RenegadeBus http://renegadebusdallas.com Culture and the curious in Dallas, Texas Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:43:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 en hourly 1 New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:40:45 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3730 D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.]]> When we launched Renegade Bus on May 1, 2009, our ambitions for this space were both grand and modest. The team of us wanted simply to write about this city in a new way, to consider its art and engage in the ideas that were giving shape to what we perceived as its new future. There was no obvious home for the kind of conversation we thought Dallas should be having about itself, and seizing the unique immediacy and possibility of internet publishing, we started a web magazine with the hope (and a little naivety, no doubt) that we could help foster that dialogue.

I cannot tell you how surprised we were that in the seven short months since we launched, we have managed to achieve much of what we set out to do. We have hosted debates on our site, given voice to under- or un-published voices, and published photos, stories, and essays that have shed new light on our city.

Not least among our accomplishments has been the attention this little site has gained from Dallas’ major media outlets. Through links and online debates, we have injected ourselves into Dallas’ published conversation and, in many ways, have helped shape it.

I want to talk here about one such debate that began with an article by Christina Rees on Glasstire called “Reckoning.” In “Reckoning,” Rees tips her hat to Renegade Bus’ role in broadening the dialogue about art and culture in this city, but then she uses the example to challenge major media to do the same. Sites like this one, she suggests, have proven that there is an appetite for real, intelligent, and honest dialogue in this town – conversation that is serious without being snooty, encouraging and optimistic without being polite or superficial. But what the city is still lacking is a place where intelligent conversation about the arts happens regularly within the context of general interest media.

Rees notes, just as we have always done on this site, that Dallas is at a critical point in its cultural history, and the conversations about Dallas that are happening these days are indications that this city is deepening in its understanding of itself. But without the support of the major media, without having the intelligent conversations about art, urban planning, culture, and civic identity placed within the context of a wide-reaching publication, these conversations will remain confined to our own living rooms, bar tables, and websites.

In her piece, Rees specifically challenged D Magazine to take up the torch and champion a deeper Dallas in the mainstream media. In fact, Publisher Wick Allison had already been working to expand the magazine’s arts coverage. In a publisher’s column in D earlier this year, Allison wrote about the severe lack of real criticism in Dallas:

I do not have a solution to the problem. But as a media owner, I do have a responsibility. At the moment, we are monitoring and talking to very bright people in other cities who are grappling with the same dilemma. When we see an idea that works, D Magazine will do everything in its limited power to introduce it to Dallas. To my mind, the need is too great to merely sit by and watch.

Say what you like about D Magazine, in its thirty-five year history, it has not often been known to sit back and watch any major developments unfold in this city. Now, I am happy to announce in this space, that D Magazine will indeed launch a new, expanded arts coverage initiative, both online and in its magazine. Furthermore, Allison has asked me to be the founding editor of this new venture.

I will admit, when Allison first approached me I was flattered, excited about the opportunity, and a little skeptical. Would D’s arts editor really be given the reins to provide the kind of coverage this city needs – coverage that elevates and broadens the public dialogue and serves as a catalyst to Dallas’ continued maturity?

After a number of conversations with the editors at D, I am convinced that their vision for the magazine’s future bears much in common with the original goals of Renegade Bus. And after a great deal of soul searching, I have decided to accept D’s offer.

This might strike many of you as an unexpected development in the short history of this little site. After all, one of our most widely read pieces was written by my wife, Lucia, who tore into D’s Art Slam earlier this year. But the Art Slam episode, in fact, offers encouragement. After Lucia’s piece appeared on our site, Allison invited the both of us to discuss Art Slam, to figure out what didn’t work and why. D has shown a strong desire to learn from that experience and make sure that any future efforts represent a move forward, and not a step back, for our local scene. Furthermore, I believe in Renegade Bus, and so I believe that anyone who wants to adopt what Renegade Bus has been trying to do has to have a pretty good vision for what this city needs.

The question that remains, then, is what will happen to Renegade Bus in light of these developments?

