Metro Transit: From Bad to Asinine

I used to say, 'Blame Jefferson City for our bad transit system,' but that was before I got off the bus this morning at 14th and Spruce. The 14th Street transfer center was always somewhat of a joke; it's nothing more than a glorified turn-around stuck on a spare piece of ground next to a Metrolink station whose only point of merit is its adjacency to the Train/Bus Depot. This transfer center is totally underdeveloped even for the traffic it saw prior to the down-scaling of the bus system. Worse, it lacks any access to services such as a coffee shop, newsstand, or confectionary. I suppose some of these services exist in the depot, but what good is that to the commuter who now has to wait up to thirty minutes on a narrow strip of pavement stuck between a highway and its on-ramps.

All service east of 14th Street has been eliminated, and I'm baffled at how this could possibly save Metro any money. Buses that travel Broadway now make a detour to 14th Street to serve the Civic Center Station instead of continuing in a direct path that would take them to the Convention Center Station, adding time to the route and burning gas that needn't be burned. More critically, though, this removes service from the densest area of ridership without any logical justification.

At first, I thought Metro wanted to send a message to businesses that they need to push for better transit, but the sheer disaster of the 14th Street transfer center has me thinking otherwise. Nearly every bus that travels in the city of St. Louis converges on this grossly inadequate spot, where the sidewalks are two narrow for two people to pass, where pedestrian access crosses a highway on-ramp, and where there is absolutely no opportunity for commercial development to take advantage of the presence of so many pedestrians. It takes pedestrians away from a dense area with abundant opportunity for commercial development [not that the city's administration or downtown's property owners are smart enough to take advantage of their captive population of consumers].

This morning, as two other buses were discharging passengers to the same sidewalk, a bus driver was struggling to figure out to extend his wheel chair lift. Meanwhile, the man in the wheel chair was struggling to figure out how to maneuver onto a lift that extend most of the way across the four-foot wide sidewalk, between a cluster of bus shelters and a retaining wall that left him no room to move. Any reasonably intelligent person should have been able to look at the bus schedules, then look at the 14th Street transfer center and realize that this is an extremely stupid idea.

The only possible explanation that remains is that Metro is blackmailing the cash-strapped city for an increased transit allotment.

This isn't the city's responsibility. It's the state's and the federal government's. These are the entities that initiated the poor planning and development policies that made public transportation subsidy-dependent, so these are the entities that should be paying for public transportation.

If anybody from Metro is reading this: GIVE IT UP! Give up the asinine transfer centers, and give up your childish ploys to force subsidies.

Tonight at Powell Hall

A strange thing happened at the office today. I got a call from the Powell Hall box office. Thinking they were going to put the squeeze on me to decide on next year's season ticket, I asked my secretary to take a message. As it turned out, they wanted to 'upgrade' my seat. In hindsight, I think 'upgrade' was code for "we can sell a pair of seats if we move you somewhere else". I think my original seat would have been better.

Tonight, the St. Louis Symphony performed with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. So, I figured, no problem, they'll scoot the orchestra back and dance up front. Nope. They built a stage extension and 'wings' out of convention center partitioning--lots of black burlap and a touch of red velvet for style. My seat looked right into a wall of black. I couldn't see the orchestra at all, and only about two thirds of the stage. The orchestra was on a raised platform behind the dance floor.

The performance, or what I could see of it, was stunning. The opening piece was a post-modern rendition of Bach, using movements from the Brandenburg Concerti and cello and harp solos from some other suites. It was my least favorite of the four pieces in the concert. Boys in fey little doublets and girls in flouncy skirts pranced around the stage with rather militaristic gestures. There was some kind of story about the court jester being shunned then accepted by the courtesans and an interesting, tho chaste, strip tease in which one of the girls lost her sleeves and skirts. In one impressive move, the boys lifted her and spun her head over heels in a sort of slow-motion back flip as they carried her downstage. You'd have to see it. She floated as if defying gravity.

First intermission.

The second part of the concert featured Stravinsky and Bernstein. The dancers didn't participate in the Stravinsky, but the orchestra nailed it like the pros they are. 'Three Pieces for Clarinet' showcased the remarkable skill of Scott Andrews, who awed a restless audience into silence; 'Symphonies of Wind Instruments' showcased the Symphony's greatly improved horn section delivering a great performance. But all this paled as Hubbard Street took back the stage for Bernstein's 'Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs'. First let me say that I haven't explored much of Bernstein's music due to a fear of the atonal, but this piece was astounding--lively and timeless, showing the best potential of Jazz. The dancers, though, brought it to life in a kind of jitterbug on crack. It was synchronized hopping, or Irish dance without the kicking, that framed some dynamic choreography that truly expressed the character of the music. All dressed in identical business suits, the cast came alive for this piece much more than they had for the Bach.

