A few months ago, the City of Savannah’s Facebook page received a message from a man named James Laswell who had last visited Savannah as a Marine in 1974. He was planning his first trip back, and asked us for help so he could show his wife the Savannah he remembered: “What I recall is descending wooden steps to a boardwalk hanging over the water,” he wrote. “Along that boardwalk, dug into the bank, were several clubs. We called it Underground Savannah. Now I can find no info about them. A trip to Savannah would be incomplete without showing my wife Underground Savannah.”

It took some back and forth before we both realized “Underground Savannah” was Factors Walk – the network of stone walls, iron bridges, cobbled ramps, tiered lanes and impossibly steep stairs between Bay and River streets. Forty years later, this guy did not remember the squares, the row houses, or the wispy moss in the gnarled trees. James Laswell remembered Factors Walk. And he remembered it as a secret underground world.

Until joining the City six years ago, and moving into a City Hall office that essentially opens onto Factors Walk, I hadn’t given this historic oddball much thought. Like many locals, I had long ago given our waterfront up to the tourists. It is these tourists, however, who got me to revisit this in-between world that transitions Savannah to the river.

Tourists carry a different expression while gliding the bricks of Jones Street vs. navigating the ballast stones of Drayton Ramp. Up there, it’s a recognition of unique beauty. Down here, it’s a bit of bewilderment, combined with fear of falling. Factors Walk seems ancient, like a Revolutionary fort, but with the backdoor feel of a lane, which it is: dumpsters, air compressors, parking spaces, workers on smoke breaks are all found here.

When I was flown in to Savannah for a job interview 13 years ago, they put me up at the old Day’s Inn on Bay Street. I checked in just as it was getting dark, and wandered over to the labyrinth near Jere’s Antiques. The criss-crossing catwalks at odd levels (there is a Lower, Middle and Upper Factors Walk), the hand-cut masonry, the people stumbling around with alcohol in hand — it reminded me at the time of the pillaging scene on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney.

Unlike the rest of the Historic District, which Oglethorpe laid out with carefully planned OCD orderliness, Factors Walk has more of an improvised quality. While our squares and streets are named after Savannah’s heroes and wealthy, this area took the name of the common factors — blue collar businessmen who conducted trade from the warehouses along the waterfront.

Its construction was pure utilitarian. By the mid-1800s, the Port of Savannah was an exporting machine at a level that would impress Curtis Foltz. We didn’t import much, however, so the European ships headed our way sailed across the Atlantic with empty hulls, which made for tippy ships. To provide ballast, they would load up the hold with heavy stones, then unload them on the Savannah waterfront to make room for our cotton, rosin and timber.

As exports increased, the stones began piling on the riverbank in mounds big enough to make it difficult to get around. At the same time, the 40-foot bluff upon which Savannah was built began seriously eroding under the weight of all this up and down activity. So Savannah came up with a win-win: use the abundance of ballast stones to stabilize the bluff and create some roads and walkways to make it easier to move goods.

One can only guess how these ballast stones began their journey across the Atlantic. Two years ago City workers were repairing a section of the Whitaker Street Ramp where it meets River Street, next to the Bohemian Hotel, and noticed that one granite block they pulled up had Chinese characters carved on its face. The workers brought the stone to our Library and Archives Director, Luciana Spracher, who discovered it to be a grave marker for a man named Zhang Lin’an who died in 1798. The marker was likely placed there when the ramp was repaved in 1867. How this Chinese headstone ended as ship ballast and then pavement for 150 years of River Street revelers remains a mystery, but sounds like the opening scene of an epic novel. The marker was recently put on display in City Council Chambers, as part our international exhibit.

Walking the three-quarter-mile length of Factors Walk reminds me of a geology class I took while going to college in Colorado. Our professor would take us to road cuts through the Front Range foothills, where the layers of igneous and sediment were exposed, and attempt to piece together their geologic history.

Savannah’s history is found in the layers of Factors Walk’s stone walls. Perfectly cut limestone, granite and marble squares give way to rounded cobbles which butt up again big Savannah Greys which transition to 20th century red bricks and more modern cement blocks. A Factors Walk survey commissioned by the MPC last year notes several “ghost walls” that emerge and then disappear into nothingness. When we needed bigger walls, we didn’t start from scratch. We simply built on top.