At first I decided I would simply step down as editor. However, it has become obvious during the course of the conversations among the site’s founders, that continuing to run Renegade Bus as-is would pose a great number of conflicts – practical, professional, personal and familial. And so we were forced with the opportunity to draft the ending of our own history, which could go two ways: Renegade Bus could continue on as is, advocating for an alternative local voice at risk of damaging our best intentions and relationships, or we could close up shop and throw our efforts wholeheartedly into this new endeavor, as well as seek out new ones that cultivate and shape Dallas’ best possibilities. It was the decision of the founding editors to take the latter course.

Renegade Bus is not dead, but it will enter a period of prolonged hiatus while our remaining founding members, Lucia Simek, Joan Arbery and Teresa Burkett, work to reshape its physical presence in Dallas. One idea for its rebirth is to re-launch as a print journal, an idea which was always floating around since we began talking about this project. Rest assured, the Bus will be back.

For now, nothing makes me more excited than the opportunity to bring much of what we have been trying to do here on this site to D Magazine, to lend our voice and tone to the greater city, and to offer many of our contributors a wider audience.

These are exciting times in Dallas. Your readership and participation on this site, we truly believe, has helped foster a wider and more faceted understanding of Dallas. I want to thank our readers, contributors, advocates, and friends for coming with us on this ride, and I very much look forward to continuing our conversation through Dallas’ city magazine in the coming years.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus/feed/ New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-4/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-4/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:37:59 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3731 D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.]]> When we launched Renegade Bus on May 1, 2009, our ambitions for this space were both grand and modest. The team of us wanted simply to write about this city in a new way, to consider its art and engage in the ideas that were giving shape to what we perceived as its new future. There was no obvious home for the kind of conversation we thought Dallas should be having about itself, and seizing the unique immediacy and possibility of internet publishing, we started a web magazine with the hope (and a little naivety, no doubt) that we could help foster that dialogue.

I cannot tell you how surprised we were that in the seven short months since we launched, we have managed to achieve much of what we set out to do. We have hosted debates on our site, given voice to under- or un-published voices, and published photos, stories, and essays that have shed new light on our city.

Not least among our accomplishments has been the attention this little site has gained from Dallas’ major media outlets. Through links and online debates, we have injected ourselves into Dallas’ published conversation and, in many ways, have helped shape it.

I want to talk here about one such debate that began with an article by Christina Rees on Glasstire called “Reckoning.” In “Reckoning,” Rees tips her hat to Renegade Bus’ role in broadening the dialogue about art and culture in this city, but then she uses the example to challenge major media to do the same. Sites like this one, she suggests, have proven that there is an appetite for real, intelligent, and honest dialogue in this town – conversation that is serious without being snooty, encouraging and optimistic without being polite or superficial. But what the city is still lacking is a place where intelligent conversation about the arts happens regularly within the context of general interest media.

Rees notes, just as we have always done on this site, that Dallas is at a critical point in its cultural history, and the conversations about Dallas that are happening these days are indications that this city is deepening in its understanding of itself. But without the support of the major media, without having the intelligent conversations about art, urban planning, culture, and civic identity placed within the context of a wide-reaching publication, these conversations will remain confined to our own living rooms, bar tables, and websites.

In her piece, Rees specifically challenged D Magazine to take up the torch and champion a deeper Dallas in the mainstream media. In fact, Publisher Wick Allison had already been working to expand the magazine’s arts coverage. In a publisher’s column in D earlier this year, Allison wrote about the severe lack of real criticism in Dallas:

I do not have a solution to the problem. But as a media owner, I do have a responsibility. At the moment, we are monitoring and talking to very bright people in other cities who are grappling with the same dilemma. When we see an idea that works, D Magazine will do everything in its limited power to introduce it to Dallas. To my mind, the need is too great to merely sit by and watch.

Say what you like about D Magazine, in its thirty-five year history, it has not often been known to sit back and watch any major developments unfold in this city. Now, I am happy to announce in this space, that D Magazine will indeed launch a new, expanded arts coverage initiative, both online and in its magazine. Furthermore, Allison has asked me to be the founding editor of this new venture.

I will admit, when Allison first approached me I was flattered, excited about the opportunity, and a little skeptical. Would D’s arts editor really be given the reins to provide the kind of coverage this city needs – coverage that elevates and broadens the public dialogue and serves as a catalyst to Dallas’ continued maturity?

After a number of conversations with the editors at D, I am convinced that their vision for the magazine’s future bears much in common with the original goals of Renegade Bus. And after a great deal of soul searching, I have decided to accept D’s offer.

