Our View - Friday

HOW TO MAKE A CITY THRIVE
Concerts bring vitality to downtown

If a new book were written, titled "What a Great City Looks Like," the following scene might grace its cover: toddlers splashing about a water-spewing sculpture; hippie-style, sun-loving, barefoot college students and vagabonds lounging lazily on blankets; polo clad husbands pouring merlot alongside their big, floppy-hat-wearing wives; entire families feasting on some of the best tamales outside of southern California.

It might seem like Utopia - or at least a scene from an era-goneby - but that would not be the case. It would be a real-life scene straight out of downtown Colorado Springs every Wednesday, summer 2008.

Thanks to a public-private partnership seven years in the making, Springs residents enjoy a summer concert series that's second to none along the Front Range. From doo-wop to folk, bluegrass to rock, the weekly "Getting Down Downtown" music concerts have something to please any musical taste.

And all of this is set against the gorgeous backdrop of a Pikes Peak sunset - a scene people would travel halfway around the globe to enjoy.

It all started seven years ago when Classic Homes decided it was good business to get out in the community and promote the downtown area. Seeking ways to get involved, the company's managers jumped at the idea of hosting a free summer concert series. Other companies and organizations, like the Nor'wood Development Group, the Downtown Development Authority, and the Colorado Farm and Art Market (CFAM), slowly joined in and voilá - a fantastic weekly concert series emerged.

Now, every Wednesday, thousands of Springs residents descend upon downtown and America the Beautiful Park. Couples buy fine wine at the Tejon Street Wine Shoppe beforehand; families grab pizza at Poor Richards; teenagers get ice cream at Josh and John's after the concert. Businesses anywhere near the event bustle with activity.

The tremendously successful concert series is a perfect example of how private businesses and organizations can make use of public space to fuel business and generate new vitality for downtown Colorado Springs. And it could not have come at a better time.

As the prices of oil and other essential commodities continue to rise with no end in sight, family vacations have been cancelled or cut short. If consumer costs continue to soar, we may begin to see a reversal of the decades-long trend toward suburban sprawl - like it or not. People will begin to discover the economic advantages of living, working and playing near the center of their communities. Recreation will become less of a long-distance endeavor, and more an act of taking simple pleasures from centrally located community events. Downtown is poised to snatch prosperity from an economic slump, if merchants and associations play their cards right.

The summer concert series stands as a great example of what can and should be done to make downtown a central feature of life in Colorado Springs and the entire Pikes Peak region. More events, more housing and more business downtown will make the core of our community, and therefore the rest of the city, thrive like never before. Masses of people - living, working, spending and playing - are what make a successful urban core.

Congratulations to Classic Homes, Nor'wood Development Group, the Downtown Development Authority, and the Colorado Farm and Art Market. They have displayed how simple, mostly private actions can bring life, vitality and prosperity to downtown Colorado Springs. Other private agencies and businesses should follow their lead, finding simple ways to promote food, music, culture, art and commerce - the essential components of great cities and towns.

THE NUTTY, CHURCHILL WANNABE

Professor Paul Zachary Myers, of the University of Minnesota Morris, is a sad man worthy of pity. He is so desperate to be noticed that he has promised to go on the Internet and desecrate the Eucharist - a consecrated host that hundreds of millions of Catholics hold dear as the real and physical presence of Jesus. On his blog he promised extreme sacrilege involving treating the Eucharist "with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse..."

Myers, the newest symbol of wasted tax-funded academic largesse, makes Ward Churchill look like a Nobel laureate.

Myers teaches biology at Minnesota Morris. It's a tiny college that's great at teaching the liberal arts, but a place of potential obscurity for a professor of science. Unfortunately for others at the school, it's best known today for this pathetic play by Myers.

Myers, seeking to spend his 15 minutes of fame, wants to prove that the Eucharist - a communion host consecrated by a priest and handled with uncompromising care - is just a "cracker." He publicly solicited people to send him consecrated hosts so he could do horrible, unspeakable things to them on video that he plans to distribute on the Internet. He claims to have received several hosts, and he's poised to begin his deed.

How thoughtful. How brave. How sensitive. How loving. How tolerant of the religious convictions of others in his world. Myers has chosen the only realm of overt bigotry that remains acceptable in academe and the rest of American society.

By aggressively insulting Catholics, he has boldly chosen to go where many, many other bigots have gone before in modern times. He has chosen to assault the sensibilities of a religious culture in which the devout are taught to turn the other cheek, to expect persecution and to embrace it. He has chosen to attack a religion he knows will spare him any difficult consequence. He chose the only form of bigotry that won't cost him his job.

To challenge religion, Myers might embark on something a bit more courageous if he were a man confident in his lot. He might go on YouTube, perhaps, and desecrate the Koran. Heck, he'd be brave just to write or video blog words of disrespect about Islam and Islamic beliefs. If he did that, he could end up living in exile just to save his life from believers who don't take insults lightly. Who can forget Salman Rushdie's experience, after writing a fictional book that rudely portrayed a fictional character? Some Muslims believed the fictional character was intended to represent Mohammed, and that was too much to tolerate. Rushdie merely appeared to insult Islam by proxy, and Islamic leaders ordered followers to deliver his head in a bag.

Heck, Myers wouldn't have to go so far as to risk his life to boldly challenge belief. He could simply choose to malign Scientologists, who might just sue him out of house and home. Or, he could try setting the Anti Defamation League into action. The Jewish community knows all too well where religious bigotry leads.

But Myers, that nutty professor in Minnesota, is wasting his moment in the spotlight on the safest and easiest road to rebellion known to humankind. He's attacking the only major religion that's safe to malign in the hallowed halls of academia these days.

Try as you may, Dr. Myers, you're no Ward Churchill. At least he showed some courage, and original ideas. Your sick stunt derives nothing but pity.