The surveyors also observed a number of entrances into the wall that are now bricked in, likely blocking either storage space or underground tunnels. The 131-page document is largely a dry, technical read, but on this matter the authors can’t contain themselves: “Little information is known about these tunnels. The use of these tunnels is rumored as either passageway to: smuggle or hide slaves and/or pirates, or to secretly transport the many dead from hospitals during the yellow fever in order to deter the city from widespread panic.”

In the wall next to City Hall, on the Drayton Street Ramp, are four large vaults with unusually high ceilings known as the Cluskey Embankment Stores. While we know they were commissioned by the City in 1842, and have been used for covered parking since 1962, we don’t know much about how they were used in the 120 years in between. Documents are rather vague, and photos are frustrating: our Archivist has discovered several turn-of-the-century photos of Drayton Ramp, but in each one the vaults are slightly out of frame. Many believe that for a time they were used to hold slaves for auction, a story that is passed on in a few walking tours, but we have no documentation indicating either way.

To help solve this mystery, the City earlier this year contracted with an archaeology team from Georgia Southern University to excavate the vaults. Thus far the team has dug up lots of items, including glass, metal, bone materials, and a mass of pharmacy bottles encased in a concrete-like mixture. Our goal when the archaeological work is done is to create an interpretive display that helps tell the story of both the vaults and Factors Walk. We have decided to no longer use these curiosities for parking.

We have been working on plans to improve Factors Walk, drafting standards for signage, bridges, the placement and screening of HVAC units and refuse facilities, new lighting, some of which has already been installed. The City classifies the Factors Walk wall as a monument – by far our largest – and like all monuments, it is in a constant state of erosion that requires attention: Currently we have two stabilization projects in progress to repair major vertical cracks that have developed in the wall near the Old Harbor Light and next to the stairs beside City Hall. Later this year we will begin work on the walls at the Abercorn and Barnard ramps.

There are dozens of businesses that call Factors Walk home, just as it was in the 1850s, and still a few bars located here. When James Laswell returns to find the Underground Savannah of his Marine days, he’ll discover that not all that much has changed. The stairs are still uncomfortably steep. The stones are still ankle-twisting uneven. The mysteries still abound.

Bret

 

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A few days ago in St. Augustine, Florida, venerable and esteemed rock music icon Bob Dylan wrapped the latest chapter of what has become known unofficially among his devoted enthusiasts as “The Neverending Tour.”

Launched in 1988, it found the aging poet and acoustic folksinger turned brash electric guitar put-down artist extraordinaire at what he believed was the nadir of his enviable career. In a fit of what can only be termed artistic desperation, Dylan, who just 14 years prior had led the most profitable, sold-out tour in the history of rock music (a cross-country trek backed by his stalwart henchmen The Band), ignored the fervent pleading of his respected manager and threw together a fiesty, somewhat sloppy “garage trio” made up of moonlighting members of the Saturday Night Live house band.

Dylan forced them to (halfway) learn almost 300 songs (including his own hits and misses plus covers of tunes by other artists both well-known and painfully obscure) from which he’d derive setlists on a whim each night, and told his agent to book them as many oddball gigs as possible in small, out of the way towns, colleges, fairgrounds and amusement parks — and, while he was at it, to go ahead and book another gig the following year in the exact same town or venue.

It was seen by some in the music industry as commercial suicide, the last gasp of a once great artist far past his prime and commercial appeal, intentionally aiming for the cheap seats, hoping to wring one last paycheck out of his once golden surname — and doing it in the most crass and tossed-off way imaginable.

Many critics, and his manager, felt Dylan had lost his grip on the established way of growing and maintaining your brand in the rock music world. To them, touring for superstars in the pre-internet age was all about holding back. Hanging in the shadows of one’s private life, far out of the line of sight of fans, developing some new whopper of a stage show every three years or so that would then be hyped mercilessly whenever the artist deigned to come out of hiding and deliver a musical sermon to their faithful flock.

To them, Dylan’s plan seemed addled. Intentionally playing small markets outside the big cities? When the fans who lived in those towns could be counted on to make the drive to your nearest concert just for a glimpse of you from the farthest reaches of a cavernous auditorium?

Intentionally choosing to play in small theaters a fraction of the size of the rooms you filled on his last tour just two years before (which found superstars Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers acting as his backing band)?

Steadfastly refusing to play almost any of the material from your most recent records? Not even having a new album to promote? Drastically rearranging your classic songs so that even the sweetest, beloved ballads became distorted, edgy rants delivered by a punk-ish band whose members were in their late 40s? Insisting ticket prices be kept lower than what you could easily charge? Selecting quirky alternative rock and reggae bands as your opening acts, when it was a safe bet most of your fanbase neither knew or cared for them?

