By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

Ah, December, when everything is bursting at the seams. The roads and stores teem with toddling shoppers, the credit card accounts balloon, schedules brim with parties and irritation bubbles forth from the harried populace.

Likewise, editorial columns overflow with wish lists and retrospectives. Suppressing my contrarian tendencies just this once (but don’t ask again), I guess I can play along for the season’s sake.

So, what would I ask from the fat guy in the red suit?

For starters, how about some downtown landlords that realize the reasoning behind the idea of “putting fannies in seats?” For years, I worked downtown and countless nights I sat at the door of near empty bars trying to coax wanderers to step inside. Time after time, they would crane their necks around, spy the scarce attendance and proffer some half-hearted excuse about “looking for some friends” before drifting away.

What they were looking for wasn’t “some friends,” but merely a decent-sized crowd of anyone. Mobilians hate doing anything without plenty of others there to see it.

The same applies with downtown living. While the condo market continues to chug along into highly priced territory, it seems to be creating a void in other ways. The oft-ballyhooed creative class isn’t flocking there in the droves some city leaders said they wanted.

In particular, arts spaces aren’t thriving. While Space 301 undergoes expensive renovations, Alabama Contemporary Dance has left downtown, off.Dauph art space has departed and others are barely hanging in there.

As speculation inflates realty, reality is that the bedrock of true vitality is being squeezed out.

There’s still not the foot traffic and sense of life you find in truly urban centers, places like Manhattan, Chicago and San Francisco. That is going to be a requisite to further progress

I have to wonder if anyone will realize that it’s better to keep a space filled for the long haul and create further economic action down the road rather than to try and squeeze every short-term penny out of a spot as quickly as possible?

While I’m pleading with St. Nick, how about the jolly old elf granting an influx of new residents? I’d love to see thousands upon thousands upon thousands of new Mobilians arrive, but not just any folks. I’d like a panoply of transplants arriving from moderate to large cities across the nation, actual cosmopolitan people used to pavement under their feet and tickets in their hands, those who know about being involved and active and progressive. Sophisticated people willing to seize life and not be content with another blasé weeknight in front of the television. People who truly value a wide variety of art and entertainment, who believe interaction is for more than drunkenness and gossip. People who see pre-Lenten parades and pomp as peripheral not pivotal and who believe lifting the community as a whole is the mark of true “civilization.”

Well, we said “wish,” right?

Speaking of Santa’s list, The Centre for the Living Arts should get some goodies in their stocking for utilizing the Saenger Theatre as well as it has been in decades. They’ve met some of the more commonplace tastes in town with a bulging schedule of various pop music genres. Now if they could sprinkle in the occasional Branford Marsalis, Chick Corea or Joshua Redman show, we’d have the full slate covered.

And there’s more candy on the mantle for CLA since bringing the fresh perspectives of curator Clayton Colvin. Their investment in the aforementioned revamped facilities for Space 301 are a gift in itself to downtown and garners them an extra special piece of peppermint.

While we’re at it, Santa needs to drop a few bags of booty in Langan Park for Tommy McPherson and the crowd at the Mobile Museum of Art who have done a superlative job over the last few years with shows that have set new marks for this long tepid facility. The sterling physical renovations of the last decade have been matched by the work within.

The Mobile Symphony is in the “nice” column after that night with Itzhak Perlman and they look to further things with the Joshua Bell show in 2008.

Mobile Opera? Well, I was tempted to suggest switches for the departure of Jerome Shannon, but I wasn’t privy to the inner workings of that development so I’ll hold off on judgment. I will say that the organization could move up the list by finding a way to mend the generational rift that seems to plague opera involvement. Exposing younger and less affluent citizens to the marvel of the voices involved can help remove the stodgy stigma that seems to have affixed itself to the genre. I know the opera movers and shakers are contemplating such and I hope they find a way to solve the riddle soon.

While lumps of coal are reserved for some hereabouts, in particular the citizens letting things like Arts!Alive and the Art Walks wane in attendance, there are far too many smaller players throwing their might into the fray to waste time on further aspersion.

Our community is littered with authors and painters and filmmakers and dancers toiling in near obscurity for little more than their own satisfaction. So if this season is about cherishing the warmth of community against the waning light of winter or honoring those who dared to lift the meek above the mighty, then little could be more fitting than to herald those stoking the embers of creativity in anonymity.

It’s those intrepid souls who are our truest hope, our guiding star to a new era.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

Archives