This might strike many of you as an unexpected development in the short history of this little site. After all, one of our most widely read pieces was written by my wife, Lucia, who tore into D’s Art Slam earlier this year. But the Art Slam episode, in fact, offers encouragement. After Lucia’s piece appeared on our site, Allison invited the both of us to discuss Art Slam, to figure out what didn’t work and why. D has shown a strong desire to learn from that experience and make sure that any future efforts represent a move forward, and not a step back, for our local scene. Furthermore, I believe in Renegade Bus, and so I believe that anyone who wants to adopt what Renegade Bus has been trying to do has to have a pretty good vision for what this city needs.

The question that remains, then, is what will happen to Renegade Bus in light of these developments?

At first I decided I would simply step down as editor. However, it has become obvious during the course of the conversations among the site’s founders, that continuing to run Renegade Bus as-is would pose a great number of conflicts – practical, professional, personal and familial. And so we were forced with the opportunity to draft the ending of our own history, which could go two ways: Renegade Bus could continue on as is, advocating for an alternative local voice at risk of damaging our best intentions and relationships, or we could close up shop and throw our efforts wholeheartedly into this new endeavor, as well as seek out new ones that cultivate and shape Dallas’ best possibilities. It was the decision of the founding editors to take the latter course.

Renegade Bus is not dead, but it will enter a period of prolonged hiatus while our remaining founding members, Lucia Simek, Joan Arbery and Teresa Burkett, work to reshape its physical presence in Dallas. One idea for its rebirth is to re-launch as a print journal, an idea which was always floating around since we began talking about this project. Rest assured, the Bus will be back.

For now, nothing makes me more excited than the opportunity to bring much of what we have been trying to do here on this site to D Magazine, to lend our voice and tone to the greater city, and to offer many of our contributors a wider audience.

These are exciting times in Dallas. Your readership and participation on this site, we truly believe, has helped foster a wider and more faceted understanding of Dallas. I want to thank our readers, contributors, advocates, and friends for coming with us on this ride, and I very much look forward to continuing our conversation through Dallas’ city magazine in the coming years.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-4/feed/ New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-3/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-3/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:36:55 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3732 D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.]]> When we launched Renegade Bus on May 1, 2009, our ambitions for this space were both grand and modest. The team of us wanted simply to write about this city in a new way, to consider its art and engage in the ideas that were giving shape to what we perceived as its new future. There was no obvious home for the kind of conversation we thought Dallas should be having about itself, and seizing the unique immediacy and possibility of internet publishing, we started a web magazine with the hope (and a little naivety, no doubt) that we could help foster that dialogue.

I cannot tell you how surprised we were that in the seven short months since we launched, we have managed to achieve much of what we set out to do. We have hosted debates on our site, given voice to under- or un-published voices, and published photos, stories, and essays that have shed new light on our city.

Not least among our accomplishments has been the attention this little site has gained from Dallas’ major media outlets. Through links and online debates, we have injected ourselves into Dallas’ published conversation and, in many ways, have helped shape it.

I want to talk here about one such debate that began with an article by Christina Rees on Glasstire called “Reckoning.” In “Reckoning,” Rees tips her hat to Renegade Bus’ role in broadening the dialogue about art and culture in this city, but then she uses the example to challenge major media to do the same. Sites like this one, she suggests, have proven that there is an appetite for real, intelligent, and honest dialogue in this town – conversation that is serious without being snooty, encouraging and optimistic without being polite or superficial. But what the city is still lacking is a place where intelligent conversation about the arts happens regularly within the context of general interest media.

Rees notes, just as we have always done on this site, that Dallas is at a critical point in its cultural history, and the conversations about Dallas that are happening these days are indications that this city is deepening in its understanding of itself. But without the support of the major media, without having the intelligent conversations about art, urban planning, culture, and civic identity placed within the context of a wide-reaching publication, these conversations will remain confined to our own living rooms, bar tables, and websites.

