“Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning. ”
― Pablo Neruda
“I drank for some time, three or four days. I couldn’t get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat. ”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Ever since I went on the Dallas Contemporary bike tour of murals I have been paying attention to where more of these are. There are a lot more than you would think.
Today, I walked past another work by the local street artists, Sour Grapes. This one was on the side of a liquor store in Oak Cliff, near Bishop Arts – at 501 W. Davis.
Street Mural by Sour Grapes, Oak Cliff, Texas (click to enlarge)
“Baby,” I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.”
She looked down at me. “Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
First, let me tell a little story. It’s a story I’ve told too many times before, and if you know me, you’ve probably heard it more than once. But if I type it out here, maybe I can get it out of the way, and quit repeating myself.
When I first moved to Dallas, in 1981, I had no money (and I have no money now… how does that work?) and lived with some friends in Oak Cliff until I saved enough to get an apartment. I rode the bus down Sylvan and then across the Trinity River on Commerce into Downtown, where I worked in the Kirby Building (now converted into condominiums). The bus would go past the Belmont Hotel every day – I think it was abandoned at the time. It was a very nasty area in those years – if you stood on that corner very long you would probably get your throat cut.
I would tell people, “That Belmont property is so cool. Someone needs to buy it and fix it up. It sits up on a hill with a great view of downtown – wonderful Dallas Art Deco architecture. It’s a shame, somebody needs to do something.”
They would reply, “You are crazy. You’ll get your throat cut down there.”
Now, thirty years later, the Belmont is restored into a cute little boutique hotel, it boasts a famous restaurant, and the area around it is booming with cool hipness. I was thirty years ahead of my time… but then again, a stopped watch is right twice a day.
I decided to ride my vintage Technium instead of my commuter bike – in my constant efforts to keep the thing working I have rebuilt the rear wheel, lacing new spokes around a new hub and cassette and truing the thing – so I wanted to give it a try. I rode my bike to the train station for the ride downtown and, as always, right after I bought my ticket for the DART train at the Arapaho station, the train pulled in. You have to cross a street through a tunnel to get to the platform, so I usually miss my train and am therefore late for whatever I have planned. This time I hauled ass down the tunnel and caught it right as it was pulling out. The transit gods smiled on me that day.
There was a good bunch of bicyclists and we headed out from the Dallas Contemporary down to Commerce and across the river to the Belmont – following the bus route I remembered from thirty years ago. Along the side of the cliff up to the hotel three murals were painted. The first by Shepard Fairey (he’s best known for the Obama poster), the second by JM Rizzi, known as JMR, and the third by local artists Sour Grapes.
Bike tour group in front of the Belmont Hotel murals. (click to enlarge)
Shepard Fairey mural at the Belmont Hotel, Dallas, Texas.
Sour Grapes mural at the Belmont Hotel, Dallas, Texas.
Closeup of the Sour Grapes mural at the Belmont Hotel, Dallas, Texas. (click to enlarge)
One really cool part of the ride was that each stop had a talk by a docent – Erin Cluley from Dallas Contemporary who talked about the process of setting up the murals and getting the artists into town and working. I was particularly interested in how the out-of-town artists adapted their work to the more conservative attitudes here and what they thought of the city in general.
Erin Cluley, the docent giving a talk on the murals in front of the Belmont Hotel
From the Belmont, we went down the street and around the corner to Trinity Groves – a very interesting area of restaurant incubation. There were more murals by Shepard Fairey and JMR, plus some work by FAILE – a pair of Brooklyn based artists that had an amazing exhibition back at the Contemporary.
The murals from Trinity Groves.
Shepard Fairey mural at Trinity Groves.
FAILE mural at Trinity Groves.
FAILE uses the year 1986 in their work – the year of the Challenger Disaster.
Murals by FAILE and Shepard Fairey, Trinity Groves, Dallas, Texas.
Bike tour stopping to look at a mural by JMR. The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and Downtown Dallas in the background.
