Graffiti, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum Goldfish
Graffiti, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Tag Archives: Dallas
Bicycle and Glasses
When I first moved to Dallas and worked downtown, I remember trooping out together at lunch and walking from the Kirby Building (which was offices then) over to the Spaghetti Warehouse which at that time (1981) sat alone in an empty sea of abandoned brick warehouses, west of downtown.
“This is such a cool area, somebody ought to do something with it,” I said.
My cow-orkers laughed at me, as was their habit. “This place, these old empty buildings, what a silly idea.”
But of course, in the next few years they were developed. The West End Marketplace was installed in a gigantic old cracker factory next to the Spaghetti Warehouse and for years it was the place to go for things to do. I remember going down there on the day it opened (maybe 1985?) and it was very exciting. The building had four floors of retail, topped with a food court and movie theaters. Next to the building was Dallas Alley, a narrow neon lit defile that gave access to a plethora of nightlife options. If memory serves, it had at least five nightclubs built into its base: a piano bar, a contemporary live music club, a blues bar, a saloon, and a giant multi-level dance palace. It was a blast.
But all good things come to an end, and big city nightclubs and urban retail… the end usually comes suddenly. After a few years of bright lights and a few years of decline, it all went dark. The West End Marketplace closed and is still mostly vacant. Dallas Alley was reduced to a slightly scary route to get north to the now-growing Victory area. The Spaghetti Warehouse is still there.
Back in the day, Dallas Alley was lined with sculptural tributes to great Texas Musicians. These have been stolen, vandalized, or fallen into disrepair. It’s a shame.
Roy Orbison’s glasses, though, still remain.
My old Raleigh Technium and the Tribute to Roy Orbison in Dallas Alley.
Turandot at the Death Star
Most of you know about Cowboys Stadium. A lot of folks call it Jerryworld, after Jerry Jones, of course – but I refer to it as the Death Star. It is a structure of almost unimaginable size. When you are driving around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the thing will, often unexpectedly, be spotted looming on the horizon like a giant scoop of steely ice cream. You will look, and then realize how far away it is. I’ve seen the thing from just west of Mesquite – a good forty miles away.
Cowboys Stadium – The Death Star
Its purpose, of course, is to be the home of the Dallas Cowboys, America’s (nowadays mediocre) Team. But it is also used for other purposes, from concerts to monster truck rallies. I’ve seen a basketball game there.
Other than its gargantuan size, the stadium’s most famous attribute is its video screen. A four-sided apparatus (two large screens on the sides, and two small ones on the ends) that hangs down from the roof over the field, it simply has to be seen to be believed. The first thing that strikes you is the size – 72 feet tall and 160 feet wide. But what is jaw-droppingly amazing is the quality and brightness of the picture it displays. It is better than real… it is real life re-imagined on a grand scale.
So when I read that they were going to put that screen to a unique use – they were going to simulcast a production of the Dallas Opera’s production of Turandot from the Winspear Opera House onto those giant screen, I had to be there.
Turandot simulcast at Cowboys Stadium.
I have to admit, the main reason I wanted to go was simply the uniqueness of the event. Grand, full-scale, opera being piped live into the gargantuan shrine of huge sweaty sportsmen… this was something I had to see – the collision of two very different worlds. I picked up tickets for Candy and I, and marked the calendar to drive out there.
We had our doubts. I had seen some light opera over the years, but never a whole production of grand opera. What would it be like on a giant video screen? Candy especially didn’t think it would be all that – and almost didn’t go. She asked, “It isn’t long is it?”
“Yes, it’s very long.”
“They aren’t singing in another language are they?”
“Yes, it’s in Italian, but there will be subtitles.”
In the end, we made the drive. There were twenty-nine thousand people there. I don’t think there have been very many live opera performances with (counting the folks at the Winspear) thirty five or so thousand spectators. Before the festivities started, the crowd was pretty restless and innervated.
I wanted to get there on time because before the opera itself started they showed a cartoon on the big screen. It’s what most folks think of when they think of opera – What’s Up Opera, with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. You know… “Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!”
Elmer Fudd on the Giant Screen
And then, after another mini-opera modeled after Julia Child baking a chocolate cake and a bunch of interviews, the performance started.