And, strangest of all, planning to come back and play the exact same place little more than a year later? Conventional wisdom pegged this scheme as not only foolish, but spectacularly ill-conceived and doomed to an ignominious, very public, slow-motion failure.

Yet here we are, 25 years later, and in the interim Dylan has made some of the very best albums of his career, and played some of the finest and most transcendent concerts of his life (accomplishments most would have thought impossible a quarter century ago). At almost 72 years old, he is, amazingly, still on the road backed by an agile band of fast-on-their-feet musicians, doing essentially the same thing he began in 1988.

He’s also drawing large crowds who appreciate this off-kilter approach. In fact, in just a few weeks, he’ll launch a summer run through large, outdoor amphitheaters, flanked by a handful of the top names in twangy, roots-oriented rock and country music.

Dubbed “AmericanaRama,” this low-key traveling festival finds the bill rounded out by none other than alt-rock icons Wilco, folk-rock revivalists My Morning Jacket, and, appearing at various dates along the way, iconic Grateful Dead frontman Bob Weir, critically adored British guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson, post-modern pop-funk-psych visionary Beck and rising star Ryan Bingham. Tickets are selling briskly, and this symbolic passing-of-the-torch between the old and new guards has the potential to be one of the more unique and interesting package tours of its kind in decades.

Every bit of this late-career resurgence and creative burst can be attributed to the unorthodox hairpin turn in how Dylan viewed not only himself, but his audience and the music business in general.

In retrospect, his trademark penchant for reinvention served him very well, and he is now surely savoring the sense of accomplishment that comes from thwarting pundits’ expectations. By sloughing off the crushing weight of his iconic mantle and confounding those who assumed they knew their hero’s mindset and artistic trajectory better than he did himself, Dylan systematically shed many of the fans who foolishly insisted on keeping the songwriter boxed into the creative and branding limitations set by his early, worldwide fame.

Dylan instinctively knew he had to be seen as a vital, active artist to younger listeners, rather than as a relic of their parents’ generation — no matter how beloved or revered a relic. He had to prove his worth all over again, while not appearing to reject or be ashamed of his international standing and famous back catalog of inspiring words and music. In other words, he had to visualize an entirely new life for himself — one that paid homage to, but in no way rested on, his hard-earned laurels.

Like the most accomplished of the shape-shifting pop and rock songwriters who’ve followed in his wake (Lou Reed, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and the Pixies’ Frank Black Francis), Dylan –when operating at his very best– created trends, rather than chasing or adapting them.

As I look around Savannah these days, I cannot help but be struck by the need for our city’s very own “Neverending Tour” moment.

In many respects, this jewel of a city –a marvel of the United States in more ways than one– has become far too complacent and resistant to the kind of modernization and change that Dylan applied to his own impressive-yet-aimless career. As a city, we are as he had become: bloated, disillusioned, drifting and famous more for being famous than for what made us famous in the first place.

Reflexively frightened of change and progressive ideas, our city leaders (both the elected ones and the non-elected power players who REALLY pull the strings in this hauntingly beautiful and beguiling picture postcard facade of a town) have hamstrung our future by trading away bravery and vision for what they believe is stability and security, but which is actually a type of engrained stasis that is turning into necropsy.

True, there are a handful of accomplishments and developments that can be easily ticked off and pointed to which would supposedly support the notion that Savannah is not only adapting, but poised to thrive in these treacherous economic times. Yet dig just a little deeper and you’ll find fear, uncertainty and an almost overwhelming aversion to accepting constructive criticism.

Dylan has openly bragged that he became a timeless icon by having an almost preternatural sense of faith in his own abilities and good judgment. That’s what allowed him to reach heights of artistry, fame and adulation which in some respects have not been surpassed by any songwriter since. That’s what still allows him the courage and nerve to buck tradition and prevailing wisdom, time and time again.

However, it’s not enough to have nerve, tenacity, extreme self-confidence and a willingness to, as Dylan once put it, “accept chaos.”

You also have to be smart, clever, wise, prescient and cautiously humble. Those are the key qualities which are often sorely lacking in the leadership of Savannah, and in many of its most prominent movers and shakers.

It would bring me no end of joy and relief to look back 25 years hence and find this wonderful, promise-filled place that I love enjoying a Dylan-esque resurgence of its own that’s every bit as real, tangible, centered and cagey as his own. What will it take? How can we help? Who and what will have to be cast aside in order to make way for the new, and the brave?

