Majestic Parking

“‘He thinks you need a lobotomy. He told me you’re obsessed by car parks.’”
—-J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes

parking

“An immense peace seemed to preside over the shabby concrete and untended grass. The glass curtain-walling of the terminal buildings and the multi-storey car-parks behind them belonged to an enchanted domain.”
—-J.G. Ballard, Crash

“At the time he had found himself wishing that Catherine were with him — she would have liked the ziggurat hotels and apartment houses, and the vast, empty parking lots laid down by the planners years before any tourist would arrive to park their cars, like a city abandoned In advance of itself.”
—-J.G. Ballard, Concrete Island

“Wilder pressed on. “I know Charlotte has reservations about life here — the trouble with these places is that they’re not designed for children. The only open space turns out to be someone else’s car-park.”
—-J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“The town centre consisted of little more than a supermarket and shopping mall, a multi-storey car-park and filling station. Shepperton, known to me only for its film studios, seemed to be the everywhere of suburbia, the paradigm of nowhere.”
—-J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company

“The street lamps shone down on the empty car parks, yet there were no cars or people about, no one was playing the countless slot-machines in the stores and arcades.”
—-J.G. Ballard, Hello America

“Two vehicles occupied opposite corners of the car-park, breaking that companionable rule by which drivers arriving at an empty car-park place themselves alongside each other.”
—-J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“Acres of car parks stretched around me, areas for airline crews, security personnel, business travellers, an almost planetary expanse of waiting vehicles. They sat patiently in the caged pens as their drivers circled the world. Days lost for ever would expire until they dismounted from the courtesy buses and reclaimed their cars.”
—-J.G. Ballard, Millennium People

“I had left the Jensen in the multi-storey car park that dominated the town, a massive concrete edifice of ten canted floors more mysterious in its way than the Minotaur’s labyrinth at Knossos — where, a little perversely, my wife suggested we should spend our honeymoon.”
—-J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come

“Thousands of inverted buildings hung from street level — car parks, underground cinemas, sub-basements and sub-sub-basements — which now provided tolerable shelter, sealed off from the ravaging wind by the collapsing structures above.”
—-J.G. Ballard, The Wind from Nowhere

“Already, without touching her, he knew intimately the repertory of her body, its anthology of junctions. His eyes turned to the multi-storey car park beside the apartment blocks above the beach. Its inclined floors contained an operating formula for their passage through consciousness.”
—-J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

Sweeping the Cycletrack

There are a lot of cycling events in Dallas, this time of year… even though the weather is extremely iffy. It can be freezing, wet, windy, or even hot – but at least it won’t be toxic, like the days of summer.

There were three things bicycle-wise I wanted to do on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I didn’t commit to them (in this day and age, lack of commitment is a “maybe” on a facebook event) because my son Lee was in for the holidays from New Orleans (my other son was in New York with some friends) and I wanted to be free to spend some time with him.

What was I thinking? He has better things to do than to hang out with me.

The first event was an eleven o’clock sweeping at the cycletrack that runs over the Jefferson Street Viaduct.

In its never ending quest to climb out of the basement of the worst city for cycling in the US – one thing that Dallas did was establish a two-way cycle track across the Trinity River on the Jefferson Street bridge. I think it is semi-temporary and the route will move to the Houston Street bridge once the trolley route has been constructed there – but that will be years into the future.

The route is a lot of fun – one of my favorite rides in the city. When you think of cycling infrastructure that is used for transportation rather than recreation you begin to think in terms of “choke points” – place where you can’t cross easily or safely on a bicycle. Classic choke points are highways, rail lines, and rivers. A huge one in Dallas is the Trinity River and its river bottoms – it divides the metroplex in half and makes it impossible to commute the short distance downtown from Oak Cliff. Routes are opening up – such as the Santa Fe Trestle crossing, but they suffer from lack of connections on each end.

The Jefferson Viaduct Cycletrack was a godsend. It runs right from the heart of Oak Cliff into the center of downtown and is a great commuting route with a killer view from the top of the bridge.

View from the high point of the Jefferson Viaduct Cycletrack, Trinity River, Dallas, Texas

View from the high point of the Jefferson Viaduct Cycletrack, Trinity River, Dallas, Texas

Bicycle Lanes on the Jefferson Viaduct from Oak Cliff into downtown, Dallas.

Bicycle Lanes on the Jefferson Viaduct from Oak Cliff into downtown, Dallas.

The problem was that the city didn’t do a very good job of cleaning the track and it has been collecting a lot of junk, rocks, and dirt… and especially that bane of delicate bicycle tires, broken glass.

