Tomorrow, a re-worked version of Oklahoma City's proposed ordinance against panhandling in medians will be considered by City Council. When Ward 6 Councilwoman Meg Salyer introduced the proposal in September, the ordinance was explicitly designed to rid city streets of the blight of panhandling, addressing it as a quality of life issue--not for the panhandlers, but rather for the people in their cars who don't wish to look at panhandlers.
After substantial public outcry, the proposal was tabled utimately until December 8. Since then, supporters of the proposal have shifted the focus away from panhandling per se and onto public safety, now claiming that the ordinance is needed to save the lives of people in the medians, who are at risk of being struck by motorists. Meanwhile, the Oklahoma City Homeless Alliance, which supports the popular Curbside Chronicle, a paper which employs the homeless, claims that the ordinance will kill the Chronicle, 90% of whose sales are made from public medians.
I'm not entirely convinced that this is the case. I'm not at all sure that the Chronicle will be destroyed of vendors are forced to move from the median to the curbside. I am, however, completely convinced that "safety" is not at all the true purpose of this ordinance. The city has been unable to show that people being hit by cars while in the median has been a considerable or consistent problem. One highly publicized case involved a firefighter being killed in Michigan while collecting money during the "Fill the Boot" campaign, but this turned out to be a premeditated homicide. Meanwhile, Phil Sipe, president of OKC's IAFF, the firefighter's union, said in the NewsOK linked above that the most serious injury he can recall in our own city during a Fill the Boot campaign has been a sprained ankle.
The fact is, there is no data to support claims that this ordinance is necessary for public safety. Instead, tying the issue to public safety is clearly a rhetorical move, made to make an anti-panhandling ordinance (which many critics consider an anti-poverty ordinance) more palatable. The need to address poverty and homelessness is very real. And the need to address panhandling is even understandable. I fully appreciate that many in the voting public are uncomfortable being constantly confronted with panhandlers, though I admittedly look down on these people for their squeamishness. But to claim that this ordinance is about safety, and not about getting rid of panhandlers is simply disingenuous.
I don't personally think that panhandling ordinances are useful. They do nothing to solve the real, root problems, or even to improve them. Rather, they simply sweep the problem under the rug and may even make it worse. While there is some research (and a great deal of overblown anecdotal evidence) to suggest that many panhandlers are not truly street-homeless, policies that may inhibit worthwhile projects like the Chronicle, the work of the Restoration Church, the Fire Department's "Fill the Boot" campaign, and the like are not at all helpful. To me it's clear that there's not actual public safety problem at issue here. The actual question is if we are willing to kill off the Chronicle in order to insure that commuters in our urban areas have a less ugly ride to work.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Imploding Downtown. . .Again, or 'the Problem of Missing Teeth'
This morning, the former Hotel Black and the Motor Hotel next-door were imploded as the 400 block of West Sheridan continues to be cleared to make way for new development. This comes after the hotly debated destruction of the Union Bus Station at 427 W Sheridan in July, after Councilman Ed Shadid's efforts to save it through litigation failed.
I admit that I will have a hard time missing 427 West Sheridan. Generally, if I know a place by its specific street address, that's a bad sign. It means I've had plenty of negative contact with the place. So though I understand the general anger among otherwise like-minded folks over the demolition of the Union Bus Station, I have a hard time mustering the righteous indignation I was able to for Stage Center (a place I loved and whose address I do not know). I'm more bothered by the destruction of the old Hotel Black, whose glass encased penthouse (or whatever that was) was one of the defining features of our skyline for me when I was a kid. I also hated to see the destruction of the block of retail store fronts along the south side of Main Street. Though they were all empty, and perhaps no longer viable, I loved the porcelain tiled facades that so richly captured their period.
What worries me most, though, is whether or not anything worth having will actually replace these. It's bad enough that historic buildings with lovely facades are being destroyed. But I would at least feel a bit better if I had more faith that something worth building would actually replace them.
Perhaps my fears are unfounded. Before the block was cleared, plans were well underway to develop the 27 story 499 Sheridan project, which already has two major tenants. It's just that we in OKC have heard all this before.
In the 1970s, the Pei Plan called for huge swaths of downtown to be razed to make way for the future Myriad Gardens, the Galleria shopping center, and several other projects. Much of the demolition work, which is cheap compared to actually building new projects, was done so that by the end of the decade, vacant lots separated the financial district from Film Row (where not much was going on and which is only recently on the upswing).
Then, the oil bust of the early 1980s came. A detailed account of the boom/bust and its effects on Downtown development can be found in Steve Lackmeyer and Jack Money's book OKC: Second Time Around (Full Circle Books, OKC), essential reading for OKC enthusiasts. The short account is that many of the planned projects were abandoned. The botanical gardens and the Crystal Bridge were eventually completed, as was a portion of the Galleria which mostly sat empty until the Oklahoman moved into the building recently. Many of the lots that remained were eventually bought on the cheap and paved over into parking lots.