In her piece, Rees specifically challenged D Magazine to take up the torch and champion a deeper Dallas in the mainstream media. In fact, Publisher Wick Allison had already been working to expand the magazine’s arts coverage. In a publisher’s column in D earlier this year, Allison wrote about the severe lack of real criticism in Dallas:

I do not have a solution to the problem. But as a media owner, I do have a responsibility. At the moment, we are monitoring and talking to very bright people in other cities who are grappling with the same dilemma. When we see an idea that works, D Magazine will do everything in its limited power to introduce it to Dallas. To my mind, the need is too great to merely sit by and watch.

Say what you like about D Magazine, in its thirty-five year history, it has not often been known to sit back and watch any major developments unfold in this city. Now, I am happy to announce in this space, that D Magazine will indeed launch a new, expanded arts coverage initiative, both online and in its magazine. Furthermore, Allison has asked me to be the founding editor of this new venture.

I will admit, when Allison first approached me I was flattered, excited about the opportunity, and a little skeptical. Would D’s arts editor really be given the reins to provide the kind of coverage this city needs – coverage that elevates and broadens the public dialogue and serves as a catalyst to Dallas’ continued maturity?

After a number of conversations with the editors at D, I am convinced that their vision for the magazine’s future bears much in common with the original goals of Renegade Bus. And after a great deal of soul searching, I have decided to accept D’s offer.

This might strike many of you as an unexpected development in the short history of this little site. After all, one of our most widely read pieces was written by my wife, Lucia, who tore into D’s Art Slam earlier this year. But the Art Slam episode, in fact, offers encouragement. After Lucia’s piece appeared on our site, Allison invited the both of us to discuss Art Slam, to figure out what didn’t work and why. D has shown a strong desire to learn from that experience and make sure that any future efforts represent a move forward, and not a step back, for our local scene. Furthermore, I believe in Renegade Bus, and so I believe that anyone who wants to adopt what Renegade Bus has been trying to do has to have a pretty good vision for what this city needs.

The question that remains, then, is what will happen to Renegade Bus in light of these developments?

At first I decided I would simply step down as editor. However, it has become obvious during the course of the conversations among the site’s founders, that continuing to run Renegade Bus as-is would pose a great number of conflicts – practical, professional, personal and familial. And so we were forced with the opportunity to draft the ending of our own history, which could go two ways: Renegade Bus could continue on as is, advocating for an alternative local voice at risk of damaging our best intentions and relationships, or we could close up shop and throw our efforts wholeheartedly into this new endeavor, as well as seek out new ones that cultivate and shape Dallas’ best possibilities. It was the decision of the founding editors to take the latter course.

Renegade Bus is not dead, but it will enter a period of prolonged hiatus while our remaining founding members, Lucia Simek, Joan Arbery and Teresa Burkett, work to reshape its physical presence in Dallas. One idea for its rebirth is to re-launch as a print journal, an idea which was always floating around since we began talking about this project. Rest assured, the Bus will be back.

For now, nothing makes me more excited than the opportunity to bring much of what we have been trying to do here on this site to D Magazine, to lend our voice and tone to the greater city, and to offer many of our contributors a wider audience.

These are exciting times in Dallas. Your readership and participation on this site, we truly believe, has helped foster a wider and more faceted understanding of Dallas. I want to thank our readers, contributors, advocates, and friends for coming with us on this ride, and I very much look forward to continuing our conversation through Dallas’ city magazine in the coming years.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-3/feed/ New Growth: An Evolving Vision for Renegade Bus http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-2/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-2/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:35:52 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3735 D Magazine, lending the voice and tone of this publication to the greater city.]]> When we launched Renegade Bus on May 1, 2009, our ambitions for this space were both grand and modest. The team of us wanted simply to write about this city in a new way, to consider its art and engage in the ideas that were giving shape to what we perceived as its new future. There was no obvious home for the kind of conversation we thought Dallas should be having about itself, and seizing the unique immediacy and possibility of internet publishing, we started a web magazine with the hope (and a little naivety, no doubt) that we could help foster that dialogue.

I cannot tell you how surprised we were that in the seven short months since we launched, we have managed to achieve much of what we set out to do. We have hosted debates on our site, given voice to under- or un-published voices, and published photos, stories, and essays that have shed new light on our city.

Not least among our accomplishments has been the attention this little site has gained from Dallas’ major media outlets. Through links and online debates, we have injected ourselves into Dallas’ published conversation and, in many ways, have helped shape it.

