The Tears of Things

The Pride of Phoenix, Part One: Roosevelt Row is Desolation Row

[This post is what you might call a classic hanshaacking.]

by The Tears of Things

Here comes the Blind Commissioner. They've got him in a trance:
One hand is tied to the tightrope walker; the other is in his pants.
And the riot squad, they're restless, they need somewhere to go,
As Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row. -- Bob Dylan, 1965.

So the next morning, there we were, Lady and I, at My Florist Café, she with her coffee and croissant, me with my biscuits and gravy, fortifying ourselves for our photo-essay on the "burgeoning" Downtown Phoenix arts district, Roosevelt Row. It was a delicious breakfast but it went sour when we got to Roosevelt Street. Fair warning, reader: it ain't a pretty picture -- it's a lot of ugly pictures. These people -- Wayne Rainey, Greg Esser, Cindy Dach, Ted Decker, whoever the lazy landlord is who owns Sol Central, and especially their vaunted spokesperson, Kimber Lanning -- these people want money, and lots more, from the city, but they won't even improve their buildings' facades.

Here are some details about the latest boondoggle the arts crowd wants to extort from the city, without these slumlords -- harsh? wait until you see the pictures -- lifting so much as a broom or a paintbrush.

From a July 30th news article by Ginger Richardson:

Phoenix officials have unveiled preliminary plans designed to help arts and culture flourish downtown and across the city.

Developing a strong arts community is considered especially crucial as the city puts more and more energy and focus into revitalizing and developing its core, said Phil Jones, executive director of the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture.

The proposed strategies include:

• Helping the arts community utilize the city's small-business assistance program so members can run their own businesses.

• Creating a loan program so residents can purchase or renovate downtown buildings for arts-related activities.

• Providing economic incentives for arts-related small businesses or artists in live-work spaces in the downtown area.

• Developing a multi-use downtown arts space, possibly in the 2006 bond program, that will provide exhibit and performance space for local artists.

• Designating a portion of the city's core as a cultural district.

It's as though Phil Jones never drives on Roosevelt Street, just minutes from his downtown office. And this is from the text of the actual Evans-Churchill Draft Plan:

Goal 5: Arts and Entertainment

Recommendations

1. Arts District along Roosevelt: Support the creation of an Arts District along Roosevelt Row with technical assistance in securing funding for marketing and expansion, district parking, and streetscape amenities such as banners with a common logo, special lighting, outside art venues and supportive activities.

2. Special events support: Provide special events assistance for activities such as First Fridays through marketing, other related arts and food events and fairs.

3. Financial assistance: Identify funding opportunities to assist in purchasing, building, or renovating artists' live/work space and exhibit space along or close to Roosevelt Row.

4. Incorporate art into Roosevelt streetscape enhancement: Identify funding for arts projects in conjunction with the revitalization of the East Roosevelt streetscape on public property or right of way easements.

5. Artists' education programs: Work with existing and potential institutions to provide arts related educational programs and vocational training.

Reader, reflect on these while perusing the pictures below.

And reflect on this as well: We're about ten days from September First Friday, the de facto beginning of the fall art season, and the core of Roosevelt Row looks derelict, deserted, and desolate. Here's a short tour, with generous commentary. Part Two will cover Grand Avenue and Lower Downtown, though we do comment on Beatrice Moore's vaunted Stop'N'Look at the very end of this part. (The piece is photo-heavy, with embedded images and popups, so be patient if it takes a while to load.)

This is the front of modified arts, owned and operated for the past half-dozen years by Kimber Lanning. (All photos by Catherine King and Jerome du Bois, August 23, 2004.)

Don't you love the Christmas lights?

Don't you hate the dying vine?

This is Kimber Lanning recalling the remarks that got her a standing O last year when Richard Florida came to town riding on his one-trick pony:

This wonderful downtown that I'm describing is still very fragile, though. We don't have enough owner-occupied properties or live/work spaces that are affordable for artists and musicians, and the neighborhoods belong to primarily low-income families without much political clout. Together, we need to call on the city to immediately protect our diverse inner city communities with aggressive mixed-use zoning laws that encourage integrating small businesses like bakeries, grocers and florists into existing neighborhoods. Low interest loans should be made available to encourage local people to buy homes, and allow entrepreneurs to buy properties for small businesses. We need to invite opportunities for creative _expression outside of any boundaries; to protect and celebrate the ethnic diversity of our neighborhoods, and encourage the city to support locally owned establishments of all kinds.

Q: Would you open your grocery, your bakery, or your florist next to this place? Take a look at three more details, and then we'll discuss the image below.