Second intermission.

Bolero. We've all heard it, many of us are preternaturally fascinated with it. I'm one of those. I almost jumped out of my shoes when I saw the poster proclaiming 'Hubbard Street Dance Chicago/ Bolero'. I thought, OMG! they're going to dance Bolero! No such luck. It was a heartbreak to read nothing following 'RAVEL: Bolero (1928)' at the end of the program; no dancers, no choreographers, no lighting designers. I was faced the with prospect of staring at black burlap while sound wafted from the mysterious hidden platform where the chorus usually sits. It brought back memories from earlier in the season when a great mezzo performed on a bill that included the Liebestod, only she didn't sing the Liebestod, it was the abominable and useless orchestral version--just like the prospect of Hubbard Street dancing Bolero, it was a tease.

But, alas, they moved the chairs forward and I got to watch a second violinist toy with her neighbor, teasing him about not being able to see the conductor, trying to steal his bow, kicking his shoe. It was cute. It was virtually all I could see; but I don't want to dwell on my bad seat.

The audience was incredibly rude, coughing and fidgeting as David Roberson presided over the first muted bars of Bolero. The air conditioning was louder than the snare drum. I could barely hear the opening rendition of the melody. Bolero droned on. But this was not your garden variety Bolero. This was a Bolero that built slowly and steadily, with a subtlety you wouldn't think an orchestra of this size could achieve. You know how the rhythm shifts from instrument to instrument? And you know how on every recording you've ever heard, you know exactly when that shift takes place? None of that was audible in Powell Hall tonight. The rhythm and melody alike snuck around the orchestra and popped up in surprising places. Yes, this is Bolero, possibly the most over-played piece of classical music ever, and it sounded like I have never heard it before or ever dreamt it could sound. Those pesky transitions that mar every performance I've ever heard were gone. By the time my second violinist had to pick up her instrument and leave her stud muffin alone in favor of teasing out the rhythm, the audience was rapt. Everybody knew they were hearing the best performance they'd ever hear of this piece.

A Word on the St. Louis Public School System

Does the administration building have lead water pipes or what?

What agenda underlies the special adminstrative board's assinine proposals?

Someone suggested to me recently that the Powers-That-Be want to destroy the public school system because it would be easier for them to control a less-organized collection of charter schools. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but this is St. Louis, after all.

Most assinine of all is to build new elementary schools in a district that already has too many buildings for its current population, one of which would replace Mann School in Tower Grove South. WTF? Have they seen a modern school building?

Less assinine, but equally appalling, is the deed restrictions to forbid charter schools in the buildings they close.

Oh yeah, that's right, it's only been a few years since they gave away the breath-takingly beautiful Stix School, and the charming Michael School to Barnes Hospital and replaced them with a gyp board box. Lead in their water is the only possible explanation for their mental lapses.

That, or none of them have had a good education.

Our school buildings are among our great acheivements as a city. It seems to me that the board could put them to better use; lease them out to generate income; invite our colleges and universities to make more use of them; tap the growing need for professional continuing education and involve corporations in supporting these critical neighborhood institutions.

Maybe if the board showed some imagination, we'd have a good school system.

Let's not hold our breath.

Update on Powell Hall's Ashtray

Photo credit

As it turns out, the interesting piece of art next to Powell Hall is a student project. I arrived at Grand and Grandell Saturday evening to find that not only have they put up a large poster to explain the piece, but also a packet of fliers. As a student project, professional standards of craftsmanship don't apply. The important thing about the project is the students' ability to experience the interrelationships between ideas, form, light, and color; which the piece certainly allowed them to do.

The piece is part of The Community Light Project, funded by the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Grand Center, and the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University. It was created by Sebastian Hungerer and Rainer Kehres in collaboration with students from Cole Elementary, Loyala Academy, Cardinal Ritter Prep, and Metro High. The green masts visible in the photo in the original ash tray post are wind generators left from the previous installation, 'E-scaping the Grid' by Michael Oliveri. The generators illuminate a hexagonal grid of LED's that you can see in the background of my photo.

The Pulitzer also sponsored a fascinating Kehres-Hungerer work in the burnt out church at Spring and Grandell Square entitled 'Chorus'. The artists assembled lamps from the people of St. Louis and used them to create an illuminated roof for the gutted shell. I admire how they expressed the architectural form of the building while creating a compelling and colorful work of art; an ironic statement on the condition of America's inner cities, and hopefully an optimistic wish for their revitalization. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any biographical information on the artists; they seem to only have a web presence thru arts reviews and the Pulitzer Foundation.

Photo credit

Photo credit

Saturday at Powell Hall

Saturday night at Powell Hall was pretty darned good. They still had people out in the hallway making noise, and I found the side door wide open at intermission, but fortunately traffic was light that evening. I might just have to ask the house manager about this. I realize I'm in the cheap seats, but I still support this organization and I think my money is as good as the money of the swells in the loge even if I have less of it. But I can't imagine that the swells in the loge can't hear this noise, and that after opening night's spectacle of noise, management would allow even a feather to drop out in that hallway. I have nothing against housekeeping doing their job, I've been there. I know they want to get out of there, but they need to do it more quietly.

The noise in the hallway has been a perennial problem, and on Saturday, even the people around me were distracted by it, so I know it's not just my limited ability to focus on the music.

Speaking of the people in around me: picture a long-haired, bespectacled version of Britain's formidable Judi Dench having a lesbian affair with America's sweetheart Meg Ryan..... They were sitting right in front of me! They were so cute. Meg kept looking over at Judi with a sweet smile. I didn't know if I should say 'awwww, how cute' or slap them.

So, I guess I should say something about the music...

Well, it was spectacular. David Robertson led a pared-down St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a concert that featured the history of percussion. We heard Mozart's overture from 'The Abduction from the Seraglio', HK Gruber's 'Rough Music' with Colin Currie soloing on percussion, and Beethoven's 7th Symphony.

So, here's the advantage of the cheap seats: I had a straight-line view of the percussion section in a concert that featured percussion. I've always admired this section of the orchestra, and haven't ever found a reason to criticize them. To my amateur ears on Saturday, they performed their duty to perfection, especially in the Beethoven, where tympanist Richard Holmes gave the music a perfectly subtle foundation. Currie gave an energetic solo performance, but I know so little about percussion that I wouldn't know what to say about it.

'Rough Music' was really nothing of the sort. Saturday was its American premiere, and I think it will be heard often in the future. It was a mostly melodic study on percussion and orchestra, and a fascinating if not beautiful piece of contemporary music. Work like this gives me hope that someday, Architecture will emerge from its contemporary formless morass into a more sensible and sensitive style. Gruber meshes orchestra and percussion into a seamless whole in a traditionally-styled concerto. I especially liked the kettle drum segment of the non-melodic percussion, but liked the drum set segments more while he was demonstrating them in the pre-concert lecture; they didn't seem to mesh with the orchestra as well. The tuned percussion, such as the marimbas, didn't really come off as percussion so much as just another melodic instrument, and took the greater share of the concerto's percussion solo.

Overall, it was a piece that held my attention thru-out, which only otherwise happens for me in contemporary music with John Adams, whose 'Harmonielehre' remains my favorite work of modern music. [I highly recommend the Symphony's downloadable recording. I listened to it like five times in a row a few weeks ago, and will probably do it again when I log on at home to add pictures to this post.]

The Mozart was delivered in excellent style, but the Beethoven simply sparkled. At times, it seemed like Robertson was rushing the tempo, especially with his quick transitions between movements, but as the music unfolded, I couldn't say that his pacing was wrong, and in each movement, it revealed the greatness of this score. The orchestra wasn't quite ready for the first chord, but they immediately pulled themselves together and played perfectly. The horns were subtle, and the woodwinds were amazing. A particularly spectacular moment was the quietest moment in the score. Robertson, with a subtle gesture of his hand, took the strings down to such a low volume, you could hear the audience breathing. I can't imagine how they maintained such a perfect tone.

One thing that disturbed me until I figured out what was happening was that one violin seemed to be out of tune. I soon realized that due to an acoustic anomaly, i was hearing concert master David Halen's violin as if I were sitting in his lap [not that I would mind][hehehe]. As he shifted position, the sound of his violin meshed in and out with the rest of the instruments. With a lesser orchestra, this would have ruined the concert. With this orchestra and this concert master, it was sort of a treat.

Powell Hall's Ash Tray

Photo taken 9/26/8

This is the current art installation next to Powell Hall. I've tried googling it to find more information, but Grand Center seems by far more interested in selling tickets than promoting art.
.
From a distance, it looks intriguing, but don't get too close. For starters, there's evidence that the gravel was raked, but no effort was made to grade it. The work itself is sloppily-constructed. The DNA helix is made of rope lights, plastic tubing, and plastic water bottles stuck together with messy globs of hot glue. The orange and yellow cylinder is bits of paper on ladder-type masonry reinforcing with paper clips, but the clips are not all put on the same way and the wire sections are tied together by their ends with no effort made to trim the exess. They're just coiled around each other until the wire ran out. The stack of discs has fingerprints and smudges of marker on the surfaces. The green cylinder is tubes of plastic sheeting randomly stapled or paper-clipped together.
.
Is this the height of St. Louis's artistic talent--an intesting idea wasted on poor craftsmanship?