This created what planners have called "missing teeth" (see Jeff Speck Walkable City, 214-5). These gaps in the urban fabric of a city create a sort of false barrier. People don't want to walk across the open, unshaded and uninhabited space of a parking lot, so they simply don't. Thus, each part of downtown becomes an enclosed space, separated and disconnected from all the other enclosed spaces downtown. These empty spaces are part of what makes a downtown un-walkable, unenjoyable, and uninhabitable. (To see how these missing teeth have changed the look of several cities in the period of urban sprawl, see Shane Hampton's overhead slider project for OU-IQC, "60 Years of Urban Change.")
Of course, this is not a problem if the 499 project goes along as planned. But as the lot that's supposed to house the new OG&E headquarters sits fallow across the street (a project that was supposed to begin as early as May), and oil and natural gas prices plummet, I worry that we are simply going to go through the same cycle all over again. After all, this period of renewed fervor to reclaim downtown followed by a stagnating energy market seems eerily reminiscent of, well, the last time the exact same thing happened. What if these projects, like the projects of the 70s, are abandoned? Will the Motor Hotel, Hotel Black, and the Union Bus Station become parking lots?
I hated 427 W Sheridan, but not near as much as I would hate another parking lot in the middle of downtown. I will hopefully (probably?) look back and wonder why I was ever so worried about this. I'm probably afraid over nothing. I'm probably being reactionary. But I can't help it; I'm an Oklahoman, and I've seen it all before.
I admit that I will have a hard time missing 427 West Sheridan. Generally, if I know a place by its specific street address, that's a bad sign. It means I've had plenty of negative contact with the place. So though I understand the general anger among otherwise like-minded folks over the demolition of the Union Bus Station, I have a hard time mustering the righteous indignation I was able to for Stage Center (a place I loved and whose address I do not know). I'm more bothered by the destruction of the old Hotel Black, whose glass encased penthouse (or whatever that was) was one of the defining features of our skyline for me when I was a kid. I also hated to see the destruction of the block of retail store fronts along the south side of Main Street. Though they were all empty, and perhaps no longer viable, I loved the porcelain tiled facades that so richly captured their period.
What worries me most, though, is whether or not anything worth having will actually replace these. It's bad enough that historic buildings with lovely facades are being destroyed. But I would at least feel a bit better if I had more faith that something worth building would actually replace them.
Perhaps my fears are unfounded. Before the block was cleared, plans were well underway to develop the 27 story 499 Sheridan project, which already has two major tenants. It's just that we in OKC have heard all this before.
In the 1970s, the Pei Plan called for huge swaths of downtown to be razed to make way for the future Myriad Gardens, the Galleria shopping center, and several other projects. Much of the demolition work, which is cheap compared to actually building new projects, was done so that by the end of the decade, vacant lots separated the financial district from Film Row (where not much was going on and which is only recently on the upswing).
Then, the oil bust of the early 1980s came. A detailed account of the boom/bust and its effects on Downtown development can be found in Steve Lackmeyer and Jack Money's book OKC: Second Time Around (Full Circle Books, OKC), essential reading for OKC enthusiasts. The short account is that many of the planned projects were abandoned. The botanical gardens and the Crystal Bridge were eventually completed, as was a portion of the Galleria which mostly sat empty until the Oklahoman moved into the building recently. Many of the lots that remained were eventually bought on the cheap and paved over into parking lots.
This created what planners have called "missing teeth" (see Jeff Speck Walkable City, 214-5). These gaps in the urban fabric of a city create a sort of false barrier. People don't want to walk across the open, unshaded and uninhabited space of a parking lot, so they simply don't. Thus, each part of downtown becomes an enclosed space, separated and disconnected from all the other enclosed spaces downtown. These empty spaces are part of what makes a downtown un-walkable, unenjoyable, and uninhabitable. (To see how these missing teeth have changed the look of several cities in the period of urban sprawl, see Shane Hampton's overhead slider project for OU-IQC, "60 Years of Urban Change.")
Of course, this is not a problem if the 499 project goes along as planned. But as the lot that's supposed to house the new OG&E headquarters sits fallow across the street (a project that was supposed to begin as early as May), and oil and natural gas prices plummet, I worry that we are simply going to go through the same cycle all over again. After all, this period of renewed fervor to reclaim downtown followed by a stagnating energy market seems eerily reminiscent of, well, the last time the exact same thing happened. What if these projects, like the projects of the 70s, are abandoned? Will the Motor Hotel, Hotel Black, and the Union Bus Station become parking lots?
