Tag Archives: Dallas

Four Trombones and Madison King

Posted on by Bill Chance

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.

Deep Ellum – Filipino Fest

Posted on by Bill Chance

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.

June Marieezy doing a set on the street

It was really hot, which makes some folks sleepy

What I learned this week, June 15, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

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.

Hail Damages Chihuly Exhibit at Dallas Arboretum  

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.

 

Nasher architect Renzo Piano pleads for a solution from Museum Tower

From the article:

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”

Finally, a Dallas Food Truck Park.   Coming soon. Faster, please.

Debating the Root Cause of Zombie Infrastructure

From the article:

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.

Why You Shouldn’t Be A Writer

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.

Thomas Pynchon: Another Author Concedes to Digital

Oh, good! Now I can carry Gravity’s Rainbow around on my Kindle.

Swedish Edition of Gravity’s Rainbow

I’ve discovered that one of my favorite cult bands, My Favorite, is now The Secret History… with the same quirky feel. Good stuff.

A Seven-Song Primer On Michael Grace Jr., New York’s New Wave Cult Hero

What’s going on this weekend?

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…

Then, on Saturday, the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market is growing and ecompassing Filipino Fest – which sounds like fun.

Sunday? Don’t know yet… but I feel like maybe some Oak Cliff…. Maybe some Bar Belmont. Oh, Shakespeare in the Park is starting up with Twelfth Night.

Any other ideas?

It’s been a bad year for great musicians.
RIP Eduard Khil

Some random photographs

Posted on by Bill Chance

…found on my drive, left over from my trip down to the farmer’s market. I took these when we walked over to Deep Ellum.

Bikes out in front of Reno’s.

Deep Ellum Graffiti

Travelling Man

William Hawkins CSA

Posted on by Bill Chance

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.

Vintage Bicycle Swap Meet

Posted on by Bill Chance

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.

I’ve been looking at folding bikes recently. Maybe a Bike Friday, or a Brompton... but probably a Dahon. There was a folder at the swap meet – it was an old Fuji mountain bike that was a give away prize to folks that smoked enough Marlboro cigarettes.

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.

Chihuly Nights

Posted on by Bill Chance

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.

The One I Missed Before

Posted on by Bill Chance

It’s been almost a month since I went with my Writing Group down to the Arboretum to take some photographs of the Dale Chihuly exhibition there. I know I have posted a lot about this, put up a lot of pictures, but I’m not done yet, not by a long shot.

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.

It was gorgeous.

http://vimeo.com/36848879

Pizza at the Village… and a Whoopie Pie

Posted on by Bill Chance

In the Northeast quadrant of the city of Dallas, about six miles out from the skyscrapers of Downtown, sits a big ol’ apartment development, The Village. It was always a big part of my life the first decade or so I lived in Texas, though I never lived there. A lot of my friends did and I spent a lot of time hanging out in The Village.

When I first moved here The Village was the big Singles Apartment Development. It held about fourteen different apartment complexes with maybe ten thousand residents – almost all of them single. It was when it was still legal to have “adult apartments” that did not allow children. A little pricey for me, I lived a couple of cheaper places in the area and a lot of people I knew had an apartment there at one time or another.

The central nexus was The Village Country Club – a complex of pools, tennis courts, athletic fields, with a large clubhouse right in the center of all the action. They would have parties, live music, or sports leagues there, indoors and out. For a wide swath of Dallas young people, it was the place to be. I felt a little above all of that… preferring the more bohemian downbeat parts of town… but looking back it was a lot of fun. I spent a lot more time there than I thought I was and always had a good time.

All this came to a screeching halt in 1989 when the federal government made it illegal to refuse children from rental housing. Overnight, The Village became nothing more than another bunch of crappy apartments. I miss it.

So I saw on this interweb thing that there were going to be some food trucks down in the Village Country Club parking lot after work. I decided to run down there and grab a bite. I went more out of nostalgia than hunger.

It hadn’t changed much – the trees were much larger, the atmosphere more laid back and family friendly, but there were memories stirred up… all of them good.

The trucks down there were the usual suspects – but there was a pizza truck I had never been to before, The Gepetto Pizza Truck – so I bought an eight inch pie. It was pretty good – pizza is pizza and always good eats.

One of the lines of food trucks at the Village Country Club.

When you visit a place you haven’t seen in years – it’s always surprising how much the trees have grown.

The Gepetto Pizza Truck

Making Pizzas.

I don’t know if I’ve ever had a pizza I didn’t like.

After I ate, I called Candy to see if she wanted me to bring something back for her and she asked about desserts. Rockstar Bakeshop was down there with their truck, “Layla”, so I bought her a homemade whoopie pie… and didn’t eat any of it. She said it was good… rich, but good.

Rockstar Bakeshop always gives its fare fantastic names.

Rockstar Bakeshop’s truck, “Layla”

Glass in the mist

Posted on by Bill Chance

Taking a quick look through the directory full of photos I took the other week at the Chihuly Exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum I found a few (well, a lot, actually) that I liked that I hadn’t put up yet.

One group was some gorgeous blue glass that was set in the waters of the Palmer Fern Dell near the entrance to the Arboretum. This is a cool, shady spot that is a great escape from the killer Texas summer sun. The ferns are misted periodically from an automated system set on a timer and the rising fog gives the dell an otherworldly aura.

-Especially with that amazing glass sticking up through the mist.