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How to keep Baylor students out of downtown
First, a self-serving prologue.
It’s been a long while between posts, and I blame sunscreen. Or the lack of it.
I went canoeing and kayaking Saturday on the Brazos River near Glen Rose and slathered the stuff on, but I missed my right foot.
In the next five hours of paddling, splashing and lying on sparkling white sandbars, my foot broiled like a Lobster Thermidor.
Suffice it to say that by Monday I was wincing and limping like an old man. So my pedestrian adventures downtown have been on hold until tonight, when I snagged my camera and headed down Fourth Street toward Baylor.
Now, a couple of commenters on this blog have voiced fears that the way things are going, Baylor students might begin coming downtown. I know it seems farfetched. But think: What if these young scions of privilege (all are assumed to be fabulously wealthy) begin spending their big-city dollars downtown instead of driving back to their big cities on the weekends? What if they even decide to live downtown, outside the current Baylor bubble? They might corrupt us townies, you know, and force us to bleach our hair blonde and end every sentence with, like, a question mark?
Fortunately, we have some defenses against these invaders and their disposable income. The first is called Interstate 35. It’s kind of a Berlin Wall between campus and downtown, ensuring that any of the 15,000 or so Baylor folks who might consider hiking or biking a few blocks north of campus will think better of it.
In fact, the entire Fourth and Fifth Street Corridor that links downtown and Baylor appears designed to deter pedestrians with minimal lighting, unfriendly sidewalks and bleak absence of landscaping.
I discovered this the other night when I decided on a lark to walk from my house to a pub west of campus called the Dancing Bear, where some grad student friends were hanging out. I headed south on Fourth Street, past the brightly lit Heritage Square and Roosevelt office towers. I noticed that between Mary Avenue and the Clarion Inn near Interstate 35 — nearly half a mile — there were only three or four streetlights in working order.
Here’s a picture from Thursday night:
I worked my way to Fifth Street, and it was the same story: I had discovered downtown’s black hole.
The scenery, as far as I could see it, was mostly concrete, parking lots and chain link fences.
Then I came across The Bridge. The sidewalk played out here just before the frontage road.
The bridge had a few dim lights but was uninviting and intimidating. There are no sidewalks or crosswalks. You have to cross heavy traffic three times, and the only way to do that is to scamper. In short, you get the message that pedestrians are not welcome.
I’m not alone in saying this. When I arrived at the Dancing Bear, one of my grad student neighbors from Terrace Gardens said he has had the same experience walking to campus.
There’s very little commercial development remaining within walking distance of Baylor these days, and the university plans to clear most of what’s left, such as Ivy Square and IHOP.
And yet for some reason, the half-mile between Baylor and downtown proper seems strangely undeveloped, unlit and uninviting. Half a mile, or six blocks, is considered walking distance, right?
But surely no Baylor student could ever be persuaded to leave his car behind and walk or bike to get a bite to eat. Impossible, right?
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Glamour! Danger! Goose droppings! Twilight Scenes from the Brazos Riverwalk
I never thought it would happen to me.
But here I am, beginning a story with the words “I never thought it would happen to me.
Heaven knows I had been warned — even by some of you, gentle readers — of the perils of walking downtown at night. But I’m a big boy, six-foot-two, and my East Texas mama didn’t raise a quivering coward, right?
On a recent evening I stepped out from my hilltop apartment to get a little exercise before a spring stormfront arrived. The sky was clear and the moon was full.
I heard some music from the direction of the Suspension Bridge, so I headed that way.
I passed the bell tower of St. Francis church, passed the school district fields where Spanish and soccer balls flew.
At Indian Spring Park, families were strolling and picnicking and lining up to take pictures of the new sculpture installation: A giant metal catfish on a rusty 1950s pickup truck.
The Suspension Bridge was lighted up and there was a dance going on.
I jogged down some stairs to the Riverwalk and there I was, surrounded by ducks and geese and a river that reflected bridges, a full moon and sunset. It looked a bit like this:
As I strolled toward the I-35 bridge amid cypress trees and flowing springs, a few questions came to mind:
- Why is this scene so seldom seen? I doubt 2 percent of Greater Waco residents have seen this splendid view of their town in person.
- Why has there been so little development that takes advantage of these river views? The old Buzzard Billy’s and adjacent buildings turn their windowless rears to the Brazos. Talk about Moon River.
(OK, OK, the river used to be an open sewer before it was Lake Brazos. And yes, Rick Sheldon has huge plans for that site, but what took so long?) - Can’t we think of a better name for this than a “Riverwalk? I believe that name has been taken.