I hated 427 W Sheridan, but not near as much as I would hate another parking lot in the middle of downtown. I will hopefully (probably?) look back and wonder why I was ever so worried about this. I'm probably afraid over nothing. I'm probably being reactionary. But I can't help it; I'm an Oklahoman, and I've seen it all before.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Plaza Mayor WILL Fail. . .Thank God
I spent the early part of my career on the south side, patrolling from Santa Fe to Portland and the river to SW Grand Blvd. SW 29th street is the main artery of the area and so I was up and down that street a dozen times a day. Though the traffic is at times horrendous, one of the things I loved about SW 29th street, then and now, is that so few of the signs are in English.
For me, the presence of districts where the signs are in languages other than English is a sign of a great city. They suggest a number of things that are important in a thriving urban area. First, they suggest international influence and diversity (albeit a limited type of diversity, since a possible drawback of these districts is that they may allow people to remain segregated in their own neighborhoods). They also suggest a strong sense of community and loyalty, anchored in a sense of place. This sense of place, of being grounded, promotes community involvement, responsibility, and ownership.
While certainly the international neighborhoods in Oklahoma city, notably the SW 29th Street corridor and the Asian District, cannot rival neighborhoods in other cities like the Chinatowns of LA, NYC, and San Francisco, or the North End in Boston, they are hidden gems in our city, deserving of attention and investment. One of my frustrations working on the south side was that it had so much potential but received so little investment. I've believed for several years that SW 29th Street, already a natural commercial district by virtue of its location within OKC's sizable Hispanic community, could become a thriving destination, a place where Hispanic business owners might enjoy the benefits of the kind of local chic, hipster vibe of places like Paseo and the Plaza District (though there's admittedly drawbacks to this, like gentrification. A subject for another time).
So, in 2013, it was with great irritation that I learned of plans to rebrand the old Crossroads Mall into Plaza Mayor in an attempt to lure Hispanic businesses into one place to "serve" the Hispanic community (and to save the dying mall). This plan horrified me for a number of reasons. First, it felt a bit gross that developers seemed to be trying to save a failing business model by passing it down to a minority community. Something just didn't feel right about, once again, bequeathing to minority communities our used-up, hand-me-down, middle-class commodities.
My greater fear, however, was that it would work--at least a little for a little while. My fear was that Plaza Mayor would pull Hispanic businesses and services away from SW 29th street, Commerce Avenue, and other Hispanic business districts that were embedded within the actual Hispanic community. Of course, developers tried to sell the idea that the Hispanic community in OKC was centered in the south side and so, Crossroads being on the the south side, this was a perfect place for such a development. We're putting businesses for the Hispanic community where the community lives. Sounds great, right? Of course, the fact is that this is only true if we're still thinking in terms of middle-class suburban car culture. This is because, in reality, no one lives near any mall. Just look at the overhead view:
This is why every time I drive past the empty Plaza Mayor parking lot, I'm encouraged by the hope that it will die sooner rather than later, before it is able to destroy the neighborhoods I grew to love early in my career. I'm also encouraged by today's report by the Oklahoman's Brianna Bailey that community leaders on the south side have begun working to secure public support for development on SW 29th street.
After all, many of the pieces are already in place to make SW 29th the kind of thriving urban neighborhood that might rival international districts in other cities. There are loyal, grounded residents in close proximity. There are a few well-established cornerstone restaurants like Taqueria de Los Desvelados (my favorite). On weekend nights, the street is teaming with taco trucks and people cruising in customized cars, giving the street healthy potential for a thriving street festival scene.
One of the things the area needs is some coordination--someone to connect with in-place neighborhood associations like the College Hill NA, a well-run, highly involved model of a neighborhood association. College Hill, hosts its own neighborhood movie nights, projecting movies onto screens in members' backyards, meets with police and fire officials for Neighborhood Night Out, gets together for ice cream and "Mexican Bingo," and so on. With support from and coordination with other NAs and business owners, these types of events could easily become district events rather than neighborhood ones.
But the area also needs and deserves some public investment. The area needs better sidewalks and well marked crosswalks to make 29th street more walkable and more suited to gathering. As it exists, SW 29th street is pretty uncomfortable if you're not in a car. The street, which has a reputation for being in a "bad side of town" could also use more highly visible but benign police presence, like one might see in Bricktown or at the Fair, in volumes high enough to make visitors feel safe but laissez faire enough to be part of the atmosphere. Finally, district signs, decorative lighting and other "placemaking" amenities visible in other neighborhoods would help to give the residents in the district a sense of pride and the affirmation that the city supports their efforts.
There is enough neighborhood loyalty, community interest, and embedded commercial presence on the south side that, with some reasonable public investment to support what's already being done there by private citizens and business owners, the SW 29th street corridor could become one of OKC's really cool places. Though, admittedly, Big Truck Tacos should worry about what would happen if hipsters were to find out about south side truck tacos. And perhaps the south side should also be a bit worried about hipster-creep.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Alternative Other Cities: Chicago-and its Suburbs
Being good urbanists and all, our family doesn't go to resorts or lakes for our family vacations. We go to cities where we don't rent a car, but rather use public transportation. We try to break free from the tourist areas and break out into neighborhoods where we can explore local haunts, talk to people live there who don't make money by catering to us, listen to the accents, and so on. We try to learn the individual character of cities.