This is a saguaro cactus. Big deal, right? Your God-damned right it is! For any truly sensitive Valley denizen, much less thirty-year desert dwellers like Lady and I, the saguaro is a spiritual being. You smile indulgently. Well then, spend a few open nights in the deep desert, as we've often done, under land, lots of land, 'neath the starry skies above, and you'll change your tune. Or should. Never mind; many are tone-deaf these days. This poor cactus has had to endure years of heedless teenage punk music freaks waiting to get in the door, flicking their ashes all over it -- and then it had to endure the music as well. And still does. And she wants streetscape amenities.

Kimber Lanning has no pride of ownership. Modified Arts looks like this all the time, certainly for the two years we've been monitoring the dump. In fact, it looked the same way back in 1999 when I saw Godspeed You Black Emperor there. (You'd think, with all her sycophants, one would think to water the plants.) And now we find out she's opening a branch of her charmingly named record store, Stinkweeds, farther uptown. Grrrr. Why are they giving her another business license?

Here is Kimber Lanning, in December 2003, on running a business:

"That's what I'm most proud of, that in Phoenix, where people say, This town sucks,' we have been able to put together a volunteer-based art space that has been able to last five years," Lanning says. "When bands leave, they get paid. It's well-run, you know what I mean? And what touches me most is that these kids who are volunteering . . . are learning about how to run a business with integrity and how to be reliable . . ."

Two words, kids: Push Broom.

If we owned this place, there wouldn't be a cigarette butt in sight, the Christmas lights (!) would be history, and there would be cat's-claw vine and fuschia bougainvillea spilling in foaming riots of chartreuse and hot pink from the entire perimeter of the roof. No staple- and paper-flecked plywood festooned with torn posters. If we had to have bars, they would be as close to invisible as we could make them. We'd have healthy plants outside. And we'd take that saguaro back to the desert where it belongs.

Finally, if we owned the place, you could see in the windows. It's a visual art gallery, right? (If you need them closed for music venues, hint: drapes.) We will return to the window issue more below. But first, more examples of nothing to see here from Greg Esser and Cindy Dach. Keep in mind that Esser actually works for the City of Phoenix as Director of the Public Arts Program. The Public. Arts. Program. As in, out in public.

Here is eye lounge, just west of modified arts:

Note the two blind eyes of eye lounge. Those arched windows are completely boarded up -- you cannot see inside this visual art gallery to examine what, if anything, is on display. Also, there is absolutely no helpful printed information anywhere about the gallery itself, its hours, or a list of members, or upcoming events, or small photo examples of members's works, or . . . but we're tired of doing your work for you, Greg Esser, big art pro from Denver. This is a sorry-ass performance so far, and it gets worse, doesn't it?

Here's another gallery, further west, with the deeply-thought-out name 515:

No, that's not a takeoff of Santiago Sierra's Lisson Gallery installation. It's simply slammed-on corrugated steel. Edgy, huh? If only we had proprietors Brad Konick and David Young, the blind commissioners, standing proudly there, one before each door, then this picture would be complete. And this is a good place to note the utter lack of imagination in signage and lettering, an apparently lost art, consumed by Futura Medium and Stencil.

Esser and Dach also own a stark house/gallery around the corner on Sixth Street called -- you guessed it -- Sixth Street Studios. These creative types!

Both Esser/Dach enterprises are collectives. eyelounge has twenty members. We don't know about the other one. What are they doing down there, synergistically speaking? We know they're not landscaping, that's for sure. Or creating great signs, or irresistible window displays.

During the Richard Florida Visitation, sponsored by Phoenix New Times, Michelle Laudig interviewed Dach:

Local business owners are some of the most creative people around, says Dach, because their survival depends on it. These are the people who can give the city its character. And these are the people whom she says the city should be helping. "If Phoenix [leaders] could get behind saying, I'm not going to give $2 million to The Great Indoors. I'm going to give $2 million to 10 local independent businesses,' what a great city this would be."

She wants more money so she can spread their blandification to even more helpless venues. Both Dach and Lanning, founders of Arizona Chain Reaction, criticize big-box developers every chance they get. They ought to clean up their little boxes before worrrying about the big ones, and they ought to take care of one box before acquiring another one.

[Sidenote to Greg Esser, a public official: I often drag out this 1998 quotation about citizenship from Christopher Hitchens, who could tie a knot in Richard Florida's khakis with a half-dozen words and a raised eyebrow. I don't know what kind of glory you trailed in from Denver, but we're not impressed. Here is Hitchens, from "Secular Values and Republican Virtues":

The concept of a secular republic rests on the pattern and form and mould of the citizen, the free individual who can and must think for him or her self, who deliberates with others on the basis of equality, who is inclined both to demand and to accept responsibility. But the very image of this person is being lost to us . . . in the obsession with personality, solipsism and conceit: the sort of disposable "celebrity" now offered to us daily, who may exhibit great arrogance but -- and I stress this -- no pride.