- Who turned the lights out? The lack of lighting seemed to answer the first question.
- Is it really safe down here at dusk?
On the way back, I saw other pedestrians silhouetted against the far-off streetlights. They were couples, holding hands. I didn’t feel menaced by them. I saw a woman walk across the old MKT Railroad Bridge above me, toward the hobo camp on the east side. She didn’t bother me.
What I didn’t count on were the geese.
I grew up on a farm, and let me tell you: Geese are gangstas.
A duck might waddle up and look at you adorably until you unhand your sandwich crust. A goose will snatch it out of your hand and doesn’t care if it draws blood.
Now here are two gray Toulouse geese striding toward me, hissing and honking, extending their long necks like bayonets. The sidewalk is narrow here: If the geese don’t grant me passage, I will have to climb up the steep riverbank or swim. I draw myself up to my full height, wave my arms and holler. The geese don’t budge.
I am being mugged by geese. I laugh, but my mind races. Could a goose really kick my butt? Would I finally get my comeuppance from poultry? I have my cellphone, but what would I tell 9-1-1?
“Look, ma’am, I grew up on a farm, and let me tell you, geese may look harmless, but… Hello?
So I do the manly, valiant thing: climb the retaining wall and run away, the angry honks and hisses trailing off behind me. I hightail it back home just before the storm breaks.
I haven’t learned my lesson. An unrepentant pedestrian, I’m still walking along both sides of the river at dusk. I still recommend the view, but go at your own risk and with this advice: Carry a cellphone, ditch your wallet, and fill your pockets with cracked corn.
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The downtown of tomorrow: Your ideas
Talk about a lazy fisherman. My last entry asking for ideas for downtown was like a trotline that kept on bringing in a catch day after day on the same bait. I was having so much fun I just decided to leave it for a while.
So what do my blog readers want for downtown?
To begin with it seems they want a lot of small businesses: art galleries, specialty shops, bike shops, a pharmacy, a bookstore-cafe, a bakery, a yoga studio, a video store, a gas station/convenience store, a dry cleaners. Oh, don’t forget the manly bourbon-and-a-shave place.
On the more ambitious side, several mention an upscale grocery store, like Central Market.
Some mention businesses that are already said to be in the works, such as a gym and a movie theater that serves beer and food.
Readers want recreational shopping in the form of a farmers market and an arts-and-crafts market.
They want a variety of distinctive restaurants. Some mentioned seafood, Italian, French, Southeast Asian, Mediterranean, Indian, barbecue and new-style Mexican.
They want public investment, too: More parks (including a dog park) are mentioned, along with a marina and improvements to the urban section of the Riverwalk. Several mention museums and recreational developments such as an IMAX or amusement park.
Others stress the need for more parking — a major point of debate in cities today. We also got some calls for light rail or a fixed-line trolley.
One reader wanted pavers on Austin Avenue (Say, aren’t there bricks under the pavement already, along with old trolley tracks?).
Some of these items would require a huge investment, but it strikes me that the majority are not “big fix” ideas. For example, no one suggested copying Memphis, which built a sports stadium near Beale Street. The consensus here seemed to be that small-scale improvements are the stairway to urban vitality.
And most of the ideas are doable, a downtown developer who reads this blog told me. He said that even a trolley system isn’t out of the realm of possibility, though it would require significant public support.
Another reader, a downtown restaurateur, told me he’d consider opening a convenience store to serve downtown, even if it wasn’t a big money maker.
Count me as a customer. As a downtown resident, I’d pay a little extra for the privilege of not having to drive four miles to get a bottle of cough syrup. Failing that, a shot of bourbon and a shave might cure what ails me.
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Your turn: What does downtown need?
As you might have read in my Sunday article, the near future of downtown includes pubs, new eateries, condos, an art gallery and fancy offices.
Now I’d like to know what you readers think downtown needs.
What should its future identity be? A Central Business District with lots of gleaming skyscrapers and corporate headquarters? A leisure playground full of restaurants, nightspots and small shops? A tourist Mecca? Do we need a shopping mall? A sports stadium? A Wal-Mart? A giant hotel? Chain restaurants? Or something more small-scale and unique?
Of course, for the first century or so of Waco’s history, downtown was the center of everything. At the time of the Waco tornado 55 years ago, it was home of most of the movie theaters, department stores, office buildings, hotels, clubs and restaurants in Waco, and even a fair amount of heavy industry.
You can’t blame the tornado for the end of downtown’s primacy, but a lot of businesses took the opportunity to skedaddle to the suburbs. Land was cheap out there, the new shopping centers offered oceans of parking and the shiny new buildings seemed preferable to those dank old Victorian brick buildings around the Square.
