trying to figure out how to carry it on my bike. The legs collapse, of course, but it’s still pretty long. After thinking about it, imagining all sorts of different scenarios and improvised equipment – I simply took a single bungee cord and tied it to the rack. It stuck out the back… but it worked. Sometimes, simple is the best.
I rode the train to the Union Station and it was a short jump to get on the Jefferson Viaduct. As I rode up and over I noticed the old, abandoned parking garage that served Reunion Arena back in the day. I turned in and rode up to the top level, where there was a great view of the downtown and the Omni.
I was a little early and there was only one guy there – and I set up my camera and tripod.
My commuter bike on the old parking garage with the Omni in the background.
The only problem was that the audio portion of the program was broadcast on 97.1FM – and as I was packing up I realized that I don’t even own a portable radio. I would have to watch the show without sound.
As the appointed hour arrived a good number of cars started to arrive and try to jockey for position. Watching this comedy of of errors on the parking garage ramps below my perch was as amusing as the video show itself. A few more bicyclists came riding up and some police cars showed to work on reports and see what was up.
Watching the show from the roof of an SUV.
I have no idea who owns that old parking garage or if there are any plans for it in the future. It does have a spectacular view of downtown but there isn’t anything going on there now except a home (and bathroom) for homeless folks. I wish the city would do something cool – the top level of the garage could get the Klyde Warren treatment. A layer of dirt, some grass, and you would have another really amazing urban park. The levels of parking below could be used for visitors or for the Convention Center nearby. As a matter of fact, the Convention Center would benefit from a nearby open, grassy, park area with a killer view. It would be a great spot for outdoor events.
That’s my idea, at any rate.
My vantage point was a little too close and that emphasized the low quality of the image – and I missed not having the sound – but it was still a lot of fun to watch. I was glad that I made the effort to get out of bed and get down there.
A figure swimming across the hotel. (click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
When the Expanded Cinema ended everybody switched positions – there was supposed to be a fireworks show in honor of the new observation deck on Reunion Tower. Nobody knew exactly where or when that was going to happen – but that’s a story for tomorrow.
“On my tombstone they will carve, “IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
“As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born
Deep Ellum Art Park, Dallas, Texas (Click to Enlarge)
“Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
I like photographs that I take because I can look at them and they will bring back the sensations and emotions I felt in the instant that I pressed the shutter. In this one I can feel the summer heat still coming off the sidewalk as the evening cools off. I can see the bright “magic hour” preternaturally colored light bouncing off the buildings all around me making the shapes and angles sharper than they otherwise are. I can hear the honking of the Friday evening traffic – office drones desperately trying to get home, delivery trucks dropping off the last loads of the day, the opera patrons heading for the parking garage. I smell the diesel exhaust mixing with the cooking wafting from the local, sidewalk-level restaurants, gearing up for the dinner crowd. I remember the feel of the rough sidewalk under my feet.
I remember the excitement of the workday being over and the anticipation of hearing some live music. I remember the layering of memories as I walked down a familiar street that had changed drastically, completely, since the first day I had set foot – changed almost as much as I had. I remember the slight smile on my face.
Without this photo, these memories are lost in time.
I’ve… seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those… moments… will be lost in time, like tears… in… rain. Time… to die…
—-Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner
“Someday the old shack we call the world will fall apart. How, we don’t know, and we don’t really care either. Since nothing has real substance, and life is a twirl in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas. This is attached to a “Rat Rod” – that looks like it might still be incomplete.
“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
When I first saw one of these it was over forty years ago and although I was only, maybe ten years old, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in the parking lot of the McDonald’s at Fourth and Walnut in Hutchinson, Kansas. There is still one there, but it looks completely different of course. In 1967, the place still was more of a shack with those giant yellow arches. I think its “sold” sign was still in the millions. Once, I saw a guy actually fetching a bag of real potatoes from an outbuilding to cut into fries.
That was a long time ago.
At any rate, there was a car in the parking lot with this galvanized steel contraption attached to its window. I looked at it closely, with the kind of curiosity only a nerdy ten-year-old boy has. It was a big metal tube, closed off at the back, with a coarse screen on the front, and a vent that went through the partially opened window into the interior of the car. I was able to guess its purpose, though it seemed pretty odd.
My father confirmed that it was a crude air-conditioner. You dumped a five pound bag of ice into the tube and when you drove, the air was forced over the ice and into the car. Ordinary air-conditioning was still rare in automobiles, but I have no idea how common this sort of contraption was.
So now I see another one, sort of, at a car show. This one is not as crude as the one in my memory (I’m pretty sure that one was home-made) and, instead of ice, it’s an evaporative cooler – better known in these parts as a swamp cooler. It’s known as a Car Cooler or a Thermador.
Maybe that’s how the one in my memory worked… but I seem to remember a place for ice. No matter, neither one would really work very well. I think I’ll stick with Freon.
She sits in the park on a red blanket with a bottle filled with blue drink. She watches her dog, her child, her husband, while she doesn’t move herself – except her eyes. Lasering back and forth across the grassy patch they stay on target. Meanwhile, the world moves on, unknown.
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
It is too late.
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, opening lines.
Machine gun and pinup girl
The doomed flyboys of WWII painted pinup girls on the noses of their B-17s cementing the fusion of sex and bombs, of beautiful women and annihilation from the sky, of danger and love, of longing and luck, of desire and death.
Image from Wikipedia.
This is the (arguably) most famous of all, the “Memphis Belle.”
I give you a reproduction, a homage if you will – painted on a restored old car, a “Rat Rod” – complete with fake machine guns mounted over the exhaust headers.
Rat Rod – Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Sex and power and death and speed, beauty and doom, lust and destruction – a potent cocktail that tastes like licorice and smells like gasoline.
I’ll tell you ’bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat
Soft drivin’, slow and mad, like some new language
Now, listen to this, and I’ll tell you ’bout the Texas
I’ll tell you ’bout the Texas Radio
I’ll tell you ’bout the hopeless night
Wandering the Western dream
Tell you ’bout the maiden with wrought iron soul
—-The WASP, Jim Morrison
Revolution Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Bill Chance 