Author: Toby Weiss

No more Lowe’sville.
The third week of November found Ms. Thompson finally selling her home to DESCO. They were the last house standing in the way of, ahem, progress. She really had no choice, but she gets a red badge of courage for having lived in such desolation while fighting a losing battle against eminent domain.
And in short order, the house was stripped.

On December 5th, guys worked until well after dark loading fixtures into a U-Haul. On December 6th, workers began dismantling the garage. Surely, the house will be dust in the wind before Friday rolls around. And crushing the Lone Holdout won’t be near as noisy and harmful as the new buildings going up.

I hope the Thompsons got enough money to buy a worthy new home. And even as the last remnants of this battle are disappearing, the fight wants to go a few more rounds.
From the December 7th “Town Talk” in the Suburban Journals:

“Boycott Loughborough Commons
PEOPLE OF SOUTH St. Louis and South County do you feel powerless about eminent domain? Now is our chance to show people that we don’t want houses torn down for shopping centers when we have enough places to shop. I urge people to draw up petitions in your neighborhood for people to sign that they will not shop at the Loughborough Commons Shopping Center at Loughborough and I-55. Send those to the DESCO Group Developers. Let’s finally do something. Let us show that we still can control this type of situation. We deserve to be able to keep our homes and feel safe about situations like this. This is not what eminent domain was for.”

On December 3rd, I got an e-mail from “abba-dabba,” a business partner of the Marilyn Shrine artist Kabbaz.

I thought that art book had slammed shut, but with one small message, I knew more chapters were being written. Turns out “they” have heard of my interest in the work, gave me a link to the updated Kabbaz website, and wrote that if I liked what was done in the past, I’m really going to like what’s coming up.

I was simply thrilled that they had made contact, and knew how much I loved the silent art gallery. But then with the promise of something new to come? Is this a holiday miracle?

Today, I drove by the store front and SHE’S BACK! And in fitting tribute to coming back from the dead, it’s a replica of her LIFE magazine cover! Some faux marble painting was done to the display window, and when peeking in the front door, there’s another painting! At the entrance there appears to be a mural of a squatting Marilyn from the remaining footage of her last (aborted) movie, Something’s Got To Give.

Will it be a Marilyn Shrine Coffee House in competition with the Starbucks across the street? A restaurant? A full-blown art gallery for an artist-in-residence?
I’ll wait patiently for the answer. I’m just grateful that Kabbaz and Marilyn are back. Santa came to town a little early this year.

The Highlands @ Forest Park
Oakland Avenue, clinic St. Louis, cost MO
There are 2 things I think of every time I drive by this building.

#1: Shortly after it opened for business, treatment the east-facing elevation was quickly dotted with window shades. Much like ants under a magnifying glass, when that brilliant morning sun comes through all that glass, the inhabitants fry.

#2: All those window shades going up and down make that elevation look like a crossword puzzle.
14 ACROSS
Thoughts on the development standing on the ruins of The Arena

Fresh off the evening plane, and my friend drives us directly to the heart of Las Vegas Boulevard – The Strip. From the passenger seat, I soak in the throbbing lights, pirate boats, fountain shows and drunken revelers. But amidst the flash, what truly catches my eye is a tiny dark patch. Alone and deserted in the shadows is a round series of white clamshells, the strangest and most beautiful thing I’ve yet seen on The Strip. I ask my friend to please bring me back here in the daylight so I can get a better look at the building in the center of the Black Hole on The Strip.

Come to find out that within my first 5 minutes in Las Vegas, I fell in love with a building that’s scheduled to be demolished. But of course! As in St. Louis so it remains in Vegas: If I love it, it shall come down. For a person leaving St. Louis in disgust over how it wastes its evolving architectural heritage, Vegas was either the best or worst place to go, depending on what lessons I needed/wanted to learn.

The building is the lobby of what was the La Concha Motel. The motel portion was demolished in December 2003 but the famous lobby remains behind as the sales office of the company schilling space in the skyscraper condo slated to rise in its place. Considering that downtown Las Vegas regenerates itself about every 15 years, the La Concha – and it’s next door neighbor, the former El Morocco Motel – has been a tenacious little trooper. But times up, ta ta.

But wait up! Turns out there is a Nevada Preservation Society! Concerning Las Vegas, would this define the phrase “exercise in futility?” But their first successful “save” is the La Concha lobby, which will be cut into 7 pieces and moved a couple of miles away to serve as part of the anticipated neon sign museum. Yes, there are small pockets of people trying their best to preserve Las Vegas history, and you’d think in a town with such deep pockets it would be easy, but no.

Las Vegas owes its life to the building of the Hoover Dam, which was a WPA project in the 1930s, so “history” is a vague concept for this town. When locals say a building is old, they mean it might be 30 years old. When any city on the globe can be recreated with the proper props and financial backing, who cares about the physicality of a history that reaches back maybe 70-odd years?

Look to the mountains that 360-circle Vegas and you can feel the land’s history. It’s all insanely gorgeous, very Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. Step onto the foot of a mountain, stare up into the abyss and know that not even Steve Wynn can recreate something this awesome (sure he created a forest, but it has that 15-year shelf life). But because of that mountain ring, there is finite space to build, and since Vegas exists solely for gambling, the most important buildings accommodate that activity.