Nowadays, in almost any American city, the idea of going downtown to buy a wheelbarrow, a watch or a washing machine seems quaint. The downtowns that have thrived are those that have created a new identity with specialty retail (Pike Place Market in Seattle, for example) interesting restaurants, museums, lots of welcoming public spaces and dense housing aimed at young professionals.
In short, it’s got to be a place people want to hang out. Examples: Austin, Texas; Asheville, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; Ithaca, NY; and bigger cities like Montreal, Chicago, New York and San Francisco.
As one who lives and works downtown, I find my wish list involves small things that add up to a nice quality of life:
- A pharmacy that offers general merchandise such as toilet paper, milk and extension cords.
- A mailing center with UPS/FedEx, combined with Kinko’s or the like.
- Small parks, plazas and courtyards
- A farmer’s market
- A local history museum
- Lots of varied music venues, offering live music every night.
- A row of small art galleries
- A small grocery with both staples and specialty items (like Trader Joe’s on the West Coast.)
- Ethnic restaurants, such as Indian and Mediterranean.
- A really good barbecue joint.
- Specialty retail such as bookstores, music stores, toy stores and bike shops.
I could go on, but it’s your turn. What do you want downtown?
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Downtown 2008: A time-lapse odyssey
A couple of my colleagues and I have become intrigued by time lapse photography lately. We had the idea of taking a daily picture of the downtown redevelopment area and assembling it into a video for our website.
Well.
It was a brilliant idea, but it turns out someone has beat us to the punch.
This link shows photos taken of the chamber of commerce site starting in April 2007, following the new building’s progress from first dirt work last summer until now. A camera atop City Hall takes pictures every 15 minutes or so. The angle is wide enough to take in some other parts of downtown.
The photos are cool enough. But click in the top center icon and you can see a time lapse video that compresses a year into a couple of minutes. Earth movers scurry around frantically. Then comes the foundation. Suddenly the steel beams appear like an erector set deftly assembled by an invisible child. Then, sheathing, bricks and a gold dome.
If you look closely - very closely - you can see the Waving Man in the background.
We haven’t given up on doing our own time lapse adventures, and we’re open to suggestions. As I write, one of our multimedia guys has a video camera trained in my direction as part of an Orwelllian experiment. He’s going to speed it up and show the Thursday afternoon of a Waco Tribune-Herald reporter in fast forward. All that excitement, crammed into such a small time: Will it overload the circuits?
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Enough with the mudslinging
I am reminded again that online anonymity tends to make some people stupid, mean and reckless.
I’m talking about last week’s blog wars over a local developer.
It seems somebody in another town was mad at him and was in a legal dispute over a business deal. I don’t know all the details. There was never an accusation made, just a lot of innuendo and indiscriminate mudthrowing.
Others — attacking out of the shadows of anonymity — jumped in to crow about the “downtown scandal” and to rail about “profiteering” (a word they apparently failed to look up in the dictionary).
The posts, which were mostly on a colleague’s blog, have been taken down because they violated our user agreement, which forbids:
- Uploading, posting, emailing, transmitting or otherwise making available any content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, libelous, or obscene;
- Uploading or posting any off-topic or irrelevant material to any chat room or forum.
But you shouldn’t need to read the agreement or know libel law to figure out that it’s wrong to sucker-punch people in a community forum.
Let’s go back to first grade Sunday School and remember the Golden Rule. What if it was you who was being attacked? What if it was me? What if an anonymous poster wrote “Trib reporter J.B. Smith routinely fabricates news stories and is on the take from City Hall. Trust me on this. I know people who know this firsthand. Also, he can’t dance.”
Disregarding the last part (which may be fair comment), it’s false. Sources I have covered in this town for a decade know it’s false. But what if a prospective employer Googles me and sees it? Easy. My reputation is damaged.
In the newspaper world, we sometimes damage people’s reputations in the course of ferreting out the truth. I don’t relish it, but it’s the nature of the business.
But several things will happen before I publish damaging information. I make sure the accusation is based on verifiable sources. I call the person and allow him or her to comment. I try to present those comments fairly. I sign my name to the story and put my e-mail address and phone number at the bottom.
This takes time, caution and the ability to suspend judgment.
An invitation: If you believe someone in the public eye or in a position of trust is doing something corrupt or unethical, call me at 254-757-5752. Have a specific accusation, and back it up with evidence, not innuendo. Put up or shut up. If there are legitimate questions about a public figure, we’ll check it out.