So on Saturday, local bicyclists banded together and a group was organized to sweep the entire mile and a half length. I wanted to go but didn’t realize until the last minute that I was able to work it into my schedule. I loaded up my car, dug out an old push broom from the garage and drove out. I have been trying to reduce the amount of driving I do (and have been more successful than I imagined) but today the timing was too tight so I cheated and drove. I parked in the old semi-abandoned parking garage (the place where I took the photos of Reunion Arena with fireworks after the Omni Hotel light show), walked out, and started sweeping.

Working in several crews spread out we swept the whole length in a little over an hour and a half. It was surprisingly fun, though my back reminded me of it the next day.

Sweeping on the Jefferson Street Cycletrack, Dallas, Texas

Sweeping on the Jefferson Street Cycletrack, Dallas, Texas

Sweeping on the Jefferson Street Cycletrack, Dallas, Texas

Sweeping on the Jefferson Street Cycletrack, Dallas, Texas

Sweeping in the other direction, towards Oak Cliff

Sweeping in the other direction, towards Oak Cliff

Goddess of the Golden Thighs

Reuben Nakian, Goddess of the Golden Thighs, 1964-65/Cast 1969-74, Bronze
Irving Arts Center, Irving, Texas

Goddess of the Golden Thighs, Reuben Nakian (click to enlarge)

Goddess of the Golden Thighs, Reuben Nakian
(click to enlarge)

I don’t care anymore what anyone thinks. It doesn’t matter, you know, what I do or what I say. I just try to keep busy. Even my art’s, you know. . . . I do things just to keep busy. I don’t give a goddamn if. . . . I don’t even care to go to the Metropolitan Museum, and that was like a sacred place for me, and that meant, you know, I don’t even care to go there. So, Jesus, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m bored and blasé, you know. But I think my eyes. . . . I can’t see too good. Then I’ve been tired, I have a cold in my system. And it stays all summer and I’ve been tired as hell. Well, I’m feeling a little better now; maybe the cold’s worn off. I’ve got a little more pep. But when you’re saggy and tired and your eyes are not too sharp, you know, I get depressed.
—-Oral history interview with Reuben Nakian, 1981 June 9-17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Selling Cotton Candy

Dallas City Hall during the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot

Dallas (click to enlarge)

Dallas
(click to enlarge)

Blanco #17

Mac Whitney, Ovilla, Blanco #17, 1985 steel, paint

Mac Whitney, Blanco #17 (click to enlarge)

Mac Whitney, Blanco #17
(click to enlarge)

Mac Whitney, Blanco #17 (click to enlarge)

Mac Whitney, Blanco #17
(click to enlarge)

Mac Whitney, Blanco #17 (click to enlarge)

Mac Whitney, Blanco #17
(click to enlarge)

SCABhenge

Closeup of the crazing in the ice sculpture at the Dallas Contemporary

Closeup of the crazing in the ice sculpture at the Dallas Contemporary

The ice sculpture at the Dallas Contemporary

The ice sculpture at the Dallas Contemporary

The last moments of the ice sculpture at the Dallas Contemporary

The last moments of the ice sculpture at the Dallas Contemporary

I have always been fascinated by ice as a sculptural medium. It is cheap, versatile, and, most importantly, temporary. It is fixed in time. What you see now is totally unique, it will never be repeated.

The coolest ice sculptures were Dane Pennington’s Transcendence – from the Arts District a couple years ago. Larger than life figures and monoliths slowly melted – releasing stones that were imprisoned within. I kept going downtown day after day to watch them melt.

Transcendence, on the first night.

Transcendence, on the first night.

Transcendence, on the first night.

Transcendence, on the first night.

After a day of melting in the rain

After a day of melting in the rain

A few weeks ago, I went on (and wrote about) a fun bike ride organized by Dallas Cycle Style. It started at, and was part of, The Dallas Contemporary 35th anniversary celebration. Out in front of the Contemporary was an ice sculpture called SCABhenge, built by the Socialized Contemporary Artists Bureau.

It had been out all night and the ice had crazed and was falling apart. I was there for its final demise, melting in the Texas afternoon.

If you watch this time lapse video closely, you can see a few bicycles from our group go by.

That Can’t be Safe

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life & writings of Benjamin Franklin

safe

Views from the Perot

There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.
—-Ross Perot

Taken from the Perot Museum, Dallas, Texas

Looking back towards Klyde Warren park - and the Eye of Sauron.

Looking back towards Klyde Warren park – and the Eye of Sauron.

Entrance Plaza for the Perot Museum

Entrance Plaza for the Perot Museum

Downtown Dallas

Downtown Dallas