This is inexcusable. The closing celebration for the Art in October event in the Arts District went down Sunday afternoon. It is now clearly Tuesday morning. And as anyone with access to the internet knows, information not only wants to be free, it wants to be free immediately. If you won’t excuse me, you’ll forgive me.
As others have already reported, those who bravely ventured downtown were treated to a delightful time on Flora Street. I see no reason why a similar gig like this shouldn’t happen once every month. Veletta Lill and her team from the Arts District, the Downtown Dallas folks, Jason Roberts and his merry band of urban DIY urban planners — they all ought to start planning right now to make this street party a regular occurrence beginning no later than 2012, when the Woodall Park is scheduled to open. The other thing that needs to happen: the ass end of the Belo Mansion and the street-level portion of the Trammell Crow Center need to be retro-fitted to embrace Flora Street. Once you’ve sat at a cafe table under those inviting cypress trees along Flora and eaten a taco while watching your kid play chess, you’ll understand that it’s just dumb how that space is utilized now.
One more thought before I leave you to your election-watching. I parked in the Arts District and walked west(ish) down Flora to the area that was blocked off for the food trucks and the rest. En route, we passed an unrelated street festival underway at the Cathedral, where a cowboy-hatted Tejano band was rocking a Latino crowd. Now, we arrived early, about 11:30, and things got livelier a bit later at the (mostly) gringo party down the street, but my first impression when we got to gig on Flora was: white people are boring. The folks who go to church at the Cathedral already know how to have a good time in downtown Dallas. We need to find a way to cross-pollinate these two cultures.
A Tejano band gets the party started next to the Cathedral.
Kiddos enjoy a bounce house under the sun shade of the Winspear.
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3 comments
winner:
“the ass end of the Belo Mansion and the street-level portion of the Trammell Crow Center need to be retro-fitted to embrace Flora Street.”
urban buildings shouldn’t have backsides, but rather interface appropriately with all sides.
We went down there and had a blast as well. Agree with all you said. Also passed the festival next to the cathedral and hung out for awhile. What a bonus. It was an unexpected surprise.
Thanks Tim. You were certainly looking at the closing day of the first year of an annual event – Art in October. Once a month events of this scale might kill us all, but we are working through frequency, scope, focus, etc. It is interesting that the single greatest cost to the Dallas Arts District for Sunday was the street closure – the cost of closing the single block, with police support, was about $2200. The city’s cost for street closures can be a deterrent to people doing events.
Couldn’t agree more about retail space engaging the street. MOre of that will be discussed Thursday.
The cathedral’s event was part of a fundraiser for them. They used to do a carnival, but they have scaled back this year. Originally, we were going to have Flora closed, adjacent to Crockett, in which case that event would have been more blended with ours because there would not have been a barricade at Flora. We narrowed the scope of street closures due to cost (it would have been more than $8,000) and thus more separation.
We do work closely with the Cathedral. As part of Art in October we did our first sacred spaces tour of the Cathedral, St. Paul’s and First United Methodist Church. The Cathedral’s 3 choirs and the choir from First United Methodist Church all sang outside the Winspear, prior to curtain time for Anna Bolena on Sunday. The choirs and costume events did cause cross-pollination of the groups. However, we need to continue to work to find other events that bring our groups together more.