In the meantime, for the good-hearted majority of online newspaper readers out there, I suggest that silent disregard is the best response to those who don’t play well with others.
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PID tidbits
I dropped by for the meeting of the Public Improvement District board today, and the ideas were flying.
This is the city advisory board that oversees downtown projects and services that are funded by a special tax on downtown and Elm Street properties. It’s also become kind of a sounding board for downtown interests since the demise of Downtown Waco Inc. Twenty-four members showed up today.
One was David Wallace, the Sugar Land mayor and Heritage Square developer, who drove up just for the occasion. He told me afterwards that the student housing component of the development, next to the Marriott, is about to break ground, and the designs have been filed at City Hall. I’ll see about getting those tomorrow.
A few quick notes from the meeting itself:
- Architect Sterling Thompson said he’s working with Douglas Brown (a PID member) on redeveloping the Bridge Street area, near the east end of the Suspension Bridge. Brown has been steadily acquiring vacant properties in the Elm Street area for years, but he’s keeping his plans close to his chest.
- Michael Wray, the Austin Avenue Flats developer and Downtown Merchants Association chair, reported that he met with top Baylor officials about improving connections between downtown and Baylor, including better sidewalks. He also plugged the Third Thursday program, which is starting May 15 with a sundown showing of Shrek on a huge inflatable screen at Heritage Square.
- A Baylor researcher shared some early results from an ongoing PID project on how to market and promote downtown. The first focus group involved seven non-native Baylor students, who were asked about their opinions and perceptions of downtown.
It seems they tended to view downtown as RiverSquare Center, and tended to think there’s not enough to do downtown.
None of them had heard of Brazos Nights (see my last posting). They wanted to see a drugstore and more nice retail and restaurants — and they preferred locally owned businesses to chains.
They’d also heard from friends and professors that downtown was dangerous, though none had ever had a negative experience when they ventured downtown. - As if in reply to those fears, Waco Assistant Police Chief Robert Lanning gave an in-depth report about crime in the downtown public improvement district. I’m planning a story about this so I’ll spare you the details, but the pattern is that crimes against persons has been decreasing in the area over the last few years, while property crime has increased.
Overall, there were 943 incidents in the PID last year, about the same as 2003, and the district is much bigger now. Most of those incidents appear to be minor, including traffic stops. All in all, Lanning said, downtown is one of the safer areas in Waco. But some PID members suggested downtown will need more officers as it develops. - Teri Holtkamp, the city’s homeless services coordinator, gave an analysis of homelessness and how it affects downtown. She said a 2007 count found 431 homeless people in Waco, including 70 chronic homeless. That’s down from 2005, when there were 600 counted, including 95 chronic homeless.
She explained that the chronic homeless, who often have jail records, substance abuse problems and physical and psychological disabilities, take up about 50 percent of services available to the homeless.
She said homeless advocates are still working on creating permanent housing for the chronic homeless, possibly at the Veterans Administration complex. They’re working with Mercy Housing, the Catholic group that is building the senior residential community at the old Providence Hospital site in North Waco.
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Stop this man before he dances again
Two items today: News and a confession.
News
May 15 marks the debut of a monthly Big Night on the Town. The Downtown Merchants Association is planning to program special events downtown on the third Thursday of each month. The first one will be an outdoor movie, shown on an inflatable screen in the Heritage Plaza area.
The group also envisions live music and art displays on Third Thursdays. The members are encouraging shops and restaurants to stay open later and offer special deals.
The project is the brainchild of Chris McGowan, the urban planner for the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, and Austin Avenue Flats developer Michael Wray.
“This thing is going to start small, but as it develops it could grow into a really wonderful institution,” Chris told me.
I also hear from well-placed, highly reliable sources that the Hippodrome is going to start showing movies this summer. Stay tuned.
Confession
Friday night, defying previous advice and common sense, I succumbed to the temptation of dancing in public.
You can hardly blame me. It was a cloudless spring night with just a whiff of cool breeze. University-Parks was closed off for the evening, and on the stage were two eminently danceable bands.
Grupo Fantasma and Brave Combo were there to kick off Brazos Nights, the free summer concert series at Indian Springs Park. (Here’s the lineup for the rest of the season)
My friends and I spread out blankets and supped on pasta salad and red wine while we listened to the 12-piece Grupo Fantasma’s smoking set of salsa, cumbia and a hint of James Brown-style funk.
As the music played, a group of small boys competed for our attention. They lined up on the giant metal longhorn skull near our picnic site and took turns scooting up to the tip of the horn. Some would do a little dance when they got to the top, then swing down and dangle from the horn, wriggling like a fish on a hook before dropping into the dark below.
