June 20, 2005
Signs of Inferiority, Plus A Grand (Avenue) Vision
by Jerome du Bois, with Catherine King
The human calling him/herself anotherphoenician posted a new ad hominem comment on the piece I wrote about her/him, which of course I deleted because it also contained personal insults and sexual slander. (I won't edit comments. Stay in the lines or you're out.) For some reason, she/he cannot resist talking about such irrelevancies; it's a sixth-grade level obsession. He/she also tries to irritate us by calling us "Jerry" and "Cathy." Whoa, we got the alloverfidgets on that one. Naturally, this person can set the record "straight" by emailing a copy to all his/her friends. Fine. But I won't have that crap here.
Let's recap the discussion we were trying to have before this narcissist crashed in. Amy Silverman wrote an article claiming that Phoenix has an inferiority complex. We disagreed, and counter-argued that Phoenix's cultural leaders, such as Beatrice Moore and Kimber Lanning, because of their own insecurity and need for control, have encouraged a dependency on them, and on city and state money. This behavior and this policy drive away or stifle talent, foster financial laziness, increase their already-overdeveloped sense of entitlement, and create coteries of sycophants who just want to please.
But the response, as usual when we enter this fray, refers not at all to the subject, but insults about our mental stability (that old chestnut), how we think we're all that because we dress well, and how we're bitter because we couldn't make it in this town as artists. Sprinkled with general claims like "Kimber Lanning has done more for this city than you ever will"-- but they always trot out only that one lonely, skanky example: modified arts. Oh, yeah, long may that freak flag fly.
anotherphoenician followed this script to the letter, but does manage to drop a few gems I'd like to examine. But first let me clear up a couple of misconceptions.
I don't care if this person ever identifies him/herself. Period.
About our professional failure: we've published the whole story, which is strung out along the blog for two years. Read it yourself, if you're interested and if you can find it all. We're relieved to not be part of the Phoenix art scene, or any art scene, anymore, and have no wish to participate in them. Period.
The way we dress . . . Sheesh. The deleted comment went on and on about it. This person does not want us to think or feel anything good about ourselves. We cannot brag or stand tall or stand apart. No matter what we say, we're out of date or not in any men's fashion mags or yada yada yada. Anything we try to lift up, she/he tears and tears away at. We cannot look good. Why? Or, to use a line we get a lot from the wimpies out there: Why so angry? As I recall, in this person's first comment, he/she, in a totally unsolicited manner, mentioned our "nice clothes." A belated thanks, wanker. (I'll get back to fashion later in this post.)
This person has zero sense of humor. I wrote a line saying I didn't care if he/she was a "one-legged transgendered Pakistani pole vaulter," and he/she comes back with:
What would it matter if I was transgendered?
Anybody besides me find that hilarious? Maybe it's a clue, too. This person seems gender-obsessed. I don't care. We just think she's Kimber Lanning, that's all. If Kimber Lanning was a man --but we're not going there!-- we'd be hoisting his petard in the proper manner. Gender, schmender, gay, straight, no matter to us. We hate stupidity and evil and bigotry, not what people do in bed or which way they dress their genitalia.
Then he/she says something about modified, which is finally on-topic:
Kimber has done more for this town than you could ever do. Modified brings many muscians to town that would not otherwise come here. Modified provides a alcohol free venue that underage teens can go and enjoy themselves. But I'm sure you are against teens enjoying themselves.
Not at all. But the scene down there is just Kimber Lanning's little engine; it put-puts away, and keeps her in business, and allows spoiled young people to feel edgy, but it sends no inspiring ripples out into the larger culture. It's middle-class young people indulging in a new rite of passage; instead of travelling to Europe, they form a garage band, or some progrock derivative, and tour the country on daddy's plastic. They put out demo cds, and when you read their professional biographies, they're all former members of something: Mocket, Sprocket, Wocket, Spawnic Youth . . . It's not a bad circuit, and it's fairly harmless. (I'd be double-checking that "alcohol-free" schtick, though.) I don't care what they do. It just doesn't mean much in the larger scheme of Phoenix's cultural development. Besides, I think when ASU downtown comes as into its own, modified's alt-noodlings will be wiped out by music venues that mimic the Tempe ones. In the meantime, I consider modified more a blood clot than a heartbeat.