I want to talk here about one such debate that began with an article by Christina Rees on Glasstire called “Reckoning.” In “Reckoning,” Rees tips her hat to Renegade Bus’ role in broadening the dialogue about art and culture in this city, but then she uses the example to challenge major media to do the same. Sites like this one, she suggests, have proven that there is an appetite for real, intelligent, and honest dialogue in this town – conversation that is serious without being snooty, encouraging and optimistic without being polite or superficial. But what the city is still lacking is a place where intelligent conversation about the arts happens regularly within the context of general interest media.

Rees notes, just as we have always done on this site, that Dallas is at a critical point in its cultural history, and the conversations about Dallas that are happening these days are indications that this city is deepening in its understanding of itself. But without the support of the major media, without having the intelligent conversations about art, urban planning, culture, and civic identity placed within the context of a wide-reaching publication, these conversations will remain confined to our own living rooms, bar tables, and websites.

In her piece, Rees specifically challenged D Magazine to take up the torch and champion a deeper Dallas in the mainstream media. In fact, Publisher Wick Allison had already been working to expand the magazine’s arts coverage. In a publisher’s column in D earlier this year, Allison wrote about the severe lack of real criticism in Dallas:

I do not have a solution to the problem. But as a media owner, I do have a responsibility. At the moment, we are monitoring and talking to very bright people in other cities who are grappling with the same dilemma. When we see an idea that works, D Magazine will do everything in its limited power to introduce it to Dallas. To my mind, the need is too great to merely sit by and watch.

Say what you like about D Magazine, in its thirty-five year history, it has not often been known to sit back and watch any major developments unfold in this city. Now, I am happy to announce in this space, that D Magazine will indeed launch a new, expanded arts coverage initiative, both online and in its magazine. Furthermore, Allison has asked me to be the founding editor of this new venture.

I will admit, when Allison first approached me I was flattered, excited about the opportunity, and a little skeptical. Would D’s arts editor really be given the reins to provide the kind of coverage this city needs – coverage that elevates and broadens the public dialogue and serves as a catalyst to Dallas’ continued maturity?

After a number of conversations with the editors at D, I am convinced that their vision for the magazine’s future bears much in common with the original goals of Renegade Bus. And after a great deal of soul searching, I have decided to accept D’s offer.

This might strike many of you as an unexpected development in the short history of this little site. After all, one of our most widely read pieces was written by my wife, Lucia, who tore into D’s Art Slam earlier this year. But the Art Slam episode, in fact, offers encouragement. After Lucia’s piece appeared on our site, Allison invited the both of us to discuss Art Slam, to figure out what didn’t work and why. D has shown a strong desire to learn from that experience and make sure that any future efforts represent a move forward, and not a step back, for our local scene. Furthermore, I believe in Renegade Bus, and so I believe that anyone who wants to adopt what Renegade Bus has been trying to do has to have a pretty good vision for what this city needs.

The question that remains, then, is what will happen to Renegade Bus in light of these developments?

At first I decided I would simply step down as editor. However, it has become obvious during the course of the conversations among the site’s founders, that continuing to run Renegade Bus as-is would pose a great number of conflicts – practical, professional, personal and familial. And so we were forced with the opportunity to draft the ending of our own history, which could go two ways: Renegade Bus could continue on as is, advocating for an alternative local voice at risk of damaging our best intentions and relationships, or we could close up shop and throw our efforts wholeheartedly into this new endeavor, as well as seek out new ones that cultivate and shape Dallas’ best possibilities. It was the decision of the founding editors to take the latter course.

Renegade Bus is not dead, but it will enter a period of prolonged hiatus while our remaining founding members, Lucia Simek, Joan Arbery and Teresa Burkett, work to reshape its physical presence in Dallas. One idea for its rebirth is to re-launch as a print journal, an idea which was always floating around since we began talking about this project. Rest assured, the Bus will be back.

For now, nothing makes me more excited than the opportunity to bring much of what we have been trying to do here on this site to D Magazine, to lend our voice and tone to the greater city, and to offer many of our contributors a wider audience.