Then it was our turn to move to the groove. We approached the asphalt dance floor and began bopping to the Latin beat. A couple of my friends were from Mexico, and they taught me the steps to the cumbia.
Later, when Brave Combo took the stage, I reciprocated and did my best to explain the polka. “You basically just skip around and spin,” I said.
Now a couple of dancing flashbacks. It started at sixth-grade church camp in Athens, Texas, to the sounds of Air Supply, Michael Jackson and Chicago, at the precise moment that I began to appreciate girls. By my eighth-grade prom, I had honed my athletic dance style to the point that my date observed that I appeared to be “dancing on a hot plate.”
Fast-forward to college: I took a social dance as a physical fitness requirement and a valiant effort to meet girls. I succeeded in learning how to do the cha-cha, tango, polka, two-step, jitterbug, foxtrot, etc — after a fashion.
I may be mediocre at these classic dance styles, but cut me loose from them, and I’m in trouble. At wedding receptions and such I see attractive young people bop around to the beat, and it looks easy enough. But a tall, bespectacled white guy tries to copy what they’re doing, and he becomes a comedy act.
This isn’t just me saying this. At a Brazos Nights a couple of years ago, I bravely got up and boogied with a female friend while W.C. Clark moaned the blues. A friend who I’ll call Big Mike (his real name) remained seated the entire evening and remarked afterward that for a musician I had the worst sense of rhythm he’d ever seen.
But this Friday night it didn’t matter. After the musical mad scientists of Brave Combo took the stage, all sense of dignity was drowned out by polkas, cha-chas, spy-movie rock ‘n’ roll and yes, a hip-hop version of the Hokey Pokey. And was there a chicken dance? Yes, I seem to recall there was.
It was spring. It was Friday night. The lead singer was wearing a King Tut headdress. Children were dancing with their moms and dads. My friends’ 10-year-old girl was weaving in and out of our circle, wearing her glow-in-the-dark necklace.
For that evening Waco was a small, friendly town where people weren’t afraid of their neighbors.
So my answer to Big Mike and the other critics over at the punch bowl: I’ve gotta dance. Come join us sometime.
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Ode to the Shotgun House
Here’s another argument for walking: It improves your eyesight. Who knows how many times I have driven past these three shotgun homes on North Sixth Street near Waco Drive before I finally noticed them while walking home from work.
What’s a shotgun house, and why would I bother to take a picture of one?
Glad you asked.
Shotgun houses are long, skinny houses built one room in front of another, with the narrow side facing the street. It was said a shotgun blast fired through the front door would exit the back door. In the 19th and early 20th century, they were popular throughout the South.
Waco used to be packed with them, I’m told. They were concentrated in the poor or working-class areas, especially black neighborhoods. I’ve seen old pictures of them in the area between Baylor and the Brazos River before that area was bulldozed by federal and city Urban Renewal in the late 1960s.
Today they’re an endangered species, here and elsewhere. Some have received historic designation as examples of a once-common vernacular style of Southern architecture.
The cluster of North Sixth Street shotgun houses has shrunk from seven to three over the last 20 years, judging by a city historic building inventory.
The topic of the downtown shotgun houses came up today as I was chatting at a local coffeehouse with Dr. Kenneth Hafertepe, museum studies diretor at Baylor.
“The rarity of shotgun houses jacks up their historic significance,” said Hafertepe, whose research specialty is historic preservation.
One restoration project is in Georgetown, Texas, where I was a rookie reporter in the 1990s. I remember writing stories about this little dilapidated shotgun shack next to the public library and wondered if the next stiff wind would knock it down.
From the looks of the website, the house is now carefully restored and serves as a little museum of black history, with art exhibits and period furnishings.
The history of shotgun houses is fascinating, though it necessarily involves some speculation.
Historians such as John Vlach of the University of Texas have traced it back ultimately to the Yoruba people of West Africa. The story as I understand goes like this: Slaves brought their traditional linear building style with them to the Caribbean, particularly Haiti, where the basic form can still be found.
The Haitian Revolution in the late 18th century caused panicked slaveholders and their slaves to relocate to New Orleans. The economical building technique took root in Louisiana and spread throughout the Deep South and ultimately to Texas.
Dr. Hafertepe from Baylor said shotgun houses are still associated in most people’s minds with African-Americans, but in fact they were widely used by working people of all backgrounds. He said the downtown Waco shotgun houses apparently were occupied by white people, according to old city directories.
