Liles

Dallas just got a little less distinctive.

I have to say, this just reinforces a terrible dynamic that it destroying what is left of the work ethic of this country.

Lose 100-0, and you're a national hero. Win 100-0, and you get fired.

Not surprising that every failing industry in the United States is begging for a handout from the government.

Cricket Taylor is amazing. Don't pigeonhole her as just a blues vocalist; she can sing anything. Great songwriter and guitar player, too.

"American Apparel is made in America, and pays a 'living wage'."

And the guy who owns the company has been accused of sexual harassment by a number of his female employees.

Small price to pay for a living wage, huh?

Terry Bozzio was playing with Korn on the Jay Leno Show the last time I saw him, about nine months ago.

Please don't insult Art (or art) like that.

Btw, it was Wilonsky.

Yes indeed. Good for me.

For you, not so much...

Let me guess... you took out your gun and put it out of its misery?

Dude, I'm opening up for this incredible DJ (and apparent Jackopierce fan!) at Sons Of Hermann Hall.

You wouldn't know who I'm referring to, would you?

His identity is top secret. Shhhh!

Thank God! Finally!!!

I totally put my life on "hold" when they dropped off the radar. Things were really rough there for the last few years. After the bank foreclosed on my condo and I blew my 401k on hookers and blow, it was time to go straight underground - to a cardboard teepee east of Mesquite.

Now that JP is back on the scene I'm gonna re-introduce myself to a toothbrush and rinse out my Crocs. It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from my crotch.

Not sure. I don't belong to any group.

I only went because Tiffany and Frank asked me to attend. I took it for what it was - a gathering of motivated creative people who are simply tired of lip service and empty promises.

Russ Hobbs from Prophet Bar was the host, for what it's worth. After about ten minutes of everybody introducing themselves to each other, it was nothing but inspired and intelligent conversation for two hours after that.

With all due respect to Gianna Madrini and Tanner Hockensmith, I'm not sure that the Deep Ellum Association really knows what it is doing.

The Town Hall Meeting was ultimately a redundant photo op and covered no new ground. All of these little "micro-meetings" are sure to be more of the same. They're just rehashing the exact same things they were talking about before I left for Los Angeles two years ago. It felt like a time warp.

Talk is cheap. Progress means picking up a paint brush instead of a telephone. The group who gathered the other night at Prophet Bar is well past talking about crime watches, websites and discount cards. This is about artists, residents, creative business owners and arts patrons taking matters into their own hands.

The creative arts movement in Deep Ellum started out as an organic manifestation of expression, and (in my opinion, anyway) all of this political butt-sniffing is just stagnant and counterintuitive.

People like Hal Samples, Sean Jenkins, Frank Campagna, Russ Hobbs, Tiffany Kieran, Mike Snider, Carl Lutz, and Sean Fitzgerald (among many others) all have the right idea: "Build it and they will come..."

We can talk about stuff until we're blue in the face, but from what I've seen, all that jabber about "branding", marketing, crime and websites is just more time spent on an endless treadmill.

I'm taking this straight to the people of Dallas. Past the landlords and speculators; the City government; the neighborhood bureaucracy and all of the anonymous and disconnected nay-sayers: it isn't advantageous or necessary to initiate or dictate policy and protocol to a subversive arts movement.

We can do this organically. We've done it before.

You wanna create and maintain something special? Let the artists do their thing. Lose the politics. Ditch the tired old talking points. Stop micro-managing and start actually doing something.

I was born in Deep Ellum and found my creative voice there twenty-three years later. Now, twenty-three years after that, I'm here and happy to give something back. But I won't be looking for validation in the eyes of all of the local political movers and shakers. They just don't get it. They never have and never will.

If you feel me, you know where I'll be.

There was a very inspirational brainstorming session last night at the Prophet Bar.

A large number of dedicated gallery owners, artists, residents, public relations execs, photographers and committed visionaries gathered together to cut through all the distorted perception and begin the process of reclaiming Deep Ellum.

Fact: nobody, including Beck Ventures, is going to change the face of this neighborhood for the worse. The deal hasn't gone through yet, and when/if it does, many of the properties they are interested in are protected by a no-tear-down clause. Unless a building is simply beyond salvage or repair, it isn't going anywhere.

Fact: the creative/artistic legacy of the neighborhood is simply priceless. Much in the same way small business owners came together to deal with the SUP issues, we are going to continue to reach out to the North Texas creative community in the effort to protect and restore this neighborhood.

Fact: as many of you have already pointed out, there are literally dozens of interesting and inspirational destinations within the neighborhood. Deep Ellum is anything but dead. In actuality, during this difficult economy, the neighborhood is currently providing the best overall value for your entertainment dollar. This isn't a veiled pitch or advertisement, it's simply the truth.

Fact: if you've never been to an art gallery opening, you should know they're free. It's a great place to take a date. Many of the galleries in the neighborhood all have art openings on the same night, and they are all within walking distance of each other. You don't have to spend five or ten bucks to park in a lot, just bring a handful of change and you can park on the street the whole night for less than three bucks.

If you'd rather go drop 60 bucks a person at the House of Blues to see a show that ends before midnight, spend six or seven dollars for a single beer at the Palladium, then go for it. Just know that drink prices in Deep Ellum are WAY less than that. You won't go broke by seeing a show or dining in this neighborhood.

