Truth is, every city needs to focus more on its beauty | MARK HUGHES COBB
We've lost The Globe and The Chukker, CityFest and Weindorf, but gained Government Plaza and the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater, within the slightly more than two decades of this century.
Some of our finer diversions, expressions of art and leisure that existed 20 years back and continue on, include the Bama Theatre, Kentuck Art Center, Theatre Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa Children's Theatre, Tuscaloosa Community Dancers, Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra, and, I'm not above being proud to say, The Rude Mechanicals. We launched on a whim and a sweat layer in spring 2003, found there was at least a modest audience for Shakespeare in the summer, created a name and logo, and year after year evolved our performance traditions.
They continue this week with "The Tempest," and June 22-25 with "Much Ado About Nothing." See our Facebook group for more. Monkeypox withstanding, we'll be rolling 20 years from now as well, 20 again, and 20 more, and possibly even after, assuming Stephen King wasn't dead-on about various world-ending events coming to pass.
Places, events and gatherings that didn't exist 20 years ago:
• Government Plaza
• Tuscaloosa Amphitheater
• Hotel Indigo and its Lookout Rooftop Bar
• Embassy Suites, with its Side by Side Kitchen and Cocktails
• Druid City Music Hall
• Druid City Brewing Co.
• Black Warrior Brewing Co.
• Loosa Brews
• Alcove International Tavern
• Druid City Arts Festival
• River Market, and the Riverwalk
• Ernest and Hadley Booksellers
• Druid City Derby
• The Actor's Charitable Theatre
• Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center
• Civil Rights History Trail
• Alberta School of Performing Arts
• Gateway Innovation and Discovery Center
And the Minerva statue and numerous other public art projects, including the Federal Building murals that brought artist Caleb O'Connor to town.
After a couple of "What'll we do with it?" years, Government Plaza has drawn more consistent crowds for DCAF, the summer Live at the Plaza series (which starts again Thursday night with Adam Hood), the Tinsel Trail and Holidays at the Plaza, offering 5 acres of landscaped green space in the middle of downtown for casual everyday use.
Entrepreneurs Bryan and Lee Finison are building an attraction adjacent to their Treehouse Farm and Nursery, 6052 Watermelon Road, to be called The Venue Tuscaloosa. An acre of green will accommodate a pub, five dining choices and an ice-cream/coffee/gourmet milkshake spot, all surrounding a live-entertainment stage.
With the old McFarland Mall space brushing out the rubble, 36.5 acres of prime land will be available, abutted by an interstate and two major city thoroughfares. Owner Stan Pate has considered a number of proposals, most recent being a "regional entertainment district" anchored by a sports complex with skate park, food truck spaces, specialty retail and more. But nothing's been cemented yet.
A recent Tuscaloosa News story by Jason Morton included readers' suggestions, which ranged from the tragically predictable — chain stores and restaurants — to the less-likely, such as a botanical garden, an aquarium, a casino (perhaps that respondent has connections in Montgomery that know something we don't), an amusement park, a drive-in theater and other draws that could become beloved, things with style, pizzazz, or character that reflects the community.
Folks, please stop making me yawn-cry with shouts for Buc-ee's, Costco, and Trader Joe's. This mass-marketed crap stymies authentic locals, dulls the imagination. Crazing beaver nuggets from a chain gas station could help explain why local chefs struggle to maintain steady clientele.
City-hired consultants found a proposed 20,000-square-foot venue could help Tuscaloosa land buckets more travel bucks. We could land 34,000 more hotel room stays per year, and as anyone with eyeballs can tell you, we've got hotels, beaucoups more than 20 years ago. Such a space could open for trade shows, meetings and entertainment, not to mention sports, but yes, because you've got to mention sports.
As noted by our pal Bill Buchanan, who before his death in December served as director of community development for Tuscaloosa Tourism and Sports, music and art-related events, along with our abundant natural resources, could turn Tuscaloosa into a tourism destination for more than sports. That in-coming money may become more necessity than bonus, replacing tax revenues from a shrinking retail base, one that favors online, or buying from those chains and big boxes.
“People are not going to wake up one day and declare, ‘I’m tired of all this convenience and saving money,' " Bill said. Ouch. But true.
Obviously Tuscaloosa experiences have expanded this century, but have they grown better? Or simply bigger?
It could make a fella melancholy, looking at archives from 20 years ago, roughly the time we at The Tuscaloosa News moved into this now-vintage building that will some year become the Saban Center, to the time before the words "experience" and "economy" ran together thick as brick-wielding thieves in a house of butter.
Even someone as sports-happy as Don Staley, who's done yeoman's work as president and CEO of TTS, recognizes we can't live forever on naught but sports. He worked his and his staff's tails off to create the Druid City Music Festival in 2019, only to see rough weather dampen days. You can't call any weekend in which dozens of bands fill venues in and around downtown on a Friday, then bang up to a major-scale festival on Saturday a failure, but that was to be just the first in a series of steps.
Along came the pandammit, and TTS needed to study results anyway. With Don preparing to retire and move to Florida, the chances of another such arising seems unlikely. Not for lack of vision, but because, as with all large-scale arts and entertainment presentations, investments have to make dollar sense.
The old CityFest grew almost of its own volition, starting as a street fair, a celebration of downtown renovations, and expanded to the point where the city should have hired a full-time staff, dedicated to entertainment, to help out those hard-working folks trying to learn how to fly a jumbo jet as they constructed it. Those sorts of organizations and hires did arise, but too late to salvage the two-day show from a couple of bad-weather years.
Back when, I irritated CityFest folks by making suggestions based in part on experiences with Birmingham's City Stages, how they might class up the joint. Now the Magic City has a larger tax base, and more acreage to work with, and no one expected CityFest to become its twin — though City Stages also died, victim of weather and bad economy — but any art-related activity must be open to positive change.
One such suggestion involved making entrance arches designed by, get this, artists.
Imagine, hiring artists to create art. Call me crazy.
Sure, 90 percent of folks passing through the gates just glance up and walk on by, but art-arches can mean more: Each was designed to represent the city, expressing something that said Birmingham, that showed home.
I thought that'd be just the thing: Set artists wild imagining symbolic representations of our Druid City. Make people not only see, but become aware. Make them not only aware, but proud. Make them not only proud, but invested. Make them not only invested, but involved. Engagement leads to joy, and growth. You can't force engagement, but you sure as heck can tease it out of its home-entertainment shell.
Imagine beautifying a city for no reason other than that visual and aural representations we recognize as attractive, comely, or downright good-lookin', those forms stir vitality. Call it stimulation for endorphins, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin, if you like.
It's akin to the cliche: I may not know art, but I know what I like. Truth is: Beauty is.
Sometimes words escape, but the allure does not.
You know without knowing why you'd rather look at a mountain than a road, a river than a track, an aquarium over yet another sports center.
A Globe over a Buc-ee's.
Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com, or call 205-722-0201.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Truth is, every city needs to focus more on its beauty | MARK HUGHES COBB