“What it comes down to is that whether they were black or white, for poorer people this was a way of organizing space,” he said.
So what kind of home do these houses actually make? To begin with, forget about privacy. There are no hallways, and to get from one end to the other you have to go through someone’s room.
On the other hand, they make good space of a narrow lot, and they offer light on both sides of every room.
They make a pretty good bachelor pad. My old editor in Georgetown lived alone in a restored shotgun house that the landlady had discovered in Austin and hauled to Georgetown.
My boss loved it. One year it was on the Georgetown parade of homes at Christmas. In his typical flamboyant style, he persuaded a harpist and a guitarist (me) to play inside during the tours. It was a favorite stop that year.
But shotgun houses are best appreciated in context. Here are some shots I took during the 1999 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, in a neighborhood near the racetrack. Note the close spacing between houses and the gingerbread trim.
That’s me in the last frame, in a little trimmer shape nine years ago. I wonder what shape these houses are in, nine years and one devastating hurricane later?
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AWOL no more
I returned from a weeklong vacation today to find 135 e-mails, including one from my landlord complaining that he was tired of looking at my last blog entry. My apologies. I was traveling around with Our Lady Downtown, who is my once and future next-door neighbor but currently residing and teaching in the frozen North.
We visited my folks in East Texas and then swung over to Caddo Lake, where we camped under the stars and canoed through moss-draped cypress sloughs, spying on herons, ducks and woodpeckers. I confess I was not thinking of my day job or my blog.
I apologize. Sort of.
But now I’m back, and in the hunt for interesting tidbits of downtown stories, the kind that don’t always fit in the paper. A preview: Shotgun houses, urban hawks, homegrown restaurants, a historic church building that was torn down, an old feed store that did not get torn down because of an old man’s feistiness. I’m always looking for interesting stories, so drop me a line.
Finally, a coda to my last posting on public art, since Scott asked me for my own opinion. I’ll confess that I generally don’t find monumental art interesting (though I’ll make an exception for, say, the Lincoln Memorial). Traveling in Europe and Central America I’ve seen too many bronzed generals sitting on their bronzed steeds, their names forgotten, their heads covered with pigeon poop. For a closer example of monument clutter, see the Texas Capitol grounds.
I prefer art that invites imagination instead of demanding our tribute. I like the temporary sculpture along the river. It’s a delight to stumble upon a huge longhorn skull made out of junk, or a giant birdlike thing made out of something that looks like driftwood. It helps that these things are temporary and don’t presume to be icons of our community.
Thanks to everyone for your comments and stay tuned.
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Must public art be boring?
Public art has been on Waco’s brain lately. Stroll by the river downtown and you’ll see a rotating collection of eye-catching modern sculptures, courtesy of the Waco Cultural Arts Fest and businessman Clifton Robinson. Robinson’s cow-and-cowboy series, called Branding the Brazos, is under way, with the first bronze sculptures now ready to go in at the Texas Ranger Museum.
Then there was — or wasn’t — the giant Ranger. In the end, the sometimes uncivil debate that scuttled the 70-foot concrete Texas Ranger on the Brazos hinged on aesthetics, of what public art is supposed to do. It’s not a discussion most communities are used to having; we lack the language for it, beyond words like “ugly” or “too big.” The question will come up again, though. City leaders said no thanks to the giant Ranger but said they want more public art as downtown develops.
So I’m interested in hearing what people expect from public art. What should it convey? A sense of awe for authority? Civic bling? A decorative afterthought like the classic modernistic blob in an office park plaza? A community’s dignity, the solemn remembrance of things past? Perhaps beauty, if we can agree on what that means? What about fun? Can serious public art — the expensive creations that help define our public spaces — also function as a toy?
I thought about this on a trip to Fort Worth this weekend with my church’s youth group. First stop was the Botanical Gardens, where we contemplated koi in the Japanese garden and picnicked next to a blooming tulip tree. It was an intoxicating spring-like day, and before the picnic the teenage boys among us romped into a field with a soccer ball.
There was a piece of abstract metal art sticking up out of the field, with a hole in the middle. The boys wasted no time in making a contest of who could send the ball through the hole, like “The Ballgame” of ancient Mexico. There was much self-congratulation and merriment after one of them made the goal. I reminded them that in the Ballgame, the victor was sacrificed to the gods.
Later we swung by the Kimbell Art Museum and paid our respects to Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Rembrandt, Cezanne and Co. Then we went across Arch Adams Street to the Vortex, a Richard Serra sculpture that the Modern Museum of Art installed a few years ago.