This summer, when a large family trip to Germany was cancelled, we decided instead to visit Chicago, a city that my wife Charissa has never been to, and that I have only been to once when I was 14. We did plenty of touristy things, like taking in the museums and Navy Pier and the chrome bean in Millennium Park, but we also branched out to visit the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge in the near west side, a dive Pierogi restaurant underneath the "L" train, a rich-people neighborhood north of downtown where we found an early Frank Lloyd Wright (designed with Louis Sullivan), and a small chocolate shop in Old Town where one can buy a chocolate popsicle shaped like the Star of David or a chocolate Colt 1911. I even got us going the wrong direction on the green line and took a ride through the high rise projects in south Chicago.
On about the third day, we began to notice just how often we were hearing references to the "suburbs." Obviously, this isn't particularly uncommon in cities, but something was different about the way Chicagoans use the word--with a kind of tone of voice. The word was used as a kind of blanket to refer not to a place so much as a nebulous concept. In seven days, I never heard the actual name of a town, but rather only heard references to the generic "suburbs." One of the more telling uses of "suburbs" came from the semi-official language of television news, when an anchor discussed a large traffic accident on an inbound interstate, mentioning that "police, along with 'suburban' departments" were on scene. "Police" meant Chicago PD. Meanwhile, the "suburban" departments were not named. Even in the official discourse of the news, there seemed to be Chicago and everywhere else. Charissa even overheard a conversation in Wrigley field where a woman told a Chicagoan that she lived "in the suburb northwest of here," as if even a local would not have known where she was talking about if she had used the name of the town.
These are just a couple examples of this usage that we heard over and over. I have never been in a city that has such a self-conscious divide between city and suburb. I asked a architectural tour guide (one of those touristy things we did) about this, asking him why people seemed to have such disdain in their voices when they used the word "suburbs" here. He rolled his eyes and explained this a couple ways. First he said that people who live in the suburbs are "always telling people they live in Chicago, but they don't." This explanation is pretty common in big cities, even in Oklahoma City. The more telling explanation to me, which seemed an aside for him was this: "When I go out there, I get lost." A similar sentiment was echoed by my friend Michael, who we met for lunch while we were there. I forgot to ask him specifically about this issue (though I planned to) but at one point I complained about my own recent move to a suburban neighborhood and how I couldn't bike everywhere anymore. He mentioned that his wife's parents live in the "suburbs" near Chicago and that every time he "goes out there," he realizes that suburban life is not for him.
People in Chicago and people in its suburbs just don't seem to mix much. Chicago, an old city with lots of open land around it, may have the most meaningful divide between the city and the rail-road suburb of any city I've visited. In an old and compact city like Boston, you'd have to drive a long way before you're in a suburb that actually feels suburban. Many of Boston's suburbs still feel very urban, so the distinction between Boston and Belmont down't feel so extreme. Meanwhile, Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city but a relative late bloomer built after the advent of the automobile, is itself almost entirely suburban, so the difference between city and suburbs there is a technicality. In Chicago, on the other hand, the city itself is classically urban, while the suburbs are definitively suburban.
The distance between the two is not a simple matter of heavy inbound traffic, but of the two different lifestyles that have come to define urban living versus suburban living. Chicago, then, is an interesting laboratory in what makes these lifestyles different and, perhaps, incompatible. It would have been interesting to have explores the suburbs and heard from people "out there." But, alas, the suburban transit lines cost extra.
This summer, when a large family trip to Germany was cancelled, we decided instead to visit Chicago, a city that my wife Charissa has never been to, and that I have only been to once when I was 14. We did plenty of touristy things, like taking in the museums and Navy Pier and the chrome bean in Millennium Park, but we also branched out to visit the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge in the near west side, a dive Pierogi restaurant underneath the "L" train, a rich-people neighborhood north of downtown where we found an early Frank Lloyd Wright (designed with Louis Sullivan), and a small chocolate shop in Old Town where one can buy a chocolate popsicle shaped like the Star of David or a chocolate Colt 1911. I even got us going the wrong direction on the green line and took a ride through the high rise projects in south Chicago.
On about the third day, we began to notice just how often we were hearing references to the "suburbs." Obviously, this isn't particularly uncommon in cities, but something was different about the way Chicagoans use the word--with a kind of tone of voice. The word was used as a kind of blanket to refer not to a place so much as a nebulous concept. In seven days, I never heard the actual name of a town, but rather only heard references to the generic "suburbs." One of the more telling uses of "suburbs" came from the semi-official language of television news, when an anchor discussed a large traffic accident on an inbound interstate, mentioning that "police, along with 'suburban' departments" were on scene. "Police" meant Chicago PD. Meanwhile, the "suburban" departments were not named. Even in the official discourse of the news, there seemed to be Chicago and everywhere else. Charissa even overheard a conversation in Wrigley field where a woman told a Chicagoan that she lived "in the suburb northwest of here," as if even a local would not have known where she was talking about if she had used the name of the town.
