Changing the Realities of Downtowns: Alleyway Rhetoric

This past weekend I visited my hometown of San Angelo, Texas. With a population of about 88,000, it fell asleep for many years forgetting that it had such a rich downtown. Unfortunately, too many towns let their downtowns, the heartbeats of a city, fall into disrepair. Driving around, I pulled into some clean and inviting alley ways! Yes, alley ways. The rhetoric, both visual and verbal, the artists painted on the walls frame the downtowns in a new light. I found this alley way in a historic section of downtown that an artist or group of artists painted their view of what a downtown should look like. The picture with the leaning dilapidated bike shows street rhetoric at its best. The bright red wall reads, "More often than not, I would prefer to walk into the rear alley precisely for all those little hints of life, activity and transition which the placid visual arts of suburbia did their best to politely suppress or politely disguise." More and more, people are realizing that the continuous barrage of capitalistic competition in the form of commercials can wear on one's soul numbing them to life's beauty. And slowly, San Angelo is remembering that they don't have to look to Dallas, Texas for their inspiration and art and that they can grow as their own city.

As a young girl, I remember my father driving us through downtown San Angelo in our green station wagon. Out of the backseat window I saw nothing more than a sleepy central Texas town with tumbleweeds and dust blowing down the sidewalks. "Ugh! I live here?" I thought. "There's got to better," I thought plastering my cheek to the window and dreaming of some better place.