And can it be done in a way that preserves and holds dear the very best parts of our shared experiences in this idyllic little gem of a city?

- Jim Reed

 

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I admit that I haven’t tuned into Transformers since I was a young girl. After a quick google search, I was reminded that they were an alien race that posed as transportation among us humans. While it might be considered a moving storyline, I discarded my intentions to attempt any sort of cyber-robotic analogy. However, I kept the tagline. Why?

I want to be a community transformer!

Like most folks, I want to “make a difference,” whether it’s through volunteerism, career choices in service fields such as education and public health, or more recently social entrepreneurship. As I work alongside other community folk who also seek to “make a difference,” I wonder, what can we do so that this “difference” transforms communities?

Often when we work to “make a difference,” we want to change something, and preferably something we can see or measure. For example, in our current education reform environment, we say that we want to improve the quality of education for all students. That often gets translated into: we want to see a positive change in student performance on standardized tests. In public health, we seek improved health outcomes for all communities. What we commonly hear is: we want to see less incidence of heart disease, lower rates of obesity, and fewer visits to the doctor. When we focus our efforts to “make a difference” on changing a specific outcome that we can see or measure, do we limit our ability to do transformative work?

Transformation is defined as a thorough or dramatic change. While it might seem like semantics, I am talking about more than a shift in vocabulary. One can argue transformation to be the sum total of many changes. Technically, that might prove true, but are the happy, healthy, and just communities we desire (a) a series of changes in test scores, incidence rates, and housing options or (b) the interplay between possibility and reality among people and the places where they live, learn, work, and play?

As community transformers, we must focus our efforts to “make a difference” on creating conditions that give rise to positive interactions between people and possibilities.

A couple Sundays ago, the City of Savannah rerouted traffic away from several downtown streets to create the first of four fun-filled, community events called Play Streets. Kids (and those of us who are kids at heart) were able to experience what our lives would be like in a space sin traffic. By transforming our relationship with our local streets, we were able to walk about freely, ride our bicycles without hesitation, make new friends, and of course play! This created new possibilities for active living, community building, and even hopscotch record setting. In addition to the chance to become champions in the Guinness Book of World Records, we now have the opportunity to champion for conditions, such as safe play spaces, that enable our community to move healthy spaces from a possibility to a reality.

Community transformation extends beyond change in our built environment. We must also work to alter perceptions of new and existing neighborhood spaces.

Every month or so, Parent University repurposes a local school as a learning environment for parents. Course topics range from encouraging baby babble to improving your child’s reading at home to managing household finances. Through this experience, parents demonstrate to their children that school represents more than a weekday chore centered on teachers, books, and tests. They reinforce the notion of school as a cornerstone in our community and a place of possibility. In fact, when we conceive of learning as an impetus for new ideas, experiences, and actions (i.e., possibilities), we can begin to perceive school as a place for community transformation. We then shift our focus from raising test scores to creating conditions that enable the use of relevant curriculum that centers on local community, collaborative activities that foster intergenerational connections, and meaningful opportunities for everyone to develop their personal leadership. School now becomes a space that equips us to translate possibilities into real change.

In the end, community transformation hinges on how we position ourselves in relation to the communities in which we desire to “make a difference.”

In place of an illustrative example, I put forth a few questions to ponder with fellow community transformers.

• When working in communities, do you consider yourself a partner with the community or a part of the community? How does your position shape your role as a community transformer, and how do those with whom you work alongside perceive you?
• For those whose professional responsibilities = community transformation, how do you give space and possibility to fellow community members to drive community transformation?
•  Finally, with such an emphasis on place, how can we as community transformers convey notions of community that transcend geographic boundaries and create space that has no room for margins?

Community transformers . . . more than meets the eye.

Erika

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The Creative Coast rang in 2013 with a flurry of activity. With Executive Director Jake Hodesh resigning to return to his hometown of Cincinnati, outgoing board chairman Susan Isaacs wasted no time kicking off the search for his replacement. The call went out far and wide in early January via a number of local and national job boards as well through various PR efforts. Isaacs, along with other members of the search committee, set up a simple but effective system to vet the resumes as they came in. “We set up the system just in case,” explains Isaacs, “we really had no way to gauge what kind of response we would get.”

That response stunned everyone involved and, even with the system, it took many hours to process every qualified candidate. By the end of January resumes were coming in at a rate of more than 20 per day, and by the time the dust settled there were close to 300 applicants.

