Hey Dallas, hear you’re having trouble taking down a building. We’ve run into that before. Too much rebar and not enough wrecking ball.
I know you don’t like to take advice from little ol’ humble Cowtown, but we figured out how to re-use something that simply won’t go away.
Look no further than West 7th Street and the intersection with University Drive and oh seven or eight other streets but usually referred to as simply “hell.” We had a little tornado from March of 2000 (I think you’re familiar with tornados, Hey there, North Dallas!).
Well, we took the lemons from our tornado in 2000 and made lemonade or more likely moonshine with a lemon flavor. That tornado ripped through Fort Worth’s Cultural District and then headed downtown to reap further havoc. Among those buildings and structures beaten to high-holy hell by that tornado was a billboard advertising Al’s Trim Shop. The tornado tore down the billboard and bent the steel supports down like the wrath from one really pissed off god.
What did we do? Did we tear the beams down slowly with an undersized blow torch or maybe a book of matches? Heck, no. They were near the Cultural District after all. And, along with a new post office, we saw fit to turn those bent beams from an angry god into art, or as we like to say, “ort.” The post office’s rear wall features an enlarged photograph of a Texas rural landscape with a big ol’ Tejas sky above. I mean, it’s about as cool as Amarillo in January.
Now as we wait for those damned lights at the intersection from hell to finally bless us with a green so we can hook ’em down Camp Bowie to Kincaid’s, we can look over and take in some art in the meantime. I mean, why not? It sure beats putting up another convenience store or a financial institution that will change its name every two months. Give it a thought, Dallas. Lean into it, if you know what I mean. Don’t worry, we won’t take too much credit for it.