Gambling only requires a place for someone to sit down and bet. It truly doesn’t matter what the place looks like; money leaves you just the same at the Bellagio as it does at the slot machines in the gas station bathroom. With gambling, it’s not the container but the content, and if a particular building stops pulling in gamblers, then the building has to go. It’s that simple, and in a city where everything is a façade, I adore that rare form of honesty. Which makes the saving of the La Concha lobby all the more remarkably bizarre.

The lobby of what was the El Morocco Motel sits next door, and I’ve never seen so many activities crammed into one small place. This building wants to be everything to everyone in the remaining months of its life.

There’s been no news about El Morocco being spared in a similar manner, but considering how stunned Preserve Nevada must be over the La Concha victory, it might be hard to juggle two saves at a time. Plus, Las Vegas citizens simply don’t care about saving “old” buildings when they need all the land they can grab to provide new housing for the 5,000-7,000 people pouring in each month. But more important is the honesty of the chairman and CEO of Harrah’s, Gary Loveman when he told Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I’ve never understood the hand-wringing about something new, especially in Las Vegas… If there isn’t any exciting new development, then what do you have?”

Besides, if anyone truly misses these – or any – buildings after they’re gone, Las Vegas can always recreate them, if the price is right.

South St. Louis Front Yard
A Tom Turkey pulls a Diana Ross-like inflation to block out the Christmas decoration Supremes.

These blow-up yard ornaments are awfully high maintenance; they seem to deflate every other day right before sunrise thus requiring the owners to maintain a regular inflation schedule.

But I am happy to see Thanksgiving finally getting any ornament prop. I never understood why it was so overlooked as a decorating op. It’s all black and white pilgrims progress, with buckles and big hats; bright orange and indian red… All that bold earthtone and puritanical aesthetic simplicity must lack a certain dimestore glamour. A string of horn o’plenty lights sounds unappealing, automated musical lawn Indians might be politically incorrect.

So, even though these bulbous nylon Tom Turkeys are pretty fruit, I’m thankful they eeked out a few precious square feet of lawn before inflatable Santa Claus comes to town.

Speeding down a Las Vegas freeway, pharm and from the first glance out the car window I really liked this building. When I finally got up on it in daylight, I fell in love with it.

It’s simple and flashy; simple in its shapes and materials, flashy because it writes those shapes and materials in big, broad, bold strokes. Yet it never goes overboard, or crosses the line into gaudy. And this is Las Vegas, where flashy is good, and the gaudier the better. While this building acknowledges the indigenous flash, it refuses to give in completely, almost as if trying to lend a little class to a call girl of a city.

Even as I investigated the precise details of the building, I had the feeling it would never make the pages of Architectural Record. It’s as if the building has a scent that will keep the serious design media away, even while it was built to attract exactly that ilk (wholesale-wise). But this isn’t the building’s fault. This is about The Expertly Stated Opinion.

The world of design is completely and utterly subjective, there is no true right or wrong because it’s all opinion. The world of design is deep and wide, with lots of items vying for attention. Attention comes in the form of industry talk leading to press leading to the general public’s awareness of the item. If an item completes the trifecta of attention, it is commonly accepted as good, or good enough to deserve attention.

But how do you get the ball rolling? By casually but forcefully stating your opinion while talking to the proper group of people. It’s imperative that the person making the proclamation has some form of authority (signs your paycheck, knows the people you want to know, can bring attention to your project, etc.), and that it’s mixed with just the right tint of enthusiasm. If the balance is right, The Expertly Stated Opinion is naturally regarded as fact. I’ve personally experienced this phenomenon in action in architecture offices, but it’s also the basis of the entire field of media critique, from movies to records to boots to books.

I bring this up not to form a game plan towards convincing anyone that the World Market Center is worthy, but to explain why I feel the official architecture media will not accept it.
The architects of the building are not culturally cool – they’re responsible for The Bellagio, for chri’sake! People within the field don’t want to give the firm props, but sometimes have to. And from content to exterior, the building is trying to lend some sophistication to Las Vegas, an exercise in futility if ever there was one. Those 3 strikes will keep the architecture media community far, far away. Maybe if Santiago Calatrava were overheard at a cocktail party saying he liked the World Market Center building, it would appear in the Art & Design section of New York Times? Nah.

But a building doesn’t need to be deemed worthy by the cognoscenti for me to like it. And I don’t even know if this building is thoroughly lovable, because I couldn’t get inside to feel it, see how – and if – it works as intended. I fell in love with it from the aesthetic part of my soul and through the camera’s eye.

Plus, I could actually walk up the side of the building! Those sweeping arcs carved into the façade are just like ramps. Something tells me they didn’t intend for that to happen, and surely their intended clientele would never walk up the side of the building. But I did in order to get a closer look at the building’s details, and others probably will for less esoteric reasons. I predict that the first time they catch someone climbing, a protective fence will go up.

I’ll be in Las Vegas for the next week, concentrating on sun, heat (they’re “still in flip flops”) and over-the-top gambling architecture that spurrs a boomtown.

Will they take the first wrecking ball swing at Busch while I’m gone?
Oh, I hope so.
I really don’t want to see it, can’t take it, but would still be compelled to watch it no matter how painful it is. I know this, because the same thing happened with the first swing on Northland, back in April of this year.
Considering how many architectural blows this city has landed on me during 2005, I’d really like to bypass the horror of Busch’s ceremonial destruction.

“The decision to flee came suddenly. Or maybe not. Maybe I’d planned it all along – subconsciously waiting for the right moment.”
Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas