Blue Dome blessings

My column in the current issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly was about what I learned during a visit to last weekend's Blue Dome Arts Festival. As I made my way around 1st & Elgin, I had a peek at plans for Joe Momma's Pizza's downtown location, a guided tour of the under-construction 1st Street Lofts, a chat with Diversafest's Tom Green about the festival's non-profit arm, the Oklahoma Foundation for the Music Industry, and heard from Cain's Ballroom owners Jim and Alice Rodgers about their new venture on Brookside, Ida Red. It was exciting to hear about all these plans to make Tulsa a more exciting place to live, work, and play.

Something I neglected to point out in the column: Everyone of these cool new ventures is happening in old buildings. I devoted a column in April to the importance of old buildings to a lively city, and I quoted Jane Jacobs on the matter:

Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighborhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. Supermarkets and shoe stores often go into new buildings; good bookstores and antique dealers seldom do....

As for really new ideas of any kind -- no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be -- there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.