Some of my readers seem to think that I’m some flaky, hippy-dippy, crystal-gazing, bong-hitting, artist type who has no grasp on reality or the effects of poverty (though my family of four lives on less than $20K per year -- so technically we ARE poor) so let’s go ahead and reinforce this stereotype and get a little metaphysical in celebration of the Day of the Dead …
Samhain (Halloween) is the Druidh New Year. The Gaelighe (Celt is actually a Greek word), a Gaia-centric people followed a lunar calendar. Prior to the heliocentric Julian Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar, Samhain was celebrated on the first full moon in the sign of Scorpio. This is a time that traditionally marks the death of the Oak God and His symbolic return to womb of the Earth Mother until spring. On Samhain, it’s said, the Western Gate of Heaven is opened, and the veil between the Otherworld and the Middle World is at its most transparent. It is a time to mourn and rejoice for lost loved ones, to lament the loss of the warmth and fertility of Summer, a celebration of the last harvests before Winter, and an invitation to the dark aspects of the Mother with an understanding that all things must pass and that the barrenness and cold will yield again in Spring. Death is essential to life. So it goes.
This has been a year filled to the brim with the themes of death and regeneration. From the near Biblical floods and the threat of the Anapra dam bursting to wipe out Segundo once and for all (don’t even get me started on what the locals were alluding to while they were stuck at the Convention Center) to the methane explosions that drove many a resident out of the neighborhood, to the Downtown Plan, we have been pummeled with drastic change. Even the humble Tap is in existential limbo right now -- desperately waiting for its liquor license to be reinstated, while on a sort of restaurateurs deathwatch as customers slowly dwindle.
As you all know by now, City Council voted on the Downtown Plan on Samhain, and I couldn’t help but revel in the irony. Astrologically speaking, as a generation, those born from 1973-1981 are born under the immense pressure of Uranus traveling through Scorpio (with intermittent retrograde phases in Libra and Sagittarius). Supposedly this celestial movement makes us the arsonists of civilization, gleefully and wantonly burning the old institutions to make way for new growth. As any arborist can tell you, controlled burns are healthy for an ecosystem. The ashes provide the soil with nutrients, and infant florae flourish. But more often than not, Nature will handle that Herself, and a slight change in barometer can send those flames hurtling out of control, turning one fire department’s benevolent gesture into a state emergency.
This is a Plan guided by the ethos of the Destroyer Gods (think Kali, Morrugu, Cerridwyn, Marduk, Robert MacNamara): Level it, gut it, and bring in a Starbucks! Okay, so maybe the Gods of the Near East and 1960s foreign policy knew nothing about Starbucks, but it was their intention to clear a path for “progress” and change. Hell, Marduk ate his mother to clear a path for social evolution. Yes, some change can be a good thing, but I don’t think the economy would collapse if one less pretentious, unethical, union-busting coffee purveyor, or big-box store, were made to feel unwelcome.
Of course the Plan was a go. I knew that the minute I walked into the Plaza that hot March 31 afternoon. I was so pissed off and freaked out I went into labor the next day. How else was it supposed to swing when there was such consensus within City Council’s ranks from the beginning?
Before I completely change the subject, I’d like to respond to a reader’s comment from a couple of weeks ago. It was mentioned that we should back the Plan if, for nothing else, the opportunity to build green. My friend -- tell me, please -- what developer in this town uses green techniques to build houses and apartments? Sure, those McMansions on the West Side are “energy efficient,” but when you take into consideration the vast amounts of square footage that are being heated and cooled, it doesn’t really matter a hill of beans, does it? The only person I know who was using recycled tires and hay bales to build houses was my friend Dave Strickland and he’s working on a boat off the coast of Mexico right now.
Aside from this, you can retrofit a building to be green. Look at what the city of Chicago has done with their municipal buildings. You can install energy efficient windows, solar panels, and green roofs. You can replace the fiberglass insulation with something more eco-conscious. You can convert all municipal diesel vehicles to bio-diesel or reclaimed fry-grease. You can stop using industrial pest control and opt for the cheaper, cleaner, non-toxic (to humans and pets), and very effective boric acid. There are certain chemicals used in asphalt that taint the water table that we could ban like Austin did. We can put solar panels on street lamps.
It’s a way of life, man. Simple things can lead to a cleaner city: Getting an oil change; driving a vehicle which could not be used to haul artillery; driving a truck only if you are actually using it to haul materials; refraining from bleach and instead using peroxide and borax.