It was greatness. It was fucking amazing. It was fantastic. It was a thing of exquisite beauty.
When you see little bits of a Grand Opera – the overdone costumes and makeup, the melodramatic stories, the talking-in-music – it seem sort of silly, weird, and overly precious. But when you put it together like this, done well, it is an overpowering emotional experience.
I remember, in the middle of the third act, looking sideways at the massive crowd packed into the steeply sloping seats staring out at that video screen, mouths gaping, completely taken in, enraptured. I don’t see how anyone with anything approaching an open mind could not be amazed and enthralled at what they saw.
Oh, and Candy loved it too. She had brought her iPad so she could read if she was bored. It never came out of its case. She said it was beautiful and amazing. She was especially impressed with Antonello Palombi, the tenor playing Prince Calàf. Here’s an interesting story from his Wikipedia Page:
On 10 December 2006 he was thrust into the media spotlight in Franco Zeffirelli’s new production of Aida at La Scala, which opened the theatre’s 2006/2007 season. During the second night of the run, Palombi took over the role of Radames when Roberto Alagna walked off the stage after booing from the loggione (opera fans who sit in the less-expensive seats at the very back of the Scala). Palombi entered on stage wearing jeans and a black shirt to finish the act, and returned in costume after the interval to sing the remainder of the opera.
Nobody was booing from Cowboys Stadium. It’s pretty odd to see folks giving a standing ovation to performers that aren’t even there.
How was it on the screen? Not bad. Some of the closeups were a little strange – seeing things like beads of sweat or imperfections in makeup blown up to the size of a schoolbus was disconcerting. They did as good a job with the sound as they could – the vast open space echoes terribly, of course, but they had extra speakers and subwoofers lining the field and it wasn’t as bad as you would think.
So – now I’m pumped. I really want to see one of these live now. Remember, those folks are singing live… really live – they are not miked. The purpose of the simulcast was to introduce folks to something they might not otherwise see and get them interested… and it worked, in spades.
Oh man, in October they are doing Carmen at the Winspear…. I wonder if I can save enough money for tickets.
When Do People Start To Resemble Their Pets?
Deep Ellum Arts Festival, Dallas, Texas
What I learned this week,April 12, 2013
Travelling Man – sculpture east of Downtown Dallas
Houston Rising
Why the Next Great American Cities Aren’t What You Think
America’s urban landscape is changing, but in ways not always predicted or much admired by our media, planners, and pundits. The real trend-setters of the future—judged by both population and job growth—are not in the oft-praised great “legacy” cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, but a crop of newer, more sprawling urban regions primarily located in the Sun Belt and, surprisingly, the resurgent Great Plains.
While Gotham and the Windy City have experienced modest growth and significant net domestic out-migration, burgeoning if often disdained urban regions such as Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Charlotte, and Oklahoma City have expanded rapidly. These low-density, car-dominated, heavily suburbanized areas with small central cores likely represent the next wave of great American cities.
Dallas Skyline from the Soda Bar on the roof of the NYLO Southside hotel.
A sketch I made of Boquillas, Mexico, in 2001
Well over a decade ago, I went to Big Bend, my favorite place on earth, and crossed over to Boquillas, Mexico, to have some tacos and enjoy the international flavor. At that time, you paid a dollar to a guy with a rowboat (with the name “Frijoles” hand-painted on the transom) to get you across the Rio Grande. No passport, customs, or anything like that. It seemed silly, given that the river can be walked when it is low, and there is no real civilization for hundreds of miles in any direction.
After 9/11, of course, this all came to a screeching halt. No more unauthorized border crossing. The village of Boquillas was crippled by the disappearing tourist traffic. What a shame. It was gone forever.
Well, as it turns out, not forever. Now I have to get my passport in order and get ready to make that long drive to West Texas.
South County Bureau report: It’s open! Boquillas welcomes U.S. visitors, officials, media folks.
Remember to tip your boatman.
Crossing the Rio Grande in 2001
The 38 Essential Dallas Restaurants, April 2013
13 down, 25 to go.
Three on this list I’ve written about here:
Smoke
Jimmy’s Food Store
Chicken Scratch
Early Adopter Beware: 7 Huge First Gen Products
Has a Seattle Building Discovered the Secret to Making Stairs Irresistible?
