The tag art around around Grinder's is always top notch. I hadn't stopped by in a while so there was some new stuff since last I'd been.
It's funny, at the arts forum I was on the way to, one of the things proposed by people in my focus group was that there would be some way for artists to stay in a neighborhood after it gets expensive.
To me, it's obvious that the mechanism whereby artists benefit from the wealth they create moving into a neighborhood is best realized by those artists buying in. Instead of renting a studio and hoping the rent stays rock bottom even as the neighborhood improves in part because all these artists have moved in, you should buy a place and when someone offers you crazy money for the place, you know it's time to sell and go start another arts district.
Grinders is an example of this. Stretch was one of the Crossroads originals, and I saw somewhere that he claimed he sold because the taxes got too high and moved east. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the taxes went from nothing (either literally thanks to an abatement deal or almost literally thanks to the property being worthless) to something, and when he realized he could make a several-hundred-percent profit on his original investment, he cashed out and bought a much bigger space just outside of what was then the hipster zone.
Power to him, as far as I'm concerned. I met him once, briefly, and he struck me as cocky but basically likable, and I've been to his restaurants and to a concert in his venue and I got nothing bad to say.
To me, Stretch is an example of how you can live the American Dream without dropping your fishing pole in the main stream.
If someone wants to make a living in the arts, any arts, they need to be entrepreneurially oriented. A guy I once rented a house from had a sign on his wall that said, "What am I doing today that puts a check in the bank tomorrow?" People I've known who made livings as musicians, photographers, poets, novelists, etc., they all, one way or another, live that. It doesn't mean they aren't genuine artists, and it certainly doesn't mean they've sold out.
They may even pursue several avenues they know are revenue neutral at best, but they make sure to pay attention to the things that keep the lights on and groceries coming in.
It might be some artists don't have the appetite or aptitude for the business moves someone like Stretch made, and that's fine, but when those rents start rising, it's time for you to move the same way it is when you realize you can sell at a large profit. No whining allowed, Greenwich Village used to be a cheap place to live, too. There's probably a few artists in that neighborhood who aren't even that good artistically, who are living in multi-million-dollar brownstones they bought at slum prices a few decades back.
When the Village got pricy, neighborhoods in Brooklyn took over, and some of those 'hoods are now gentrified to the point of ridiculousness.
Actually, if you want to make Kansas City a magnet for the arts, let it become known not that impoverished artists can linger in poverty indefinitely, but rather that artists can reap financial gains far beyond anything they realize from art sales.
Even liberals and socialists like to make a little dough. It gives them something to wish they had to pay more taxes on, something to contribute to liberal political organizations and candidates, a good way to be NPR subscribing, Vespa riding, Whole Foods shopping liberals and socialists.
Even a tagger who uses the nom de plume Lazy creates value, there's no reason not to reap the rewards of that where you can.
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