Anyway … after the grave disappointment of Samhain morning, I spent the rest of holiday week avoiding the neighborhood. We took the kids trick or treating in Kern and I ventured out of my cozy little nest on Dia de Los Muertos to hang with the cool kids at the Cincinnati Street block party. I went expecting an art show at the Shine, and when I dropped into YaYa’s to say hi, word on the street was Beck was playing a free show at the Meat … oh, sorry … Black Market.
I had seen Beck earlier that day as I went to retrieve my car from the Camino Real’s parking lot. That was the second time I spotted him and his entourage in two weeks. Prior to that I saw them on their way back from Starr Western Wear, bags in hand, on their way to Café Central.
I ran over with Valerie, kids in tow, to watch the show, and it was wonderful … a perfect example of organic growth and natural regeneration. Do you think that Beck would have been shopping Downtown, hanging out and talking with the locals if it looked like another fucking strip mall? Seriously, people like him, the bands my husband has worked with over the years, love our rasquachismo. They love our quirks and look forward to their trips from the studio to go shop Downtown and in Juarez.
Now, a lot of people are saying, “Yeah, Cincinnati Street -- that’s what we want Downtown to be like.” Sure, but do you really think that it would have grown like that had the neighborhood been razed? As far as I remember a few major things came to play in how Cincinnati became an economic powerhouse. There always has been traffic in the Kern area. There’s a University right there. It can’t be avoided. There always have been a few successful bars and shops. Pat Devlin had his heyday in the ’80s and ’90s with the Surf Club and a couple of other joint ventures, Dolce Vita was the seminal meeting place for the college crowd, Hemmingway’s has been successful in a variety of different incarnations. The Cincinnati Street Pub was also gathering place for all generations. I miss the days when I’d be eating my split pea soup or drinking a Guinness, talking to Bernie and Jim, and in comes Pat, buying rounds for the regulars; I miss when Art Lewis or the San Patricios would play. The Dolce crowd would feed the pub and visa versa, and it was a real pub -- quaint, no pretensions, interesting conversation, good bar food, and Guinness draught.
Now, you couldn’t drag me into Cincinnati Street Pub. Why? Frankly, I can’t stand the crowd there now. Ever since Dolce Vita closed, the crowd (and I’m generalizing, so don’t get precious on me) has turned into a bunch of vapid, binge-drinking yuppies, and snotty fresas who somehow got lost on their way to G2. Now, don’t get me wrong. I commend the new owners for driving the economy. I’m just saying it’s not my scene. Since 02’s inception, and the subsequent turnover of a majority of the block, businesses have been cashing in on the crowds of wannabes who flock every weekend for a taste of the Miami-style club scene.
It’s not all bad, as there are mixed crowds drawn to some of the other places that have opened during the Cincinnati Street mini-boom -- since 02 and G2 opened, K-Bar, Bar-52 (what’s with this alpha-numeric shit?), Zepplin’s, Q8, and Black Market have flourished. Established places like Casa Jurado, Fellini’s, Sinbad’s, Mesa Street Bar, and Hemmingway’s have benefited from the traffic. Bourjalais is being forced by the wave of clubbers to change format from an amazing liquor and sweet shop to a chic wine bar or something such. New boutiques and galleries are doing well and have a symbiotic relationship with the clubs that bring in consumers. And you know what? Not one single solitary tax dollar was spent in creating this. It just happened. That is how the free market is supposed to work. No one came in and made it a development free-for-all. Small business rode the wave.
Who knows how long that can last, though. Things like this run in cycles, and as neighborhoods lose their appeal because of over-saturation and high rents, businesses take their establishments and their customers elsewhere. The high-end neighborhood loses popularity and dies out, as the low-end neighborhood establishes itself. So it goes. Dyer Street flourished in the ’70s and ’80s when Downtown was losing business to the ’burbs; Cincinnati Street is on the road to being renamed Little Miami. Downtown is already seeing a renaissance, though no one wants to admit it. We forget sometimes that cities are a living, breathing entity. Thousands of people and their consciousnesses contribute to its function. Everything natural in this world exists like this -- from moon cycles, the cycles of famine and plague, forest fires, sunspots … these are the natural cycles of life, death and rebirth. I have to wonder sometimes whether you can chart this using the Golden Ratio like so many other such cycles. I’ll get off my soapbox and let you ponder these mysteries.
Blessed New Year.
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Photographs courtesy of El Chuco. [link]
Jenni Burton can be reached at jenni@newspapertree.com.