Seattle’s $30 million carbon neutral Bullitt Center, billed as the world’s greenest commercial building, will feature what its owner, the Bullitt Foundation, calls an “irresistible stairway” when it opens at the end of the month. The elegant, light-filled escalier offers panoramic views of downtown and Puget Sound. It’s intended to conserve energy and provide physical exercise for occupants. Will it be a lesson to companies trying to get employees to make healthier choices?
We all know climbing stairs is good for us: It’s a good workout and can even save time. In 2011, researchers at a Canadian hospital found that when they had doctors take the stairs rather than the elevator, the doctors saved an average of 15 minutes per workday—and they were required to walk, not run.
But despite the benefits, few office buildings do anything meaningful to encourage stair climbing. Many workplaces have grim, fluorescent-lit, concrete passages hidden away behind fire doors. Some all but prohibit stair use, in part due to post-9/11 security concerns.
The building where I work has very inviting, entertaining, stairs with nice views. However, it was built a while back and does not meet current fire codes. That’s why stairways are so grim – because of the codes that forbid clear openings between floors (because they encourage the spread of fire). I wonder how the Seattle building gets around that problem.
—–
OK… Well, The internet provides the answer. They had to change the codes to build the building.
Bullitt Foundation says Living Building Challenge can only be met after code change
“We were shocked to learn that it is flat-out illegal to build this sort of ultra-green building in any city in America,” says Bullitt Foundation President Denis Hayes. “But Seattle changed its building code to allow super-green buildings to meet performance standards as an alternative to prescriptive standards. We wanted the design flexibility to construct a building that used less than one-fourth the energy of a (standard) code building.”
As Seen on TV: 21 Books From Mad Men
RIP Thomas Kinkade
Nothing but Net: The Citizen Kane of Bad Art
Although lost to us through a regretful combination of valium, alcohol, and Disney dreams, Kinkade’s abrupt end does not, however, signify the end to his ™. A digital immortal, his empire continues to expand post-mortem. Despite failing gallery schemes, his virtual gallery is growing. The “Kinkadian Master Style”, or official imitators, will continue to create new works through his website. Similarly, his impact remains ever present on visual blogs like tumblr. It is on these sites that iterations of his work are always being created. One current meme is to “Kinkade” an image, by adding his copyrighted cottages, or by filling any background with swaths of his paintings. It is unlikely Kinkade would be flattered by these depictions, but imagining the man, he would prefer being ironicized rather than irrelevant.
Olivehead
Graffiti in an alley in Exposition Park, Dallas, Texas
Olivehead
I like the scene painted in the graffiti, especially in the second photo, because you can see one of my favorite things – the Patricia Johanson sculptures in Leonhardt Lagoon in nearby Fair Park.
A pond in Fair Park. The red paths are part of a massive sculpture by Patricia Johanson. I have always loved those red paths running through the water, weeds, and turtles. A neglected jewel in the city.
The graffiti artist even included the Swan Boats.
Swan boat in Leonhardt Lagoon.
Five Friends
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
― Albert Camus
Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person’s essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
(click for a larger version on Flickr)
“Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Choose Your Weapon
More Blooms
“The breath of wind that moved them was still chilly on this day in May; the flowers gently resisted, curling up with a kind of trembling grace and turning their pale stamens towards the ground. The sun shone through them, revealing a pattern of interlacing, delicate blue veins, visible through the opaque petals; this added something alive to the flower’s fragility, to it’s ethereal quality, something almost human ,in the way that human can mean frailty and endurance both at the same time. The wind could ruffle these ravishing creations but it couldn’t destroy them, or even crush them; they swayed there, dreamily; they seemed ready to fall but held fast to their slim strong branches-…”
― Irène Némirovsky
Dallas Blooms, Dallas Arboretum
“The beauty of that June day was almost staggering. After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.”
― Dan Simmons, Drood
Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Accordion Player
“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.”
― Tom Waits
Ginny Mac, with Brave Combo, Deep Ellum Arts Festival, Dallas, Texas, in the middle of The Beer Barrel Polka
Brave Combo
Bill Chance 