Now, Serra is a heavyweight in the abstract art world, a High Modernist, whose metier is huge pieces of steel. In this case, it’s seven tall twisted, rusted pieces, coming together to form a septagonal hole 67 feet in the air.
Did he mean his sculpture to become entertainment? I don’t know, but there we were with a dozen other strangers lining the walls inside the sculpture, like gnomes in a hollow tree. With them we clapped, snapped, sang and collectively lost our right to be taken seriously. It turns out the work is a fantastic echo chamber. We drummed the heavy steel with the fleshy part of our fists, making the whole sculpture ring and roar like thunder. (For the record, it seemed sturdy enough to take such treatment and seemed to invite it).
Is this disrespectful to the work of art? I don’t think so. Why settle for merely seeing art from behind velvet ropes when you can also feel it and even hear it? Not to dismiss Monumental Art, but here’s a proposition: Public art that encourages adults to act like kids for a moment is successful public art.
Here are a few more examples of fun public art.
The first two are in San Francisco. The Aeolian Harp creates “music” by means of wind passing through large metal slats.
The nearby Wave Organ creates similar natural music with the action of waves on pipes.
Here’s a variation: The water organ, or hydraulophone, which allows people to play songs by pressing their fingers over water jets. Video included.
Thoughts on non-boring public art?
New downtown projects (maybe)
Thanks for the interesting info on Ozell. Now a bit of downtown development news.
I just took a look at the Tax Increment Financing District board agenda (so you wouldn’t have to). They’re the ones that recommend projects to be financed by a designated downtown/Brazos River Corridor fund.
The city staff is recommending:
1) $288,985 for fancy sidewalks, sewer line, fencing and lighting for the Staybridge Suites, planned in the 700 block of Clay Avenue. It’s an $8.2 million project with 88 rooms and a swimming pool planned. It’s an extended stay set-up, like the nearby Residence Inn.
2) $73,875 to assist Shane Turner of Hewitt in renovating the buildings at 705-707 Austin Avenue, creating three loft condos upstairs and 5,000 square feet of retail downstairs. It’s a half-million-dollar project. I’ll try to post some pics later. (It’s a couple of doors down from the TIF-assisted Austin’s on the Avenue wine-bar/office building, which is coming along nicely after some things fell through….)
3) $506,107 for the new Asian Forest exhibit at Cameron Park Zoo, a $3.25 million project.
4) $75,000 for a facade improvement program. The deal: Fix up your building facade to historically faithful standards, and the TIF will match you dollar for dollar. Typical grants would be $15,000, but bigger buildings could get up to $25,000.
The board meets at 11:30 a.m. in the Guadalupe Room at the Hilton, starting with a half-hour lunch for board members. It’s an open meeting, and I’ll give you a follow-up.
Hats off to the waving man
I hadn’t meant to write about Waving Willie today. But I saw him this afternoon on the sidewalk at Franklin and Seventh, and he was in fine form. He flailed his arms and flapped his hands like leaves in a storm. Then he ducked low, spun around on one foot and let out a whoop for the passing traffic.
I’ve never learned his real name, though we at the Trib have tried to find out in the past. He looked about the same a decade ago when he first startled me with his peculiar routine.
He appears to be well-fed and clothed, with his buttoned-up flannel shirt and wide-brimmed hat. He never asks me for money, just greets me with waves and whoops.
I assume he lives around here somewhere, maybe with kin, maybe at some group home or institution.
When I talk about the characters of downtown, he is one of best known. After a while, you learn to wave back and not to get flustered when he keeps waving.
Seeing him on a gray March afternoon, I thought about my previous post and the question of whether downtown was a blank slate.
I said it wasn’t, Scott from the Hippodrome said it was. I’m not sure we really disagree, if what he means is that the current generation has the choice to reshape this once-blighted area through imagination and hard work.
The problem with metaphors is that we tend to take them to their logical conclusion. Pioneers who saw the American frontier as a blank slate tended to see a few million Indians as stray marks that had to be erased.
When I walk around downtown at night I come across derelict people and derelict buildings — sights that scare off a lot of people. So what do you do with them if you’re trying to resuscitate downtown? Try to rehabilitate them? Remove them and pretend they never existed?
I don’t have a five-point plan on what to do about vagrants downtown. I guess my point is that they’re a product of our town’s history, a history that includes the abandonment of the inner city by respectable people, who were followed by less respectable people. You can’t snap your fingers and make them go away.
Places like Round Rock, Plano and Sugar Land get to start from scratch. Waco’s been around the block. And, I thought as I saw Waving Willie do his Bill Bojangles routine Monday afternoon, we’re more interesting for it.
