For Gopnik, and for the authors he reviews, there is no doubt that something had to be done about the state of Times Square in the 1970's. Violent crime was rampant in the street lined with porn shops and adult theaters. So, the Gap and Toys R Us, the news networks with their street side studios, and the chain restaurants are all, in some ways, a necessary improvement over the dangerous square of the 70's. Yet, for these authors, something is no doubt lost in the new Times Square. As Gopnik notes, "where once Times Square was hot, it is now cold, where once varied, now uniform, where once alive, now dead." He later explains:
. . .there is something spooky about the contemporary Times Square. . .One of the things that make for vitality in any city, and above all in New York, is the trinity of big buildings, bright lights, and weird stores. The big buildings and bright lights are there in the new Times Square, but the weird stores are not.Gopnik's lament is that when urban renewal comes, it necessarily sweeps away some of the soul that comes with the seedy stuff, the odd local characters who own the weird stores, the vitality of the unapproved art of the underclasses, the beautiful strangeness of urbanity.
Here in Oklahoma City, we are rather famously going through a Renaissance of our own. In the aggregate, this is no doubt a good thing. We are remaking ourselves as a vibrant, first class American city, one that those of us who grew up here can finally be proud of. But at what cost?
No doubt, a little something was lost when Deep Deuce was transformed from a bunch of high density, low rent housing, into the incredibly expensive condos that stand there now. The old Deep Deuce was a place where, during the early years of my father's police career, the police department was working a stabbing almost weekly. But it was also the place where a thriving jazz scene had once hosted Benny Goodman (who moved a performance to a club on NE 2nd street from the Belle Isle Theme Park when the park told him that his black musicians would not be able to play there), and which gave birth to the career of Charlie Christian. And even as hipster creep revitalizes the 23rd street corridor, it pushes out places like Mother's (the iconic florist/head shop), the curiosity shops masquerading as antique stores, and the palm readers with the neon hands in their windows. It is these things, not the chain restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions, that give life to a city for people who actually live there. It is these things and the characters who run them and patronize them that give a place its sense of local character. It is the places ignored by city planners and MAPS initiatives that make our city wonderfully strange. These places need a champion.
And so this blog won't talk much about Bricktown, or the National Memorial, or the other things we've done that anesthetize our hometown into a touristy, convention friendly midwestern city. Instead, the purpose of this blog is to celebrate those disappearing gems that give the city its character. It is to highlight the strange, the gritty, and the seedy stuff that gave Oklahoma City its beautiful urbanity, its seedy soul, even before we labelled ourselves "big league."
