In his mind, it is late in the second half of the Champions League final and Peter is playing next to Danielle DeRossi in the Roma midfield, with the giallorossi up 1-0. In reality, he is living a double life as a financial analyst for a commercial real estate company and as a writer, contributing to D Magazine and D CEO. Previously, he covered Dallas, Highland Park, University Park, and Plano city halls for People Newspapers, and helped launch Oak Cliff People. In some distant yesteryear, Peter chased saints and sinners around Rome for Inside the Vatican Magazine, Fox News, and The American, a monthly magazine distributed by the International Herald Tribune. He is married to the lovely Lucia and lives in Oak Cliff with their two daughters, both of whom are anxiously anticipating the release of Spike Jones’ Where the Wild Things Are.
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New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus
By Peter Simek
Posted in Art, Ideas, Lives on 10 December 2009
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Renegade Bus will take a prolonged hiatus, as Peter Simek leaves to lead the launch of a new arts coverage initiative at D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.

New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus
By Peter Simek
Posted in Art, Ideas, Lives on 10 December 2009
Stats: and 4 Comments

Renegade Bus will take a prolonged hiatus, as Peter Simek leaves to lead the launch of a new arts coverage initiative at D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.

New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus
By Peter Simek
Posted in Art, Ideas, Lives on 10 December 2009
Stats: and No Comments

Renegade Bus will take a prolonged hiatus, as Peter Simek leaves to lead the launch of a new arts coverage initiative at D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.

New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus
By Peter Simek
Posted in Art, Ideas, Lives on 10 December 2009
Stats: and No Comments

Renegade Bus will take a prolonged hiatus, as Peter Simek leaves to lead the launch of a new arts coverage initiative at D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.

Bullets Big In Sweden
By Peter Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 9 December 2009
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If you listen to the much-welcomed, often pretty darn great Music to the Core station (a slogan which sounds to me like a good name for a nostalgic hour-long radio show for KNON that exclusively plays cuts from D.C’s early-80s scene) you’ve likely now heard Dallas’ favorite Brit-pop outfit, the Happy Bullets, co-headed by Oak Cliff’s resident bicycle / urban planning advocate Jason Roberts. KXT is not the only outlet digging the Bullets as of late. One of the group’s songs, “Good Day,” has been picked up by a Swedish ad campaign. You can watch two ads here and here. Via Jason: the band’s royalties so far consist of wooden shoes and IKEA gift cards. (Got the powder but not the gun / got the dog but not the bun, I guess.) So in related news, the Happy Bullets need a manager.

Art On Babble
By Peter Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 8 December 2009
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Boy, it’s been quiet around here lately. I apologize to our regular readers – some changes are afoot and we will fill you in soon. For now, I couldn’t help but break the silence with this little video on Art Babble about photographer Catherine Opie (some of her work was in the Pretty Baby exhibition at the Fort Worth Modern a couple of years back, if you remember). Perhaps you know about Art Babble; I’m just learning about it now. It is a project out of the Indianapolis Museum of Art that aggregates video about art from a variety of sources. As IMA head honcho Max Anderson explains here, there is something about the way video can teach about the visual arts that makes it uniquely engaging and enlightening. Think of Art Babble as a mini-Art 21. Enjoy.

Music Rising
By Peter Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 3 December 2009
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A couple of days ago we mentioned our silent urban spaces. Now comes this via Gorilla vs. Bear: Phoenix’s poetry in the public square. Enjoy.

New DMN Management Structure Adds New Layer of Distrust
By Peter Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 3 December 2009
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Why does a city needs honest and intelligent criticism from its mainstream media? It is a way of expressing – and keeping in check – our ideas about ourselves. A city’s character is expressed in a particular and poignant way in the art it produces, and in the way it views and understands art from other places. Criticism helps plumb that expression, articulating ourselves to ourselves. So why am I worried about this new management structure at the Dallas Morning News that places entertainment editors a rung below sales managers on the chain of command? I’m not sure. To be honest, I rarely head to the DMN for criticism and arts news. This has more to do with the absolutely frustrating and convoluted workings of their Kafka-esque web-ad machine known as Dallasnews.com. (I used to read Hunter Hawk on DART when Quick was daily – he was usually the best thing in there.) But whereas the DMN seems to have been loosing relevance in this city’s scene for some time, I can’t imagine how this new arrangement won’t at the very least add a new layer of distrust, if not compromising their views altogether. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Reclaiming Public Space Through Poetry
By Peter Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 1 December 2009
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Responding to Hannah Arendt’s half-century-old lamentations about the loss of public space, City Journal contributing editor Michael Knox Beran challenges Arendt’s diagnosis that the loss public space is bound up in a degeneration of politics. Instead, Beran argues the condemning finger should be pointed at the loss of public poetry, an insight which he hopes may help those seeking to reestablish our lost public culture:
“Over the last few hundred years . . . there has been a falling-off in every department of public poetry—choral, dramatic, liturgical—as well as in popular and proverbial poetry. The traditional town-square transmitters of poetic culture . . . have turned their attention to other matters. Rock concerts and iPods we have in abundance, but our public spaces are unmusical.”

Forwarding Dallas with an Urban Hillside
By Peter Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 23 November 2009
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Although it is possibly the most interesting thing happening in Dallas right now architecturally speaking, it seems Robert Wilonsky has been the only person in the city beating away at the Urban Re:Vision competition to redesign the block behind city hall. Today he brings word that the project architect has been chosen: Portuguese-based architectural firm Atelier Data & Moov. This is no empty plan, Urban Re:Vision says they will break ground in early-2011, at which point the concrete swath behind city hall will be turned into an “urban hillside”—literally. From the designers:
“The space is organized as valleys, slopes and hilltops, to maximize solar gain, views and productive surfaces. The final goal of this project is not to build a physical structure, but rather set the means for a community to inhabit it. Not counting on people that will dwell here is only seeing half of the equation. This project intends to bring Dallas up to date, as well as aims to forward Dallas to the word as a paradigm of a solution to other cities facing the same problems.”