These are just a couple examples of this usage that we heard over and over. I have never been in a city that has such a self-conscious divide between city and suburb. I asked a architectural tour guide (one of those touristy things we did) about this, asking him why people seemed to have such disdain in their voices when they used the word "suburbs" here. He rolled his eyes and explained this a couple ways. First he said that people who live in the suburbs are "always telling people they live in Chicago, but they don't." This explanation is pretty common in big cities, even in Oklahoma City. The more telling explanation to me, which seemed an aside for him was this: "When I go out there, I get lost." A similar sentiment was echoed by my friend Michael, who we met for lunch while we were there. I forgot to ask him specifically about this issue (though I planned to) but at one point I complained about my own recent move to a suburban neighborhood and how I couldn't bike everywhere anymore. He mentioned that his wife's parents live in the "suburbs" near Chicago and that every time he "goes out there," he realizes that suburban life is not for him.
People in Chicago and people in its suburbs just don't seem to mix much. Chicago, an old city with lots of open land around it, may have the most meaningful divide between the city and the rail-road suburb of any city I've visited. In an old and compact city like Boston, you'd have to drive a long way before you're in a suburb that actually feels suburban. Many of Boston's suburbs still feel very urban, so the distinction between Boston and Belmont down't feel so extreme. Meanwhile, Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city but a relative late bloomer built after the advent of the automobile, is itself almost entirely suburban, so the difference between city and suburbs there is a technicality. In Chicago, on the other hand, the city itself is classically urban, while the suburbs are definitively suburban.
The distance between the two is not a simple matter of heavy inbound traffic, but of the two different lifestyles that have come to define urban living versus suburban living. Chicago, then, is an interesting laboratory in what makes these lifestyles different and, perhaps, incompatible. It would have been interesting to have explores the suburbs and heard from people "out there." But, alas, the suburban transit lines cost extra.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Marathon Therapy--For Me, for the City
I am not the only person who runs as a form of therapy. In fact, it's a common enough motivation that it inspires t-shirts. I was always a runner as a kid, but I slowed down a lot after the police academy because, well, the police academy will make you sick to death of running. I would run two or three miles on a treadmill as a warm-up to weight training and because doctors say you should have 20-30 minutes of cardio a day (or has that gone up now?) but that was about it for ten years. Then, in October, we put our house on the market and I turned into a basket case. I wasn't sleeping, I had ridiculous anxiety, I was not eating well. I'm a bit high-strung anyway, and the stress of buying and selling houses, packing, and moving sent me over the edge, despite the fact that the whole process went remarkably smoothly. I was actually to the point where I thought it might be time to seek professional help. Instead, I went running. And I kept running.
As my distances began to get longer and my times faster, I began to think I might like to train for the half-marathon. After all, the twentieth anniversary of the Murrah Bombing would be coming, so the Memorial Marathon seemed like a natural fit for my first timed distance run. So I began to take it seriously. Until two months ago, I wasn't sure I'd make it. I kept getting sick over the winter with stuff my kids were bringing home, so my training was falling off. But when it warmed up and I got up to eleven miles, I signed up. A couple months later, the Half Marathon medal hangs in my closet, the 13.1 sticker is on my rear windshield, and like many newly initiated distance runners, I'm hooked.
The Memorial Marathon was especially meaningful for me because the Memorial Half is a running tour of the neighborhoods where I've spent most of my career. I love these old neighborhoods: the tall buildings and shadowy streets of downtown, the stately approach toward the capital building, the handsome old houses of Mesta Park, Heritage Hills, and Crown Heights. Throughout the run, I got the sense that I was doing something I would never forget in places I love to remember. The whole run was very touching and meaningful for me.
I would be remiss to neglect the stated purpose of the Marathon itself: a fund raiser to support the OKC National Memorial, and an event explicitly dedicated to the memory of those lost in the Murrah Bombing. I have been reluctant to write about the events of April 19, 1995 for a number of reasons. For one thing, I am suspicious of the common "where were you when you found out," kinds of conversations. I understand the importance of public memory and take seriously the realness of public grief, but I also fear the temptation of making the event about myself, when so many, some that I know well, were effected much more personally than I. For another thing, with months of buildup by local media outlets, I fear exploitation of the event and its victims. I don't want to be simply adding to the noise, noise that a great many people, including some that I love very much, are trying as hard as they can to avoid. For some people, the notion that "We Will Never Forget" is not a well-meaning promise, but a horrifying curse.
