Crossing the Street
January 2008
I love telling new arrivals about my first weekend in Baton Rouge when I stood for two long days in the middle of a small field surrounded by aging homes—the right place at the right time—and listened to an unending string of bands pound the heat back out of the day. In Baton Rouge, people rely on a wonderfully enigmatic transfer of knowledge about where to be and when, a game almost of fighting to fit into the ebb of our burgeoning arts world. But some people in Baton Rouge want to begin a new habit, a habit that would breathe life into a rather arcane vision of what is possible. We have decided to use a calendar. Or two. Or five.
Both BRevents and RougePages, open forums for posting your events online, were created with the best intentions. Both sites remain largely unused. ‘Clarence’s Baton Rouge Information Page,’ while packed with information, is cumbersome. Print journals like Country Roads and 225 Magazine (among others) offer—by design—a predetermined and therefore still limited listing of local events. One of my favorite BR inventions, the e-newsletter Cherry, works concertedly to ‘fight homogeneity,’ a worthy if not yet fully-realized goal. No doubt, the calendar bug has bitten. So why aren’t we using these calendars better? More importantly, what does it say about how Baton Rouge residents communicate with each other? Or how they don’t?
My friend Donney is an events planner as well as a phenomenal poet. Donney knows how important calendars are. ‘Look at Chelsea’s,’ he tells me. ‘The first thing you see when you go into Chelsea’s is the calendar. On the first, Dave has to figure out how to fill the entire month up. In other words, he’s telling everyone that comes in, ‘You’ll always have something to do here.’’
I ask Donney if he’s ever used CultureCandy.org, the online events calendar for cool, cultural things going on in Baton Rouge, to advertise one of his events. ‘Nope,’ he answers. Suddenly I hear myself saying Baton Rouge and I realize that the picture I see is LSU, the lakes, downtown, Government Street, and a wall of misinformation and unknowns stretching north from Florida Blvd. I ask Donney if he’s ever used KontinuousEvents.com. ‘Yeah, sure,’ Donney pauses. ‘Kontinuous is, well, I guess like the black events bulletin in Baton Rouge.’ Right. That makes sense. Why wouldn’t there be an events calendar that appeals to north Baton Rouge?
About a year ago, the Arts Council of Baton Rouge started importing the CultureCandy.org calendar to their main website. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of collaboration. But does the collaboration end here? Alliances are made—end of conversation? ‘The thing is,’ Donney says, ‘there aren’t really that many ‘arts’ events on Kontinuous.’ No? So, what exactly are we calling ‘the arts’? I ask if there is music or dance at any of the events on Kontinuous. Donney nods in agreement and reminds me that his own poetry open mic is advertised on the site.
Across the city, we are still not sharing knowledge as much as we could be. From a bouquet of online and print, community and business-driven, grassroots events calendars that do not communicate with each other comes the increased fragmentation of an already fragmented city. At what point do we have a conversation about all of these calendars, niche or no, and how they do or don’t point to each other—a true collaborative effort that is held together by a shared vision to promote awareness of cultural events in our city?
My boss-lady, Anna West, says that the best remedy for stagnation is to cross the street. ‘Go where you haven’t gone before. Dare to visit the other side. Of course, you can’t do that unless you are willing to be uncomfortable, to grow a little bit, and to challenge your own assumptions about where you’re supposed to be.’ That first year in Baton Rouge, I found a Dairy Queen in the phone book and drove straight up Plank Rd. all the way to Central for an Oreo Blizzard. It was four years before I made it out to a bar on Scenic Highway. Today, still woefully ignorant about north Baton Rouge, I recognize that if I want to change the current landscape, I must recommit myself ever day to write, ask, shout, plead for more sharing, more communication, more opportunities to cross the street, to vote with my feet and my dollars and my words and my willingness to look into the heart of a new thing, a thing that says, Hell no, you’re not alone—you’re surrounded by the grace of difference. Have I come full circle? Perhaps. Hopefully. Multiple calendars in hand, I stomp back out into the city and try again to catch the flow of Baton Rouge’s many voices as they pound the heat of possibility back into the day.
***
While living in Baton Rouge, LA, I also contributed to 225 Magazine, Baton Rouge Town Favorites, and Baton Rouge Lagniappe.