A View from the Terrace
Welcome to Our Man Downtown, the blog about the past, present and future of Waco’s urban heart, from a guy who lives there. That guy is me, and here’s my downtown bachelor pad:
Oh, wait. Wrong picture. More like this:
Why do I live downtown? It’s hard to explain, but it has something to do with ghosts. Let me tell you about one named Mr. Scott, who lives in my apartment.
I’ve lived in the inner city since I came to Waco to take a job at the Tribune-Herald a decade ago. I looked around downtown, took in the pawnshops, panhandlers, pigeon squadrons and empty buildings in the faded November sunlight and thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to live around here?”
My current digs are located, soberingly, between the police station and St. Francis Catholic Church on North Fourth Street. It’s called Terrace Gardens, a name that sounds like a nursing home. Actually it’s a magnet for young bohemians and the kind of grad students who make homebrew and dress as postmodern philosophers at Halloween parties.
It’s an early 20th-century huddle of two-story houses and small bungalows built around a park-like courtyard. There’s nothing like it in Waco, or really anywhere that I know of. Let’s just say the apartments make up in charm what they lack in insulation. Wood floors, 12-foot ceilings, huge rattling windows with old glass that seems to be melting in slow motion. And the crowning touch: Screened-in sleeping porches, big enough to serve as second living rooms.
When the weather’s nice, I open the French doors onto the porch and then the big windows around back. The breeze blows through the hall, sweeping out the dust and stale air.
In the morning, light pours into my kitchen, and through the flowed glass I can see most of the Waco skyline — Pat Neff Hall, Cricket’s pub, First Baptist Church, the always prominent ALICO building — all scrunched together from my vantage point.
Then my reverie is broken by violent slam of the hallway door. The door creeps open again. Then slams.
This is no doubt the work of Mr. Scott, telling me to stop woolgathering and account for myself.
Now, I don’t strictly believe in ghosts, but I believe places like downtown Waco have a soul, a personality, a local spirit.
And the spirit of Milton Scott still haunts downtown, where he designed so many enduring landmarks, including First Baptist Church, Waco High School, Dr Pepper Museum, the Behrens building and, yes, Terrace Gardens, where he lived and tested out his ideas. I have Mr. Scott to thank for my apartment’s well-ventilated design, the porch, the transom windows and the intricate woodwork inside.
(You can read about him here).
He was a workaholic, a stickler for detail, a man who would hire a fellow to spy on the construction crew to see they weren’t cutting corners.
His discipline rebukes my lack of it, and I can almost believe the idealistic notion that architecture can make us better people.
I’ll tell you more about Terrace Gardens and Milton Scott in future postings, but I mention them here because they are part of the soul of downtown, which is what this blog is about.
Downtown is in the process of being rebuilt now, and I hope it will be filled with the vibrancy and bustle that it has been missing for the last few decades. In future entries — shorter ones, I promise — we’ll observe that evolution from the street level. But along with all the excitement of the new, I hope the redevelopers also respect the fact that downtown is no blank slate. It’s a real place with interesting architecture, interesting characters and 160 years of sometimes troublesome history: A soul. I’ll be watching from my terrace, along with Mr. Scott and all his kindred spirits.
A question for my soon-to-be-faithful readers….When you think of the soul of downtown, what people, places or stories come to mind?
Latest comments
I agree with you that 4th/5th is THE main artery not only from Baylor to downtown but from I-35 to downtown. Unfortunately the Baylor/TxDOT plan is to eliminate the 4th/5th Street Exit (as well as the 8th St. exit).
ASIDE: The
... read the full comment by Derek Tonkin | Comment on How to keep Baylor students out of downtown Read How to keep Baylor students out of downtown
another land bridge would be nice and i hope downtown attracts baylor students or some more people it feels like a ghost town after 7
... read the full comment by zoe | Comment on How to keep Baylor students out of downtown Read How to keep Baylor students out of downtown
Derek’s development progression sounds spot on to me. You start at the riverwalk and work your way back.
All of the Baylor students already renting on the west side of I-35 (as Drew mentioned) will greatly appreciate the improved access,
... read the full comment by Interesting | Comment on How to keep Baylor students out of downtown Read How to keep Baylor students out of downtown
The problem is that U-Parks, which is somewhat better but not perfect for pedestrians, goes to the edge of campus. Fourth/Fifth goes from the heart of Baylor to the heart of the re-emerging downtown. These aren’t side streets; they’re arterial
... read the full comment by j.b. smith | Comment on How to keep Baylor students out of downtown Read How to keep Baylor students out of downtown