Nevertheless, the event was a large part of my motivation to run. In 1995, my father was a crime scene detective on the Oklahoma City Police Department, and my step-father, who I lived with, was an Oklahoma City Firefighter. Both of them are strong, courageous, and empathic men, and both were caught up in the Hell of that month. My step-father spent nearly a month digging through the rubble of the bombed out building, and my father spent that same time assigned to the Medical Examiner's Office processing the bodies of the victims. Unsurprisingly, the event had a singular impact on them and on our family in ways that are, frankly, no one's business.
My dad's were and are exceptional men. They both went into their respective professions for all the right reasons. They are brave and caring, and what they experienced in that month hurt them, probably more deeply that I actually understand (they both hold their cards pretty close). I have always felt a debt to them for spending a month in a place they would not allow me to even go see. For this reason, I saw the run as a way to honor them. When training was tough, when my body was breaking down, or I felt sick, I pushed on by telling myself, "they spent a month in Hell; I can spend a few hours running." It's an empty ovation, I'm sure. A run that many people do for fun cannot really repay for the sacrifices made by any of those who were forced to sacrifice in 1995 and in the years since, but it's all I can really do: to endure in order to honor their endurance.
Beyond this, (and I didn't really think about this until during the run) it became a way to reclaim the month and the sight. April is no longer the month, and NW 5th and Harvey is no longer the place that tried to destroy my fathers and my family. It's the time and place where I accomplished something really difficult and important. In a way that is admittedly imperfect and which may or may not be lasting, at least in my own psyche, I've taken back my family. At the very least, I've reclaimed the month of April.
This notion occurred to me as a ran up Lincoln Blvd, with the field of flags in front of the capital on one side, and hand-written posters with the names of victims on the other. The Marathon itself hangs signs on light posts with the names on all 168 victims along the course, but far more touching are the hand-written signs that people along the course hold. Friends and family of victims participate as spectators, make home-made signs, hand out medals at the finish line, serve as board members, and run the race. In fact, the whole city is involved in the race. Spectators line the entire 26 mile course, stand in front of their houses handing out food and drinks to runners, and cheer for people they don't know. Neighborhood associations decorate their neighborhoods and line the streets in ridiculous costumes. Two local T.V. stations preempt programming to carry the race on live television. This communal effort speaks to the meaning of the Memorial Marathon for this city. The city was injured, horrified, and changed forever in April of 1995. But through the Marathon, we've taken back that time and place. We've reclaimed it for ourselves and for our community. Downtown in April is no longer a place of defeat, fear, and injury. Instead, it's a place of celebration, strength, endurance, and triumph.
As my distances began to get longer and my times faster, I began to think I might like to train for the half-marathon. After all, the twentieth anniversary of the Murrah Bombing would be coming, so the Memorial Marathon seemed like a natural fit for my first timed distance run. So I began to take it seriously. Until two months ago, I wasn't sure I'd make it. I kept getting sick over the winter with stuff my kids were bringing home, so my training was falling off. But when it warmed up and I got up to eleven miles, I signed up. A couple months later, the Half Marathon medal hangs in my closet, the 13.1 sticker is on my rear windshield, and like many newly initiated distance runners, I'm hooked.
The Memorial Marathon was especially meaningful for me because the Memorial Half is a running tour of the neighborhoods where I've spent most of my career. I love these old neighborhoods: the tall buildings and shadowy streets of downtown, the stately approach toward the capital building, the handsome old houses of Mesta Park, Heritage Hills, and Crown Heights. Throughout the run, I got the sense that I was doing something I would never forget in places I love to remember. The whole run was very touching and meaningful for me.
I would be remiss to neglect the stated purpose of the Marathon itself: a fund raiser to support the OKC National Memorial, and an event explicitly dedicated to the memory of those lost in the Murrah Bombing. I have been reluctant to write about the events of April 19, 1995 for a number of reasons. For one thing, I am suspicious of the common "where were you when you found out," kinds of conversations. I understand the importance of public memory and take seriously the realness of public grief, but I also fear the temptation of making the event about myself, when so many, some that I know well, were effected much more personally than I. For another thing, with months of buildup by local media outlets, I fear exploitation of the event and its victims. I don't want to be simply adding to the noise, noise that a great many people, including some that I love very much, are trying as hard as they can to avoid. For some people, the notion that "We Will Never Forget" is not a well-meaning promise, but a horrifying curse.
Nevertheless, the event was a large part of my motivation to run. In 1995, my father was a crime scene detective on the Oklahoma City Police Department, and my step-father, who I lived with, was an Oklahoma City Firefighter. Both of them are strong, courageous, and empathic men, and both were caught up in the Hell of that month. My step-father spent nearly a month digging through the rubble of the bombed out building, and my father spent that same time assigned to the Medical Examiner's Office processing the bodies of the victims. Unsurprisingly, the event had a singular impact on them and on our family in ways that are, frankly, no one's business.