January 2008
I love telling new arrivals about my first weekend in Baton Rouge when I stood for two long days in the middle of a small field surrounded by aging homes—the right place at the right time—and listened to an unending string of bands pound the heat back out of the day. In Baton Rouge, people rely on a wonderfully enigmatic transfer of knowledge about where to be and when, a game almost of fighting to fit into the ebb of our burgeoning arts world. But some people in Baton Rouge want to begin a new habit, a habit that would breathe life into a rather arcane vision of what is possible. We have decided to use a calendar. Or two. Or five.
Both BRevents and RougePages, open forums for posting your events online, were created with the best intentions. Both sites remain largely unused. ‘Clarence’s Baton Rouge Information Page,’ while packed with information, is cumbersome. Print journals like Country Roads and 225 Magazine (among others) offer—by design—a predetermined and therefore still limited listing of local events. One of my favorite BR inventions, the e-newsletter Cherry, works concertedly to ‘fight homogeneity,’ a worthy if not yet fully-realized goal. No doubt, the calendar bug has bitten. So why aren’t we using these calendars better? More importantly, what does it say about how Baton Rouge residents communicate with each other? Or how they don’t?
My friend Donney is an events planner as well as a phenomenal poet. Donney knows how important calendars are. ‘Look at Chelsea’s,’ he tells me. ‘The first thing you see when you go into Chelsea’s is the calendar. On the first, Dave has to figure out how to fill the entire month up. In other words, he’s telling everyone that comes in, ‘You’ll always have something to do here.’’
I ask Donney if he’s ever used CultureCandy.org, the online events calendar for cool, cultural things going on in Baton Rouge, to advertise one of his events. ‘Nope,’ he answers. Suddenly I hear myself saying Baton Rouge and I realize that the picture I see is LSU, the lakes, downtown, Government Street, and a wall of misinformation and unknowns stretching north from Florida Blvd. I ask Donney if he’s ever used KontinuousEvents.com. ‘Yeah, sure,’ Donney pauses. ‘Kontinuous is, well, I guess like the black events bulletin in Baton Rouge.’ Right. That makes sense. Why wouldn’t there be an events calendar that appeals to north Baton Rouge?
About a year ago, the Arts Council of Baton Rouge started importing the CultureCandy.org calendar to their main website. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of collaboration. But does the collaboration end here? Alliances are made—end of conversation? ‘The thing is,’ Donney says, ‘there aren’t really that many ‘arts’ events on Kontinuous.’ No? So, what exactly are we calling ‘the arts’? I ask if there is music or dance at any of the events on Kontinuous. Donney nods in agreement and reminds me that his own poetry open mic is advertised on the site.
Across the city, we are still not sharing knowledge as much as we could be. From a bouquet of online and print, community and business-driven, grassroots events calendars that do not communicate with each other comes the increased fragmentation of an already fragmented city. At what point do we have a conversation about all of these calendars, niche or no, and how they do or don’t point to each other—a true collaborative effort that is held together by a shared vision to promote awareness of cultural events in our city?
My boss-lady, Anna West, says that the best remedy for stagnation is to cross the street. ‘Go where you haven’t gone before. Dare to visit the other side. Of course, you can’t do that unless you are willing to be uncomfortable, to grow a little bit, and to challenge your own assumptions about where you’re supposed to be.’ That first year in Baton Rouge, I found a Dairy Queen in the phone book and drove straight up Plank Rd. all the way to Central for an Oreo Blizzard. It was four years before I made it out to a bar on Scenic Highway. Today, still woefully ignorant about north Baton Rouge, I recognize that if I want to change the current landscape, I must recommit myself ever day to write, ask, shout, plead for more sharing, more communication, more opportunities to cross the street, to vote with my feet and my dollars and my words and my willingness to look into the heart of a new thing, a thing that says, Hell no, you’re not alone—you’re surrounded by the grace of difference. Have I come full circle? Perhaps. Hopefully. Multiple calendars in hand, I stomp back out into the city and try again to catch the flow of Baton Rouge’s many voices as they pound the heat of possibility back into the day.
***
While living in Baton Rouge, LA, I also contributed to 225 Magazine, Baton Rouge Town Favorites, and Baton Rouge Lagniappe.