These are exciting times in Dallas. Your readership and participation on this site, we truly believe, has helped foster a wider and more faceted understanding of Dallas. I want to thank our readers, contributors, advocates, and friends for coming with us on this ride, and I very much look forward to continuing our conversation through Dallas’ city magazine in the coming years.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/10/new-growth-an-evolving-vision-for-renegade-bus-2/feed/ Bullets Big In Sweden http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/09/bullets-big-in-sweden/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/09/bullets-big-in-sweden/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:06:06 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3722 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. ]]> 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.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/09/bullets-big-in-sweden/feed/ Art On Babble http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/08/art-on-babble/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/08/art-on-babble/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:23:11 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3720 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. ]]> 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.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/08/art-on-babble/feed/ Music Rising http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/music-rising/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/music-rising/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:59:10 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3717 we mentioned our silent urban spaces. Now comes this via Gorilla vs. Bear: Phoenix’s poetry in the public square. Enjoy.]]> 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.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/music-rising/feed/ Reimagining Bishop Arts http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/reimagining-bishop-arts/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/reimagining-bishop-arts/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:57:49 +0000 Joan Arbery http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3714 The other night I really wanted Sour Patch kids. I could have taken the 21 bus down to Walgreens on Colorado, but that would’ve meant a half-hour ride what with the turn-around wait. It wasn’t worth the effort. With all the amenities of being in the Bishop Arts—Espumoso’s, Hunky’s, Veracruz, Epiphany, and Alchemy, to name a few—there just isn’t anywhere to go for your daily necessities. (Admittedly, Sour Patch kids aren’t an everyday need). Such a gap ends up cutting off the neighborhood’s possibilities.

I pondered these absences on the way to work one morning. What’s the rationale for not opening up “convenience” stores in a boutiquey area? Is it because such stores would create places where the people who live here would mix with the people coming in to eat and shop? Such demographic questions don’t seem to arise over in Knox-Henderson or Lakewood Village. But there seems to still be a hang-up about opening grocery stores and pharmacies next to the higher end retail and restaurants. Without these kinds of stores, there’s an implicit barrier created between those who can afford to frequent the District and those who can’t.

Let’s imagine for a moment that a grocery store/pharmacy filled in half the empty lot next to Vitto’s. The store could be made to fit the size and look of the Bishop Arts area, and yet provide everyday items. More foot traffic would emerge, thereby creating more personal encounters between locals and business owners, drumming up more business and creating a more trusting relationship between the neighborhood and the businesses. As it is, that parking lot ends up bleeding all the resources and energies of the Bishop Arts into a waste land, serving no one.

The District could also do with a little more landscaping. What if that empty space that’s now next to Ouch! Fashion got developed into a fountain area—which it looks like it was intended for—drawing people to sit on those benches and eat and talk? Instead, the lovely tree-lined Bishop Ave dead-ends into an uninviting non-space. There ought to be a something welcoming and beautiful that stands at the end of the avenue as a marker for what the area represents. What’s keeping that space empty?

The alleys, which have been muralled and moderately landscaped, could be blocked off (unless vital for deliveries) and turned into pedestrian-only arbors, parks, and beer/smoking gardens. Or why not create an organic garden (divorced from the smoking one, of course), that could then supply the nearby Bolsa with some of its produce? If possible, the zoning that allows occasional festivals to park it in the streets, like last weekend’s Cliff Fest, could extend into the alleyways. These alleys need to be made more use of instead of becoming muddy, tangle-weed cesspools.

The Bishop Arts is great in terms of providing the local and intimate, but it still needs to work harder at providing spaces that annex the people who live in the neighborhood to the stores provided by it. Granted it’s called Bishop Arts, but if cake, soy bean candles, and soda all comprise art, then why can’t Kleenex and bananas? If sustainability is really going to happen here, it can start by including more of the necessities alongside the luxuries.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/reimagining-bishop-arts/feed/ New DMN Management Structure Adds New Layer of Distrust http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/new-dmn-management-structure-adds-new-layer-of-distrust/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/new-dmn-management-structure-adds-new-layer-of-distrust/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:39:10 +0000 Peter Simek http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3711 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.]]> 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.