Tonight at Powell Hall

First, let's get some housekeeping out of the way--literally. As I walked into the auditorium down the south hallway, I saw a housekeeping worker thru the half-open door of a janitor's closet and his cart in the exit way at the far end of the hallway. These things, the public should not see--ever.
.
But wait, it gets worse. As I sat in my cheap seat on the right aisle [K30 for the curious], I heard several loud bangs during the first part of the concert. At intermission, I exited the side door on my way to the 'smoking lounge' and the cart was still there, where people had to walk around it to get to the exit door.
.
And that's not bad enough. In the second part of the concert, after more bangs and just as the orchestra reached a pause in the music, the janitor decided to move the cart. The wheels were loud enough to overwhelm the last few notes of the movement in their atonal screech. Later, there were three thundering booms that sounded like the ceiling falling in, and more smaller bangs throughout the rest of the performance.
.
As much as I admire the symphony as an organization, this is inexcusable. There is often noise from the hallway as people use the adjacent stage door, but it is intermittent and doesn't happen at every performance. To even have the janitor in the public spaces during the premiere performance is a management fumble of epic scale. At least give the man the dignity of a uniform that blends in with the ushers if he has to be there, and I'm sure there must be a more formal alternative to yellow rubber gloves.
.
I noticed this as I was scanning the foyers for kodak moments. It's a velvet dixie cup dispenser! Maybe a velvet housekeeping cart could be justified in the budget...
.
Finally, on to business.
Tonight's bill promised a spectacle, and it almost delivered. We heard John Adams's 'Guide to Strange Places', Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto with Yefim Bronfman on piano, and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. David Robertson conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
.
The concert started with a pleasant surprise in an appearance and short talk by Adams. The highlight of his brief speech was when he said [and I paraphrase] that one of the things about being a composer is that your work appears on the program with the world's greatest masterpieces. Adams's work stood up to the Rachmaninoff extremely well, in my opinion. Adventurous and mysterious, 'Guide to Mysterious Places' takes the listener on, according to Adams, a Fantasia-like journey thru sound. His minimalist style is distinctive for its bold rhythmic structure, but in this piece, the rhythm didn't drive the music as prominently as it does in his other works [many of you know his stunning 'Harmonielehre' from its excerpts quoted in 'The Matrix']. I was immediately reminded of Richard Serra's notorious 'Twain' and pictured myself running around the minimalist sculpture being assaulted by the corporate monoliths that surround it. Fortunately, this imagery faded as the music demanded other visualizations in its constantly-twisting sonic journey. The Symphony nailed the piece, for the most part. I'm no professional musician, so I'll spare you the pretentious musical references and analysis of the conductor's technique, but the musicians played as one just as we expect them to and Robertson did his usual excellent job of bringing the music to life. I just wish the horns would get their act together. I think they call it 'attacking' when the horn comes in too strong, but it's a recurring problem with the SLSO rearing its ugly head again [I missed all of last season, but in the previous season, the horns were perfect, so I'm wondering what happened].
.
Rachmaninoff's 3rd has never been one of my favorite pieces of music, and this performance didn't change that. Bronfman was technically spectacular, but thru the first two movements, he was missing a lot of the nuance. A few times, he lost the melody in Rachmaninoff's luxurious runs of scales [there's a musical term for these, but I don't know what it is and expect my readers don't either]. But in the third movement, he hit a home run. It's as if he finally came alive and realized there was more to it than hitting the keys in sequence. Again the horns hit sour, and the standing ovation seemed a little over the top. I broke my normal respectful protocol and left before it died down.
.
I quickly lost interest in the Bartok and slipped into my usual distraction of figuring out what shades they need to add to the paint scheme to do justice to the hall's beautiful plasterwork. However, the orchestra was noticeably more on its game for the Concerto for Orchestra. The horns were especially good and deserved their eager applause. The piece deserves it's reputation, I'm sure, but there's just very little from the 40's that interests me musically.
.
The biggest surprise of the evening was the audience. It was the most respectful audience I've encountered in St. Louis. There was very little coughing during the Adams, most notably a woman behind me who couldn't be bothered to control herself thru the first five minutes of the piece. They were rapt thru-out the Rachmaninoff, and there was practically no coughing at all, but they made up for it somewhat after intermission. The talking was so quiet I could only barely hear it [and that just doesn't happen with a St. Louis audience]. On the downside, the walking ovation after the Bartok was a civic embarrassment as half the people surrounding me bolted for the door as soon as Robertson put down his baton. People in the aisle in front of me were even rude enough to strike up a conversation with the people they were crawling over.
.
And if janitor noise and screeching brass wasn't bad enough, somebody just had to top off the evening by farting in the aisle. It lingered thru the entire ovation, and it smelled like a sewer.
.
I wonder if there'll be Lysol on the new velvet janitor's cart.