Where is your civic pride, citizen?]

To the east of 515, there are two to four empty storefronts with big, wide, glorious windows: all venetian-blinded, or filled with junk, or empty. What a waste! Across the street, too, and further east a block, look here at the Sol Central strip:

Look at all those windows, that free display space. It breaks your heart. Here's another view, showing the Paisley Violin with its upscale plywood look. [Full disclosure: I exhibited my word-paintings there for a month a couple of years ago. Not a peep, much less a sale.] The two owners of this place, Derek and Gina Suarez, are now planning on opening another café on Grand Avenue. Probably before they replace the windows down here, we'll bet.

About windows: We had a gallery with a big window for a year, uptown a couple of miles, and even though it was on the second floor, passing pedestrians could still see a lot, so we kept the lights on all night and the blinds up 24/7. And when we finally got the chance to use one of downstairs windows for a month, free, we jumped at the chance, and created The Last Time, a walk-up-anytime tableau about domestic violence. (Story and more photos here. We made it totally independently, with not a dime or an hour from anyone, and also in the midst of a family tragedy.)

In New York City's Chelsea there exists The Wrong Gallery, run by Maurizio Cattelan and a couple of friends. It's a blocked doorway, 36 inches wide and 18 inches deep. They put on exhibitions in this vestibule, little witty ones, and the waiting list is years long. Here in Phoenix the artists and gallerists are contemptuously throwing away irreplaceable opportunities every day to truly create visual interest. But they want money for street fairs.

West of the Violin we come upon the monOrchid complex, which used to have big photo-realist headshots -- of owner Wayne Rainey and crew -- painted on the facade. Here's what it looks like now:

Behold the professional crib of the passionate advocate of infill, the man who wrote, in the first issue of his magazine Shade, "So let's build a city and let's build it well." Or, perhaps this reflects the growing influence of Ted Decker, new director of Shade Projects and advance man for ASU interests. Either way, it's sad to see the flagship of some of the loudest promoters of downtown art floundering, and looking so ugly. No wonder they won't put the name out front; I'd be ashamed, too.

[Update 10/04/04: Sharp-eyed readers will note that I've eliminated my screed against Anthony Olivieri. That's because, unlike the others in this town, he stepped up and got hold of us to straighten us out about his situation. It's an eye-opener. I'll be posting about this later today.]

This is Holga's, an apartment complex with an art gallery attached:

This view shows the band stage and the "colorfully eccentric" doors. Rainey received $136,000 in grant money to rehabilitate the apartment complex. Now he gets the rent from twelve apartments, lets the bands play, and the surrounding streets glitter with the scattered rat's teeth of broken beer bottles.

The art gallery entrance. At least it has windows, sort of. But . . . it's like these people have never watched Curb Appeal. This picture makes us want to sic Rick Spence on Wayne Rainey.

We are not condemning every gallery or artist on Roosevelt; but those named above are some of the core people, the ones whose words get taken down, the big talkers, the dreamers, the standard-bearers, and the pictures we've shown tell how much their talk is worth, the outlines of their puny dreams, and how high they are holding those standards.

Finally, as a preview to Part Two, back to our obsession: windows and window displays, and the locally famous Stop'N'Look window presided over by "Downtown Art Pioneer" Beatrice Moore. Here it is on August 23, 2004:

Three things to note here. First, the lettering is from preschool. This is not frivolous. Ms. Moore dressed for her cover of Shade in what can only be called play clothes. Those little eyes in the Os . . . This is from someone who is considered a leader, a pioneer, and an inspiration for two city generations of downtown artists. And it shows, in her, and in those that have followed. (The last time we mentioned Ms. Moore, we called her stale cake, and we received emailed threats of bodily mutilation and death. Babies throwing tantrums.)

Second: the window is empty. There is nothing in it. It's empty. None of the restless energy burgeoning throughout Phoenix has seen fit to coalesce here. The window's empty. Where is that energy? Oh: probably here, at their celebrated Bikini Lounge, drinkin' and talkin' big.

Third: The viewer is facing west on a diagonal North-South street. This means the sun is dominant until at least early afternoon. This is Phoenix Three Digit Arizona eight months a year. What are we getting to? Where is the fucking awning?! Misters? Real street-friendly.

And this thing has been here for ten years at least. Nobody thought of shade. This isn't hard thinking. And that's says volumes about the so-called creative class in downtown Phoenix.

We point. We shoot. We'll be back soon.

Posted by Jerome at August 24, 2004 07:26 AM | TrackBack