You can't destroy or diminish Deep Ellum. It was here long before all of the shiny shopping malls, the overpriced corporate live music venues and trendy "red velvet rope" clubs with their snooty bottle service. As was referenced time and time again last night, the area is the cradle of this city's creative sensibility.

If you're content to live in a vacuous, benign existence with little sense of purpose or meaning, then stay at home and jerk off your X-Box.

If you wanna break out of a routine that offers little or no spiritual or creative inspiration, then know you will be embraced and made to feel part of this very eclectic creative community.

We're here. We're not going anywhere. There's nothing to be afraid of.

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." -- Anne Frank

Everybody hold your horses.

Robert Wilonsky over at "Unfair Park" will have an interesting new wrinkle in this story for you tomorrow.

I am very open minded when it comes to new development, as long as the word "development" isn't being used as code for more of the same stuff that you can already find all over the rest of Dallas.

I wouldn't mind new restaurants, art galleries, live music venues, funky mom-and-pop retail stores, tattoo shops, recording studios or design shops, maybe a new "art house" movie theatre, or anything that nurtures and preserves the cultural and creative legacy of the neighborhood.

Established franchised businesses like Chili's or The Gap aren't going to make Deep Ellum an attractive destination for anybody. Those people who live in the 'burbs aren't going to head to Deep Ellum to patronize a business that already exists within a couple of miles of their home.

This neighborhood has always had a distinctive character, and that definitive identity is crucial to giving "safe haven" for the creative contingency of our citizenry. It isn't about the reliving past or going backwards in time, it's about maintaining and nurturing an area that has, until now, refused to give in to greed and conformity.

A lot of people don't realize it, but Dallas-connected musicians have collectively sold almost 200 million records worldwide. A lot of these musicians got their start in Deep Ellum, and attribute their success to the nurturing environment the experienced during the early stages of their careers. The neighborhood was a natural extension of the Arts Magnet High School.

In addition, the neighborhood has been a proving ground for many of our best photographers, graphic artists, animators, writers and creative types who give the city of Dallas a signature sense of art and aesthetic.

Do we really want to let real estate speculators leverage that priceless legacy into a quick buck for themselves? That isn't development - it's a backwards trajectory that will certainly dead end into more empty buildings, only shinier and more expensive.

Who knows? Maybe the Beck Ventures people get it and understand the creative dynamic.

Still, if they plan on tearing down many of the buildings, you can't count on them being replaced with newer properties that will undoubtedly raise the competitive lease rates of the buildings that remain. That, in turn, will probably price the artists and creatives out of the neighborhood.

The goal should be to find the kind of common ground that works for everybody - not just those who are trying to leverage this distinctive legacy to get rich quick.

I'm going to assume Clay's "Open Mic Night" act is over now and we can get back to the real issue at hand.

Before anybody does anything else, I think we need to find out the backstory of just how this Beck deal went down.

First things first.

I'm very curious to see who solicited and brokered the deal, how they represented the area to the buyer, and if this person (or persons) has a pre-existing relationship with Mayor Leppert and the City Council. Were tax abatements or incentives promised to the buyer? Was Beck Ventures made aware of the historical importance of the neighborhood, or was it pitched as a large scale tear-down project?

Next.

Ten acres is a very large chunk of the neighborhood. That means whoever solicited and administrated this deal packaged a number of separately-owned properties under a single umbrella. Whoever is responsible for brokering this deal should have been at the Town Meeting and announced their intentions and motivation.

They fact they weren't there (or didn't represent themselves) should raise a red flag.

Rick, there was an item about the purchase in the Business section of the Saturday DMN. The first blog item about Beck Ventures showed up on DMN's web page before ten AM on Friday and was followed up two hours later on the Dallas Observer's blog.

Both were posted before the meeting started, so it's hard to imagine that Leppert had yet to learn of the purchase. I'm actually quite surprised that it wasn't mentioned in this Pegasus item.

Clay, I would be very curious to see how your collective contributions to the Deep Ellum art scene over the years match up to those of Frank Campagna. If you've been doing it for over twenty-five years, putting your own time, money and energy into the neighborhood as he has, then we'll take your opinion seriously. Fill us in on your background, show us that you actually have some measure of context in which you base your assertions.

(Or, you can continue to hide behind a screen name and we'll just consider you a bad comedian with a bag over your head at open mic night. It's your call.)

As for the Town Hall meeting, the Mayor showed up late and missed all of the prepared individual presentations by each of the neighborhood groups. He then seized the opportunity to pat himself on the back for AT&T's corporate relocation to Dallas; gave props to the cops; and then breezed through all of the PC talking points we've been hearing forever for years about the importance of Deep Ellum.

More telling what was he DIDN'T say - that a developer named Beck Ventures had just purchased most of the real estate in the neighborhood and is planning on tearing down many of the buildings.

For Mayor Leppert, this could have been the ideal opportunity to address the new dynamic that will be brought about by the changes that are sure to take place in the neighborhood.

Instead, he either didn't know about the deal (in which case, his aides should be fired for leaving him exposed like this), or he knew about the deal and was too afraid of talking about it and raining on his AT&T parade.

Either way, we didn't get what needed from the Mayor on Friday afternoon - and that was the Real Truth about the future of Deep Ellum.

How in the world is Lee Harvey's #25 behind a bunch of clubs that aren't even open?