A MIDWESTERN ADVENTURE
THE CITY THAT IS
October 8, 2005 - People often look confused when I tell them
Kansas City is a really cool place. Part of that is admittedly
from the outlandish memories from the four years I spent toiling as a
little confused and drunken art student, and another part of that is
attaching myself to the 'bohemian fringe' that Philip Trussell so
adequately named.
I still will go to bat for the city at any time, as I usually feel
weak in the knees every time I drive close to the downtown alone.
Filled with mid sized skyscrapers, old brick architecture, the old
mostly abandoned warehouses of the bottoms and the thirty story city
hall poured from gangster's concrete in the thirties, I can't help
but relish the old ghosts and epic stories that have nearly all but
vanished from the quiet caverns of downtown.
|
A view of the city from atop Liberty Memorial
|
I always felt like the city was bubbling with
potential. During high school, my uncle anointed me 'Po' for my
potential and youthful discretion not to apply myself in school and try
to achieve more. Kansas City grew up and hit its zenith in the
thirties, when gangsters under the lead of Tom Pendergast kept the Great
Depression and Prohibition at bay and created a haven for artists, jazz
and a cultural tour de force rarely seen in the American Plains.
They owned city hall, ran speakeasies, and allowed black culture to hits
its zenith to the snappy sounds of Charlie Parker. All that was
ended abruptly with Pendergast's fall and subsequent death, and the
motto of the city literally changed to "Where
everything is up to date."
And so the city grew stagnant, the white folks fled to the cheap,
spacious suburbs in Kansas, while the infrastructure of the city
crumbled and historical brick building by brick building soon met its
fate at the hands of a wrecking ball like the greatest little dive in
the world - The Ship -
after years of misguided and halfhearted efforts to
rebuild downtown into a thriving, lively hip nightspot again.
But
a funny thing happened in Kansas City - new
construction has popped up throughout downtown in the past 8 years since
I left school, the
Federal Courthouse and the newly finished
KC
Star Building being just two of the eye candy modern projects that
have flawlessly molded the heart of downtown with modern flourishes.
Lofts have been popping up everywhere, the city's buses and stops have
been wildly upgraded, and it seems like all the vacant space everywhere
in town has been utilized and thriving.
It's hard to pinpoint where and
when all of this began, but the Bi State tax that
helped
save Union Station, along with the preservation and
rebirth
of Liberty Memorial, topping off
Bartle Hall, rebuilding Brush Creek and recovering from the economic
hangover of allowing riverboat gambling onto the shores of the Mighty
Missouri all helped restore a civic pride that is small but growing.
In typical American fashion, artists, those lonely, unsupported
creatures who inhabit vacant lots and abandoned warehouses and create
godawful pieces of whatever that
your child could make, had a direct hand in making
downtown come alive. When I was in school, there were four
galleries downtown, and always made for an entertaining night out when
they held regular openings. Like wildfire, the galleries blossomed
from four to somewhere well over 15; 25 perhaps? - and the city wrapped
up their efforts in a neatly packaged event known as First Fridays at
the Crossroads.
The event is huge, with sidewalks six people thick,
for block upon block upon block. The art is sometimes ambitious,
sometimes pretty derivative, but the crowds keep coming and the carnival
atmosphere keeps the people coming back for more.
It's always
a thrill to visit this city, and I'm always amazed at
the progress and change that is happening there. In a way, I feel
like I've missed out on it some, like watching your younger brother grow
up halfway across the country, but sometimes, you both need that space.
And it makes chowing down on Arthur Bryant's an annual event that brings
tears to my eyes.
|