]]> http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/03/new-dmn-management-structure-adds-new-layer-of-distrust/feed/ The Momentary Quiet http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/02/the-momentary-quiet/ http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/12/02/the-momentary-quiet/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:53:28 +0000 Hans Roegele http://renegadebusdallas.com/?p=3705 “I want a wife—a German wife.” The man sitting across from me was fairly handsome and tall with black hair. He had just finished telling me that he was 21 years old, and while serving in the Lebanese army, he had been wounded both in battles with Hezbollah and the Israelis. Of his nine school-day friends, he said three were dead. Now he wanted out of the army and Lebanon, and thought the only way was through a foreign wife. I had heard similar sentiments before, and a few days later a poor farmer approached me, offering his niece in marriage. The bankers I met in Beirut made no such offer, but most of them already had dual citizenship.

I had met the soldier in the Bekaa Valley, a stronghold of Hezbollah. All along the main road through the valley were posters of Sheikh Nasrallah beaming, or armed fighters superimposed over a map of Lebanon. It was a desperately poor part of the country. At one stop, several people surrounded the van, tapping on the doors and windows, begging. They included an old man with a cane, two women in burkhas, and children. My fellow passengers were all from the Middle East, and they sat stoically through it all while the driver waded through the beggars, gently pushing them aside as though he were treading water.

All of this was happening in the shadows of the massive ruins of the Roman temple complex at Baalbek. There, the architecture exploded in a mid-empire glory of experimentation and plasticity that would not be seen until the European Baroque. Yet the temples at Baalbek also satisfied the Roman passion for order, monumentality, and symmetry that made every major temple complex in the Roman world recognizable. The temples are so large that even from close up you have to look carefully to realize that the ant in the foreground is a human. Nowadays the stones blaze in the sun, gold and white, to the traveler’s bright pink. The granite columns brought from Egypt mostly lay in cracked shafts in the sand, more a victim of the earthquakes than any act of man. Standing there it’s astounding to consider that in a time when a letter took weeks to cross the Mediterranean, an Emperor in Rome decreed that Baalbek should have columns from Egypt, and it was done, that before there was electricity or gas, the inhabitants of Baalbek had running water and heating.

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Stepping out from the Roman site, it is easy to wonder how far, if at all, people have come since then. One night after a day at the ruins, I watched from a roof terrace as all the lights in the modern city went out and the stars came out. The entire city stood still for forty minutes until the power came on again. This happened repeatedly.

And yet, less than an hour away was a monument to the modern Mediterranean: the glass and concrete towers of Beirut, where a late model Mercedes was commonplace, and European boutiques were easily found. Young women wore tight-fitting jeans with at most a brightly-colored headscarf. Thirty minutes north was the seaside town of Jounieh, where the bars were filled with Eastern European prostitutes and the men who were willing to pay for them. New residential skyscrapers are going up all over Beirut, some with windows within a dozen feet of their neighbors. Glass stores, office buildings, car showrooms, and petrol stations line the roads leading out of Beirut, and all along the coast four and five storey apartment blocks sprout from the hillsides, each elbowing their neighbor for the view of the Mediterranean. They are often served by roads with no sidewalk or lighting, and sometimes by unpaved roads. They are only reached by car or one of the legions of decades-old minibuses zipping along Lebanon’s roads. Even these areas lose power daily from about nine until six. Those who can afford to, buy generators. In the area around Beirut, the private sector seems to be hurtling ahead of the state, and the memory of a stable state seems entirely lost.

Nowhere is that clearer than in Beirut itself, for side by side with the gleaming glass towers of new Beirut were the crumbling, pocked concrete frames that once made up downtown Beirut. One such was next to my hotel, and I assumed it was abandoned, until I saw a plywood panel shift and a family came out, warily. The National Museum of Beirut has a display case with molten lumps of metal. The sign tells visitors that these were once priceless figurines between two and three thousand years old. Twenty years ago they were hit by artillery fire and destroyed.

In the ruins of Ancient Tyre I stood on what was once the city’s main street. On either side, a colonnade of granite shafts marched out to the perfectly blue sea. Before an earthquake dropped half the city into the sea, this had been a major trading port which prospered again under Roman rule, rebuilding its city with shaded streets, theatres, and one of the world’s largest Hippodromes. Lebanon’s bankers and merchants still travel the world, and bring their profits back home, but in Tyre the buildings are marked by Israeli shells, and the streets often pause for a convoy of UN vehicles. It is always a chancy business to predict the future, but in the ruins of Tyre, there may be a glimpse.

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