There's been a lot of talk lately, in the newspaper and on the radio and elsewhere, about taxes and the Crossroads Arts District and the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority, etc. Lost in the chatter, I think, is what the Crossroads is really about: a sense of place and community. I got a good dose of that last week, when I went with my wife to take in the sights of First Friday, when the galleries all open their doors late into the evening and the streets are full of people.
We wound up in the backroom of the Dolphin Gallery, where all the founding members of the storied arts district, it seems, were gathered for beer and wine and barbecue. I sat down on an old leather loveseat in the back of the room next to Jim Leedy and listened as a he spun tales of his time as an art student in New York in the 1950s, when the center of the art universe was shifting to lower Manhattan, and Leedy counted among his friends Willem de Kooning and other masters of the abstract expressionism movement. As he spoke, I let my eyes wander around the place. It was an eclectic crowd, from men in suits with loosened ties to shaggy sculptors in stained cargo pants. In the corner stood a refrigerator with every inch of its doors and sides covered with snap shots from previous parties.
The scene, it seemed to me, was distinctly Kansas Citian, not only because there were slabs of blackened ribs on the long table in the middle of the room, but because there was at once an air of cutting-edge creativity -- the presense of artists who could hold their own with those from the nation's largest metros -- and a refreshing lack of pretention. This despite the fact that our arts community has much to brag about, with a world-class art school, top-notch museums and a network of benefactors who are among the most generous in the nation. These contributions define our city in many ways, but the people who helped make them are just regular folks.
The conversations I had with folks at the party were, by and large, light and upbeat, full of creative energy and possibility. But on several occasions -- usually after I'd say, with a broad gesture across the room, "This is great" -- folks would look down and shake their heads and say, "It's a shame it's all going to end."
There is, in the Crossroads, even amid the festiveness of First Friday, a sense of impending doom.
It's still unclear what elected officials can do to save this delicate community that's sprung up in our urban core. Perhaps the already approved Crossroad's Arts PIEA is the answer, at least for the short term. And the Mayor's Office is planning a joint town hall meeting with the Jackson County Executive in hopes of finding solutions to the drastic tax increases that have been coming each year.
But for now, for the sake of this blog post, it seems worthwhile to at least acknowledge that we need places and communities like this, that are distinctly ours, that make Kansas City unlike any other city in the world. It seems that at least some of this sentiment ought to be present as we frame what is to be done.
-JM