Candidates applied from across the country and as far away as Europe. The cover letters expressed interest in The Creative Coast (of course), but a surprising number went out of their way to express a longstanding interest in relocating to Savannah. “It was inspiring to see so many smart, savvy people from places like New York City, Los Angeles and Boston all wanting to come live here,” Isaacs said. “Those cover letters were a nice reminder of how special Savannah really is.”

Just over twenty percent of the candidates came from Savannah or the surrounding area. The fact that this many local resumes also made the cut speaks to the homegrown talent we have already cultivated here, much of it due to the influence of The Creative Coast itself.

The selection committee reviewed every candidate that met the minimum requirements, before narrowing the search down to eight individuals who were scheduled for phone interviews. From there the number dropped to three finalists who were invited for an on-site evaluation by the entire Board of Directors along with representatives from SEDA and The City of Savannah.

Each candidate was asked to assemble a detailed presentation, which covered a wide variety of topics, from economic development to fundraising to leadership. They spoke of their own experiences as entrepreneurs, and of their community involvement. Each presentation was followed up with questions from the various stakeholders.

“It has been a long and grueling process,” Isaacs said, “but we are coming down the home stretch.” All board members and stakeholders have submitted their input to the search committee which is now responsible for making a final recommendation to the board. The new executive director of The Creative Coast will be announced in May.

With all this interest from around the country, Savannah certainly has had its choice of top talent. It’s a strong testament to the economic development work done so far, and of Savannah’s enduring charm and singularity. I, for one, am excited to see what this next chapter brings to our fair city.

Blake

 

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Savannah is full of cool people.

That’s cool!!

The phrase “that’s cool!” has stood the test of time. People have been saying it for decades – - the Beats, the Beatles, and beyond. You hear it in the Sentient Bean, you see it on Facebook, you read it in BiS (Savannah’s weekly business journal), you even hear it coming from the lips of Harold Yellin, partner at HunterMaclean law firm and chair of the Savannah Music Festival’s board of directors.

“That’s cool!”

Savannah is a cool place…

Savannah is a cool place with a lot of cool things happening every day. Over the past couple of months we’ve have the Book Festival, StopOver Music Fest, St. Patrick’s Day and the Savannah Music Festival. Thousands of people doing cool things all over town.

And Savannah is full of cool people…

People who do cool things like build jets, manage logistics, design web sites, run coffee shops, and create great food. They build things, connect people and ideas, profess things at SCAD , AASU, SSU and GT@Savannah, and on and on and on…

So Savannah is a cool place full of cool people. But is it cool that…

• Some folks are never seen at the cool things that go on in Savannah?
• Some folks are out of sight, out of mind as fellow citizens?
• The word special can be a code word for “with their own kind”?

Do you want Savannah to be an even cooler place than it is now? If so, that’s easy:

• Be more welcoming
• Offer your friendship to someone in need
• Get connected with people outside your ordinary path and start caring about one another
• Be more caring about what happens to others
• Challenge rejection and segregation wherever and whenever you find it
• Speak up and say “That’s NOT cool!” when you see a fellow citizen forced to live behind society’s wall of difference
• Come together rather than run from “the other”

Your actions can make Savannah an even cooler place. Here are a few images that show how cool Savannah can be…

Savannah is a place where cool people connect.

People look cool together in Savannah.

More solidarity makes Savannah a cool place to be.

More spokesmanship makes Savannah a cool place to be.

Savannah is a cool place full of cool people.

It’s cool when events are available to everyone.

Savannah sounds cooler when we’re more welcoming.

Cool people build cool things in Savannah.  Even a long time ago.

]]> http://blog.thecreativecoast.org/thats-cool/2013/04/24/feed 1 http://blog.thecreativecoast.org/the-front-porch-with-tracy-brisson/2013/04/19 http://blog.thecreativecoast.org/the-front-porch-with-tracy-brisson/2013/04/19#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:07:46 +0000 Charisse Bennett http://blog.thecreativecoast.org/?p=2848 The Creative Coast’s blogspot is Savannah’s sounding board for local thinkers, innovators, wanderers and wonderers. We’d like to welcome you to our weekly Podcast program! This week we are chatting it up with Tracy Brisson, founder and CEO of the Opportunities Project. She talks about her work at the Opportunities Project, why she picked Savannah, and the important of Twitter in creating opportunities. Hit play to hear what Tracy shared with us…

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