In the last post I included a long list of dysfunctions and syndromes. I'll reprint it here, because it I really want to repeat the last line:
Catherine wrestles with a condition called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is the only mental illness caused by other people. Some people suffer from clinical depression. Some people have conditions like OCD and mania and fetishistic infantilism --all recognized mental illnesses, syndromes, or conditions. Some people dress up like superheroes. Some people make so-called art from their urine. Some people are addicted to tattoos. Some people believe in teleportation and telepathy and alien beings. Some people are Adult Clowns; they paint the face in black, in white, in blue. Some people snort too much white powder, or live a lurching existence of eat-and-purge. Some people think our President is in league with The Devil. Others would describe these people, at least tentatively, as mentally ill, but I've just described a significant number of the downtown Phoenix art population, so why can't you sonsofbitches keep your fucking hypocrisy away from Catherine's pain!
anotherphoenician responds:
Consider that it may be a dysfunction if someone is fashionably challenged, but you have to spew about it here.
Unless this is a joke --which I doubt; see above-- this person is saying that bad fashion sense might be a borderline mental illness, and to insult it is tantamount to insulting someone with, say, Downs' Syndrome.
Hoot city. This is rich. Being "fashionably challenged" translates to just laziness, and any woman knows it, and this person going out of his/her way to mention something so farfetched . . . well, draw your own conclusions, reader.
This person does mention another relevant topic --signs:
Some gallery owners downtown are financially challenged but you skewer them for the look of their buildings or the cost of their signs.
If one looks through pictorial histories of businesses, one encounters thousands of images of proud owners photographed hoisting their first sign; or group shots of the whole company beneath a great big new beautiful sign. It's about pride. It's about not making any excuses. It's about really doing your best.
This isn't anybody's best, it's stenchworthy:
And then there's this Beatrice Moore slap-in-the-face:
(And if one considers the uncertain face of the new Paisley Violin, one thinks, "What's this? Rusty Muffler Shop?" [the "'s" fell off long ago])
And the city is giving out more money to many of these people.
Consider the whine in the above comment: I'm poor, so you have to give me a pass because I'm a lazy slob, too. If you're financially challenged, don't open the fooking gallery. See, these people have been pumping the funky for far too long. They like it that way because then they don't have to do much work. This is the 21st Century, and sneaking your pally down the alley past the supine drunks to the bare bulb crackling at the end, with its black door leading to degrading disappointment --those days are over, pete.
It's long past time for clean, well-lighted places. Proud and upscale. Retardaires like Steve Gompf can shudder about yuppification, but look at what they have now: skuzz city.
All the venues should be well-advertised ones, including their signage. Catherine and I often discuss the blight of the Big Diagonal, which has so much unfulfilled promise. And when life hands us stinkies like anotherphoenician, we see how can turn their twisted vituperation to better purposes --such as, hopefully, the last three posts. We don't want to fight anybody. We want to talk about making the city better for art, artists, artisans, and citizens.
Now, pretty soon a lot of these downtown artists will share a $500,000 grant from the city to improve their storefronts. We don't think it will make much difference, and the reason is as plain as when you're standing in the middle of Grand Avenue: it's Skankytown: the sidewalks, the lighting, the poorly-tended trees, the blasted lack of any hope in the very dust before the exhausted storefronts.
This is the vibe that everybody is celebrating down there, as written by Amy Young in the now-defunct shade magazine:
As I open the door to leave the gallery and bookstore that I operate with my partner on the corner of Grand and 15th Avenues [Perihelion Arts], I never quite know what may be in store for me. From having to roll out a breathing but immobile body from beneath the car to bumping into one of the local artistic geniuses to reminiscing with an old-timer about neighborhood history or to just being in awe of the agility of the teens racing in the alley behind the long standing Rodriguez Boxing Club just across the street as they gear up to go inside and take it to the ring, I always experience a wealth of emotions. I inhale it all in and maintain the general conclusion, as I release my breath, that I absolutely love my neighborhood. And that’s often all before I even have a chance to close the door behind me.
She loves the smell of stale male urine in the morning. It smells like --her life.
