Them Deep Elem Blues

• Stop whining. Sitting behind a keyboard is not activism. "Deep Ellum" is dead, and was dead the minute the DART train station plans were hatched. The time to do something was THEN!! Since no one did...Game Over. The architecture in and around Deep Ellum is not overly exceptional, other than it is OLD, and survived "Bulldozer Arpartheid" (See Michael Phillips' book, White Metropolis). Not that it doesn't deserve saving, on the contrary. But if you see developers as the enemy, you need to THINK like them...and look to save what is savable before they get their filthy greedy developer hands on it, and start doing horrible things, like investing and building what the market demands. Or you can move to a city where the market demands "Old and Charming", not "New and Cheesy" Look for the next cool area - even the idiots over at the DMN have figured it out http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/072707dnbustrinity.35ac218.html

• Well, my outrage sets up into a green lump of coagulated bile the more I evaluate the situation. Things like this don't encourage me, for example: http://www.deepellumhome.com/Images/de_demographics.pdf. The neighborhood and its people just are not designed to mount an effective campaign to preserve the area. Most of the immediate population is poor and uneducated according to this survey. The very nature of many of the businesses located in Deep Ellum tends to attract the disenfranchised and antiauthoritarians. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but they simply don't make great advocates when dealing with The Man (even if they are well-educated). Depending on your vantage point, it's either a situation ripe for exploitation, or a perfect formula for ineffectively championing the cause. What has to be done to save the architecture of Deep Ellum is simple. Dallasites (or Metroplexians or Texians) who don't live nearby and who don't visit now have to be brought on board to care about the buildings and their role in Dallas� history. This can be accomplished only if the buildings and history are divorced from the nature of some of the businesses that might otherwise repel this very support. Face it, in other towns and cities with historical districts, the buildings would be occupied by antique stores and tea rooms, not tattoo parlors and leather galleries. I don�t want that to happen, it�s just a simple fact. The people attracted to Deep Ellum because of the businesses, myself included, is a crowd too small to make City Hall care. The people attracted to Deep Ellum because of the buildings and history, myself included, might � just maybe, might � be big enough to get noticed. Beyond this, I have no plan to put into action. But if the City and a broad range of citizens cared, the civic, city, and corporate money would follow to preserve the bones and heritage of the place. It might not look the same afterward from a business vantage point, but it wouldn't look like a brand new West Village either.

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