The Dark Satanic Mills of the Overture Center

Emily Mills had an opinion piece in last week's Isthmus called "Leave those buskers be!". In it she decries a proposal to license street musicians, charging them $50 per year to grace the ears of passers-by and earn some coin. Like Mills, I too have come down against the idea.

However, I was annoyed to find that, in addressing this city government issue, she took advantage of the opportunity to once again scorn the Overture Center:

Madison makes a lot of noise about its thriving arts community. And the city does have dedicated, hard-working folks who've helped make it into a creative cultural center. City government, on the other hand, seems more intent on sterilizing and washing away the elements that make us unique.

The Loft teen center was exiled from State Street some years ago, freeing the area of pesky, hormonal adolescents. Plans are constantly being floated to beautify Peace Park and kick out its transient population. The Overture Center, now racked with financial woes, displaced several well-loved shops and restaurants (I miss the Radical Rye like a hooked fish misses water).

McDonalds is well-loved too but I'm not going to go around trumpeting it as a unique Madison fixture. And, Emily, are you seriously claiming that the transient population is a vital cog in Madison's uniqueness? Well, we as a city should then stop trying to help these people from improving themselves lest they get stable employment and a place to live whereupon there goes more uniqueness down the drain. Yes, shops and restaurants got displaced when the OC was built. Some, like Dotty's found new digs while others, like Radical Rye, went the way of the dodo. But I think we got something in return – anyone can walk in the OC and see walls covered in art by local artists for free; they can listen to concerts by local musicians for free; they can bring their kids in on Saturdays during the school year to experience some culture for FREE. Personally, I think it's rather "unique" for this city to have a big, shiny, expensive arts center that offers so much to the public for no cost. In addition, there are short films on the roof during June and another movie screen to abet the Wisconsin Film Festival. Overture Hall surely can accommodate productions that required a stage larger than that of the Capitol Theatre.

Besides, what's "unique" anyway? Is "uniqueness" a virtue in itself or does content count? Madison had a "unique" thing going in the early 1980s with state workers, students, and those in the sex trade at an uneasy détente downtown. Prostitutes patrolled King Street while State Street had more than a few "adult entertainment" venues. Watch Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography and get a glimpse of Madison uniqueness circa 1980. Should we lament the city having cleaned it up and disposed of its uniqueness?

A lot of this has to do with how we take a snapshot of the past and romanticize it as being the pinnacle of unique or desirable somehow. Madison still has its unique qualities. Those haven't gone away. Has downtown become a place more amenable to the bland and the middle class? Sure. And it started long before anything Mills listed in her piece. To me, downtown lost a lot of charm around the time that the Monona Terrace went in and the Square started to cater to condo dwellers and conventioneers. Hotel Washington burned down while Jocko's was raided. The Hideaway suffered the indignity of the wrecking ball so we could have Marigold while the 602 Club transmogrified into Wando's. Then the Comic Strip and O'Cayz burned to the ground. The Chamber – gone. R'n'R Station became the Paramount became a dorm. I fondly recall buying vellum at Marmalade Skies back in the days when I actually wrote letters as well as the funky wrapping paper they sold there and it's gone. The city's actions certainly have a role in determining the culture of State Street & downtown but let's not forget that private business owners do as well.

Yet others older than myself and who have been here longer surely lament the losses of Headliners or Merlyn's or the Stone Hearth and some of these people will be talking about how great things were in the mid-to-late 80s this weekend at the Senior Scenester shindig at the High Noon.

Ms. Mills, being younger, wants to look back to the early days of this millennium to find her preferred panacea.

Who gets to say which incarnation of "uniqueness" we ought to have?

Another problem, I think, comes in the tension between high and low culture. My impression is that Ms. Mills and other bloggers find that art & culture which they deem worthwhile generally, if not exclusively, come from below. It is produced by non-professionals and not mediated by what they see as elite aesthetes who reside in arts centers that cost $200 million or some such thing. That's why a spray painted stencil on a wall is worthy art while the works by local artists painted onto a canvas that end up in the Overture Center are ignored by these people. It's why Mills can write that the homeless people at Peace Park help make Madison unique while dismissing the Overture Center as contributing nothing of interest to the town's character and it's also why such bloggers ignore what happens at the OC until A) it encounters financial program which gives them an open-ended opportunity to bash it while it's down or B) a band like Wilco plays there which is OK because Wilco is "indie". Aside from an appearance by Wilco or Ryan Adams, it's as if the activities at the OC are worthless just by virtue of happening within its walls.

And can we please stop characterizing Madison as State Street? A lot of things and people exist in other parts of town that are part of the melting pot of Madison. Take sports teams. Neither the Mad Rollin' Dolls nor the Mallards have much of anything to do with State Street. What about the south side with its plethora of ethnic stores, restaurants, R Place on Park, a Latino radio station, etc.? Many beer drinkers are quaffing quality suds at places like The Malt House and Dexters, both of which reside away from State Street. And guess which side of town is the only one to have a brewery (as opposed to a brewpub)? The north side. You cannot define Madison sola State Street.

Madison was unique in 1980 and then things changed. Lo and behold it was still somehow unique in 1990. The process repeated itself and the uniqueness was present as at the change of the millennium. If you wait long enough, everything that was old will be new again. Mark my words: Madison will be a polka town once again.