It was time to ride back to the Contemporary, where there are murals by Fairey and JMR.
Back at the Dallas Contemporary. (click to enlarge)
Shepard Fairey mural at the Dallas Contemporary.
JMR mural at the Dallas Contemporary.
The ride was a lot of fun and very educational – now I’m going to be looking for murals all over the city.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Nice quote – but let’s face it, Carl Sagan is a…. well, let someone else explain it.
“I have spent my whole life scared, frightened of things that could happen, might happen, might not happen, 50-years I spent like that. Finding myself awake at three in the morning. But you know what? Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just fine. What I came to realize is that fear, that’s the worst of it. That’s the real enemy. So, get up, get out in the real world and you kick that bastard as hard you can right in the teeth.”
– Walter White
“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)
“I know the law-abiding people don’t hate us, but just dealing with the criminal element, we get a lot of hate,” she said. “If I could plant one little seed in someone’s head that the police are the good guys, I would consider myself to be successful in this deal.”
—from the Dallas Morning News
From the Pillar:
This mural was painted by DPD officer Cat Lafitte 8642 as a reminder to citizens and officers alike that we are a community.
Supplies provided by the Dallas Fraternal Order of Police, the Dallas Derby Devils, and all the awesome folks who donated their hard earned money
Pillar in the Dallas Art Park painted by Cat Laffite
The side of the pillar – Justice Shall Be Served
The pillar contains some words of wisdom –
What I’ve Learned in 32 Years:
Thank a cop, a nurse, a teacher, a soldier, a firefighter – for working so hard for the benefit of everyone and never getting paid enough.
Hug your mama cuz I guarantee you were a turd when you were 2
Be yourself cuz those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter
If you’re unhappy with something, change it, if you can’t change it, accept it
Use your freakin turn signal, people!
Hate corrodes the vessel that carries it
If someone hurts you, do what you (legally) can to punish them then secretly thank them for making you a stronger person
A Dallas police officer who is under investigation after getting into a fight with a Plano hospital worker bragged about the incident on her Facebook page.
“I threw my boot at him, Jerry Springer style, and nailed him in the face,” Senior Cpl. Cat Lafitte wrote this week, several days after police were called to the hospital Feb. 9. “It broke his glasses and cut his face and bruised it up real good!”
—-from The Dallas Morning News
Painting at the entrance to the Urban Gardens, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Up with the sun, gone with the wind
She always said I was lazy
Leavin’ my home, leavin’ my friends
Runnin’ when things get too crazy
Out to the road, out ‘neath the stars
Feelin’ the breeze, passin’ the cars
Women have come, women have gone
Everyone tryin’ to cage me
Oh, some were so sweet, I barely got free
Others they only enrage me
Sometimes at night, I see their faces
I feel the traces they’ve left on my soul
Those are the memories that make me a wealthy soul
Sometimes at night, I see their faces
I feel the traces they’ve left on my soul
But those are the memories that make me a wealthy soul
I tell you those are the memories that make me a wealthy soul
Travelin’ man, yea
—-Bob Segar, Travelin’ Man
Click on any of the photographs for larger versions on Flickr.
I’ll always remember when I went down there and took these. In particular I remember walking backward looking through the viewfinder, tilted up at the tall sculpture looming overhead. Do you see that little green step by the sculpture’s feet?
Well there she sits buddy just a-gleaming in the sun
There to greet a working man when his day is done
I’m gonna pack my pa and I’m gonna pack my aunt
I’m gonna take them down to the Cadillac Ranch
Eldorado fins, whitewalls and skirts
Rides just like a little bit of heaven here on earth
Well buddy when I die throw my body in the back
And drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac
—Bruce Springsteen, Cadillac Ranch
Cadillac Ranch, is west of Amarillo, Texas. I’ve stopped there a few times, mostly on the way back home from Santa Fe. It is an odd place – a modern American Icon of the New West.
Bill Chance 