My dad's were and are exceptional men. They both went into their respective professions for all the right reasons. They are brave and caring, and what they experienced in that month hurt them, probably more deeply that I actually understand (they both hold their cards pretty close). I have always felt a debt to them for spending a month in a place they would not allow me to even go see. For this reason, I saw the run as a way to honor them. When training was tough, when my body was breaking down, or I felt sick, I pushed on by telling myself, "they spent a month in Hell; I can spend a few hours running." It's an empty ovation, I'm sure. A run that many people do for fun cannot really repay for the sacrifices made by any of those who were forced to sacrifice in 1995 and in the years since, but it's all I can really do: to endure in order to honor their endurance.
Beyond this, (and I didn't really think about this until during the run) it became a way to reclaim the month and the sight. April is no longer the month, and NW 5th and Harvey is no longer the place that tried to destroy my fathers and my family. It's the time and place where I accomplished something really difficult and important. In a way that is admittedly imperfect and which may or may not be lasting, at least in my own psyche, I've taken back my family. At the very least, I've reclaimed the month of April.
This notion occurred to me as a ran up Lincoln Blvd, with the field of flags in front of the capital on one side, and hand-written posters with the names of victims on the other. The Marathon itself hangs signs on light posts with the names on all 168 victims along the course, but far more touching are the hand-written signs that people along the course hold. Friends and family of victims participate as spectators, make home-made signs, hand out medals at the finish line, serve as board members, and run the race. In fact, the whole city is involved in the race. Spectators line the entire 26 mile course, stand in front of their houses handing out food and drinks to runners, and cheer for people they don't know. Neighborhood associations decorate their neighborhoods and line the streets in ridiculous costumes. Two local T.V. stations preempt programming to carry the race on live television. This communal effort speaks to the meaning of the Memorial Marathon for this city. The city was injured, horrified, and changed forever in April of 1995. But through the Marathon, we've taken back that time and place. We've reclaimed it for ourselves and for our community. Downtown in April is no longer a place of defeat, fear, and injury. Instead, it's a place of celebration, strength, endurance, and triumph.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Silent City
As an admitted OKC homer (that phrase is part of my Twitter profile description), I am proud of our city. I brag about how far it's come, how sneaky-cool it is, how it's headed in the right direction, and so on. But I'm also careful to remember that we have a long way to go, both in policy and in the culture of our city. I'm careful to accept our "city on the rise" rhetoric because I think that nothing will hinder our progress like buying too much into our own hype. There is a danger that we may become unreflective. It is in this spirit that I write this sort of "State of the Urban City."
Recently, we hosted a Korean student who needed a place to stay in the week before the dorms opened. This was his first time in the U.S. so being good hosts, we were eager to show him around as much as we could. Park, our guest, is from Seoul, South Korea, one of the great mega-cities of the world. It's home to ten million people and center of a metropolis of twenty-five million. But it's also in the midst of a transitional period between traditional Asian culture and a more westernized one. Korean young people increasingly emulate American culture. For this reason, among others I'm sure, Park was very eager to learn and we were very eager to teach. As usual, I ended up learning more than I taught.
On Park's first full day here, we took him downtown in the late afternoon. It was the tail end of a chilly workday with the Thunder on the road. It was in the last few days of December. People were ice skating at the Myriad Gardens and snow sledding at the ballpark. A family was taking family photos in the Devon Tower atrium, hispanic students rode through Bricktown on Spokies bikes and people stood in a sizable line inside Starbucks. All in all, not a bad day. By Oklahoma City standards.
On the other hand, other than these few pockets of activity, not much else was going on. The Winter Shoppes had all closed but the temporary structures were still there. Ironically, these added to the feeling that nothing was going on. After all, what says "there's nothing here" better than structures where there is supposed to be something that is no longer there. Also, though it was the end of the workday, no one hung around to walk downtown or visit pubs to unwind from the day. Nobody was walking to nearby apartments or transit stops. Instead, and despite the huge growth of the downtown housing market, most people still got into their cars and drove back to their homes in the suburbs.
We walked all over downtown. We crossed streets with ease, went into the underground when we wanted to warm up (it was also empty), bought shirts at the Thunder Shop, stood in line for $4 coffee at Starbucks, took pictures from the top of the Bricktown parking garage and in the atrium of Devon Tower. As we were walking back to the car, Park said something in his broken English that brought into perspective just how far we've come (15 years ago, I would not have brought him downtown) but also how far we have to go. It was this:
A few days later, on New Year's Day, we took him to Qual Springs Mall. It was a totally different scene. It turns out, New Year's Day is a big shopping day (who knew). The stores and hallways were packed with people, the music was lively, people ate in the food court, and waited in line for movies at AMC. At one store, long tables of women's shoes were on sale, and the crowds had gathered to rifle through them, bumping into each other, spilling boxes onto the floor, arguing with each other and so on. We ran into people we knew at least three times, snacked, and window shopped. In other words, all the stuff that should happen on the street in healthy urban neighborhoods.