Anyway, Catherine and I have been having conversations about downtown improvement for over a year, usually stimulated by our frequent but irregular drive-bys of the area, and the subsequent teeth-grinding, moaning, and exclaiming, the wasted potential! being the constant theme.
So when Catherine read Mr./Ms. Poormouth's whine above, she really went into high gear and together we cobbled together this vision, and it is a grand vision, though just a beginning of what seems obviously needed:
Next time --and there will be one-- don't give the money to the artists and gallerists. They have had their chances, one after another, and look what you've still got: fly-by-night galleries (Dem No Dere No Mo') and The Bikini Lounge and the StopNLook Window and the Paper Heart, which is halfway to becoming a strip joint. It's time to stop pretending they care about quality down there, and it's time to stop handling the whole notion piecemeal, and it's time to stop handing over money to self-centered losers.
Take it to the street. Put the money on the Avenue, into the Avenue, instead. No more money for the gallerists and landlords.
Make the street beautiful, and force the gallerists to live up to the street --and fine them in incremental steps to drive them out if they don't go along.
To begin with, create another Special District --here's a name: Special Structural Improvement District --for The Spoke, which would consist of the Grand Avenue Diagonal from 7th Avenue to 15th Ave, and one lot deep on both sides. Those are the boundaries. Why so small? One reason: close financial control, but also because the improvement is restricted to public improvement: the streets, sidewalks, sidestreet curbs, public lighting, shading --but not storefronts or facades or any private property --with one exception: signage.
Another reason is to be able to legally renegotiate all contracts and leases with the city's leaseholders and property owners in that District, so that the landlord-gallerists are put on legal notice of their new obligations.
For the whole project, think permanent beauty. Hire local metal sculptors, neon artists, industrial glass people, lightbox technicians, custom masons, and tile people, even some auto body workers who know metal better than some artists. Some of them are right there on the Avenue, or close by. Think Chris Duran and his crew, and Pete Deise and his, and Corey Paisley, and those they would recommend (as long as they're all legal, of course; that's crucial). We don't endorse these people; they're just examples.
They need to make planters and awnings and light-pole extensions and benches and fountains and brickwork and grottoes and waterfalls and tree-protectors and so much else. We want to light the Avenue from end-to-end with neon art, sculptures that cool you off, shading that seduces you, benches that relax you, the sounds and sights of water to soothe you. And public art installations (as in Olafur Eliasson) and permanent sculptures (think the Dublin Spike). Laser beams shooting from one end of the Spoke to the other and bouncing back. Anchored dirigibles with videos projected onto them. Truck-mounted video screens parked here and there. Special shuttle buses with rotating themes. Public-input video cams.
[Imagine sitting in a new, improved Paisley Violin. This one has huge clean windows along the front, with a row of bench-like tables which feature chain-mounted binoculars and small telescopes. Why? Because right across the street is the newly-vitalized, actually eye-catching new installation at the StopNLook Gallery, which has got to be under new management. Diners crowd the tables to scope it out and discuss it.]
Give these core artisans exclusive contracts to make hard, permanent signs for the galleries up and down Grand Avenue, with half the funds provided by the gallerists and half by the city. After a very short while, gallerists who don't comply would stand out like red noses, and there would be legal steps in place to force them away. We need to get rid of the tweakers, pretenders, pole dancers, and runaround artists.
The centerpiece: a funicular streetcar-pair to run that single diagonal. One named Liberty, the other named Freedom, the pair simply shuttle back and forth between 7th Ave and 15th Ave --no turnarounds, a controlled speed zone, lighted glass blocks embedded in the street at all stops, and, on both sides, embedded in multicolored stone and tile, visual story after visual story of America and Arizona, all along the Spoke, clearly visible for the riders' contemplation as they roll along. The retail-friendliness of a streetcar should be obvious enough not to need emphasis.
And be clear that this is not an Arts District but an Improvement District: that is, it shall not necessarily welcome or encourage artists over restauranteurs, florists, boutique operators, bakers, confectioners, dry cleaners, cobblers; the Spoke could boast cafes and bookstores and stationers and auto detailers and antique stores and niche grocers and art galleries. And much more.
Of course, it's all a dream. But we imagine that the City Council hearings would bring out every roach who wants to defend the status quo, and that would be an unforgettable object lesson in itself for all involved. I sure would be taking notes.