Shakespeare and Co. Booksellers

Oh, I hope they win a gold for us. Go, boys!

So, I surfed the Internet last night for a little performing arts center financial-shortfall porn and it was not hard to find some. Last month Amarillo’s PAC (the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts) had some trouble because a few private donors bailed out and so the city was left to make up the difference — something like 2.2 million. There also seems to be some anecdotal stuff about ticket prices being too high, although this is disputed: remember that free show we put on last Easter? See? Quit your bitching! Then in Austin, TX, the Long Center couldn’t afford to keep up its landscaping anymore so they asked the city to cut the grass for free because, well, they were planning to “partner” with the city anyway and etc. etc. and do you have a quarter of a million dollars worth of services we can have for free right now? Things are tight but we promise we’ll make it up next year due to projected increases and memberships and yeah if you’ve just got twenty bucks we can have till payday that would be great, and if not, fine — don’t cut the grass! Let the place go to hell! It’s your city! We’re just trying to help!

Maybe these cities in Texas (Amarillo, anyway) are impoverished enough, culturally, that they really need these places, and the financial problems are worth trying to manage. But, here, where we have so much going for us …

Oh, by the way, have we got an update on the cost of our PAC? Last I checked, they weren’t planning to build it out of straw bales and salvaged 2×4s. It’s probably fairly petroleum-intensive, that kind of building. All that concrete and glass and those seats and curtains and carpet and … Of course not. We don’t have an update. I’m almost certain there will be no update. Meanwhile, city officials and concerned people are all in a fret over the rising costs of putting in a roundabout over on Higgins. Ha! Wait till you go to build a state-of-the-art performing arts center.

What else is going on? An old man in a cowboy hat idled his black truck in a church parking lot today. He had his windows open. I walked right past him. He had the whole goddamned parking lot to himself.