A fleur-de-lis for Christian [sorry about the blur]

Photos taken 9/26/8

Left Bank Books Downtown!

Lofts@315

Soon-to-be home of Left Bank - on the Right Bank [of the Mississippi]

I'm so excited! Left Bank Books is opening a second store at the corner of 10th and Locust Streets. Finally, a conveniently-located cool bookstore. I feared Borders or Barnes & Noble would beat them to it and steal the market. There's more, but I'm not sure how much I can divulge. But trust me [you'll have to at this point], it'll be swell.

Loft developer Craig Heller, who has provided space for City Grocers, UMA, and a number of other local businesses and who was brave enough to stand up to the Slay machine on the Mistake of the Century [nice fictionalized smack-down, mayor], is leasing the space to the bookstore. Now can we please have a nice, locally-operated pharmacy downtown?

I feel the burden of the big box lifting off my shoulders as I type this!
Photos taken 9-23-08

Random Acts of Beauty

Seen at Courtesy Diner on Kingshighway:

We Could Make Beautiful Music Together...

Powell Hall as the St. Louis Theater

The St. Louis Symphony season starts in just three short weeks. Highlights this year include two works by John Adams, Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, and Beethoven's 7th and 9th Symphonies.

I missed every concert last season due to sleep apnea, including John Adams's Dr. Atomic Symphony, which I had been looking forward to since its postponement in the previous season.

Stay tuned for reviews and comments on the season, and hopefully pictures. I'm going to see if I can take my camera in for some shots of the hall. Every year, I walk into the hall hoping to see that they've freshened up the paint and added some much-needed highlights to liven up that dull 1960's minimalist treatment and pop out the hall's gorgeous Rapp & Rapp detailing. Some whites for highlights and deep browns or burgundies for contrast would change the decor from Cinderella bedroom set to palatial splendor on a 'Trading Spaces' budget.

One thing they could do that would really dress the old girl up is bring back that fabulous curtain, part of which is visible in the picture above. The St. Louis had the distinction of having the only known movie palace valances that had to be raised before the movie started. Miles of fabric swagged around a cameo of Louis IX on horseback. Fabulous!

Photo from the Theatre Historical Society's Annunal No. 10 - 1983: 'Grand Drapes Tormentors and Teasers' by Terry Helgesen, from the author's collection of historic theater photos.

International Festival

Those of you who know me have heard me bitching about the International Festival in Tower Grove Park. In past years it has been noisy and attracted rude people to the neighborhood. The first three or four years of the festival, I was rudely awakened early Sunday morning with gospel music blaring from speakers pointed directly at my house. We're talking 8am here, a time when sensible people are polite about the possibility of hangovers. The year before last, one of the residents on the block actually walked over there and asked them to turn it down, which they did. But, that year and last year, a stage sat where it's sound system pointed toward the houses, and we were treated to excessively amplified music and DJ's of varying quality [mostly, the quality of the music varied, the DJ was annoying every time he stuck a mic up to his mouth].
.
This year, to my great surprise and pleasure, the stages were set up in a manner similar to Pridefest, oriented to the long axis of the park, and the Scottish Games were set up in a lawn where they were visible from the porch [hate me if you want, ladies]. Quieter activities were placed closest to the houses, and the noise was kept well away. It was nice, and it was a better distribution of the heavy crowd, tho they should work on some of those bottlenecks in the food row. Attendees were more respectful of the neighborhood, too. We've had less litter [one year a woman left a dirty diaper on the sidewalk], and the only cars parked collision-close were apparently vendors or International Institute staff, because they've been bumper-to-bumper all day. This year was the largest I've seen it, and the beautiful weather brought out a huge crowd. The rude people were still there, but they were more outnumbered than usual.
.
My dear friend Sue and I started the day with brunch at MoKaBe's, then walked up to Cheap TRX [web page under construction] before heading back to the park. You might want to sit down for this... cars turning from Grand to Arsenal actually stopped for pedestrians [I know, unbelievable; I'll make a video next year]. We had a great time and are looking forward to next year.
.
Looking forward to International Festival; something I always hoped for but feared never would happen...