The message here, at least to me, is that with all our improvements, the centers of our lives are still out in the outskirts, where we park in huge parking lots and walk in the climate controlled, high-overhead, false urbanity of the shopping mall. One may argue that it was the cold weather than kept people from downtown, and it's not fair that I'm using a December day to critique our city. But urbanists love to point out that the number of months outdoor cafes are open in Stockholm is twelve, and the liveliest time of year in many cold German cities is Christmas, whose outdoor holiday markets are famously competitive. This may indeed be a factor here in OKC, but pedestrian cities with long winters know how to do winter.
The lesson here is that Oklahoma City is still, in large part, an event city. Downtown is lively in the hours before a Thunder home game. Midtown and SOSA is flooded on an H&8th night. However, we don't yet have a city that is organically vibrant, un-planned cool, naturally urban. We may be "on the rise," but we haven't yet risen.
Recently, we hosted a Korean student who needed a place to stay in the week before the dorms opened. This was his first time in the U.S. so being good hosts, we were eager to show him around as much as we could. Park, our guest, is from Seoul, South Korea, one of the great mega-cities of the world. It's home to ten million people and center of a metropolis of twenty-five million. But it's also in the midst of a transitional period between traditional Asian culture and a more westernized one. Korean young people increasingly emulate American culture. For this reason, among others I'm sure, Park was very eager to learn and we were very eager to teach. As usual, I ended up learning more than I taught.
On Park's first full day here, we took him downtown in the late afternoon. It was the tail end of a chilly workday with the Thunder on the road. It was in the last few days of December. People were ice skating at the Myriad Gardens and snow sledding at the ballpark. A family was taking family photos in the Devon Tower atrium, hispanic students rode through Bricktown on Spokies bikes and people stood in a sizable line inside Starbucks. All in all, not a bad day. By Oklahoma City standards.
On the other hand, other than these few pockets of activity, not much else was going on. The Winter Shoppes had all closed but the temporary structures were still there. Ironically, these added to the feeling that nothing was going on. After all, what says "there's nothing here" better than structures where there is supposed to be something that is no longer there. Also, though it was the end of the workday, no one hung around to walk downtown or visit pubs to unwind from the day. Nobody was walking to nearby apartments or transit stops. Instead, and despite the huge growth of the downtown housing market, most people still got into their cars and drove back to their homes in the suburbs.
We walked all over downtown. We crossed streets with ease, went into the underground when we wanted to warm up (it was also empty), bought shirts at the Thunder Shop, stood in line for $4 coffee at Starbucks, took pictures from the top of the Bricktown parking garage and in the atrium of Devon Tower. As we were walking back to the car, Park said something in his broken English that brought into perspective just how far we've come (15 years ago, I would not have brought him downtown) but also how far we have to go. It was this:
"This city is very silence."I remember that, in college, international students from Albania who I worked a catering job with had been very disappointed in our picturesque but small college town in north-central Arkansas. They said that they had been expecting New York City. They thought all American cities would be like films of New York. I don't know whether or not Park had similar ideas when coming here, or if, more likely, he was simply comparing our city to his own. But his statement felt like a critique, or at least a counterpoint to our own rhetoric that we have come into our own as a big city. Certainly, silence is not what I want for or from our downtown.
A few days later, on New Year's Day, we took him to Qual Springs Mall. It was a totally different scene. It turns out, New Year's Day is a big shopping day (who knew). The stores and hallways were packed with people, the music was lively, people ate in the food court, and waited in line for movies at AMC. At one store, long tables of women's shoes were on sale, and the crowds had gathered to rifle through them, bumping into each other, spilling boxes onto the floor, arguing with each other and so on. We ran into people we knew at least three times, snacked, and window shopped. In other words, all the stuff that should happen on the street in healthy urban neighborhoods.
The message here, at least to me, is that with all our improvements, the centers of our lives are still out in the outskirts, where we park in huge parking lots and walk in the climate controlled, high-overhead, false urbanity of the shopping mall. One may argue that it was the cold weather than kept people from downtown, and it's not fair that I'm using a December day to critique our city. But urbanists love to point out that the number of months outdoor cafes are open in Stockholm is twelve, and the liveliest time of year in many cold German cities is Christmas, whose outdoor holiday markets are famously competitive. This may indeed be a factor here in OKC, but pedestrian cities with long winters know how to do winter.
The lesson here is that Oklahoma City is still, in large part, an event city. Downtown is lively in the hours before a Thunder home game. Midtown and SOSA is flooded on an H&8th night. However, we don't yet have a city that is organically vibrant, un-planned cool, naturally urban. We may be "on the rise," but we haven't yet risen.
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