Brick

Attend­ing the musi­cal wake of Bruce D. Walker on Sun­day brought up a lot of sad­ness in the midst of so many cheer­ful tunes by local song­sters. Stand­ing in sev­eral of the eight cor­ners of George’s Majes­tic Lounge (front bar/stage and gar­den bar/stage) I saw danc­ing and clap­ping and heard hoots and whoops. Embrac­ing the folks I knew there, though, we exchanged quick shouts (we had to yell due to the loud bands) of “isn’t it awful” with teary eyes.

Bruce founded Fly­ing Pos­sum Leather in 1976 on Fayet­teville on the “High Street” stretch of Dick­son Street. He made and sold san­dals and belts and other leather goods, most famously per­haps a gui­tar strap he got patented as it does not stress the instrument’s neck. Bruce would have been 58 years old in June, but around 6:30 a.m. last Mon­day, March 7, his shop caught fire. He was already at work, and died of smoke inhala­tion. His dog Bugsy, who went every­where with him, sur­vived the blaze (rel­a­tives have taken him in). In a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion, Fayet­teville police called the fire’s cause accidental.

I’ve bought one pair of Birken­stock shoes (reg­u­lar, closed heel and toe, for work) from Fly­ing Pos­sum, and had a cou­ple of pair of Birks resoled or recorked by him, and My Beloved had done sim­i­lar busi­ness with him, as well as buy­ing a Walker Strap. Yet Bruce got around; he was a young hippy turned promi­nent local, if eccen­tric, mer­chant. We’d howdy at the down­town Square three blocks south or maybe a sen­tence or two at the bench in front of his shop.

Bugsy, a quiet, sweet, medium-sized mon­grel, wan­dered through George’s, accept­ing pats and head scratches. The chil­dren there swarmed him at times.

Dog in a bar, call the author­i­ties! But many author­i­ties were in the road­house at some point dur­ing the seven-hour con­cert (1–9 p.m. roughly, includ­ing a funeral in the evening) , hav­ing shut down the park­ing meters for the day so more peo­ple would be encour­aged to come to George’s and honor Bruce.

Sun­day on Dick­son was so Fayet­teville. Twenty bands, spe­cial T-shirts printed up, dona­tion of food by nearby restau­rants. All that orga­ni­za­tion in just four days shows how tight the com­mu­nity is, and how much all loved Bruce.

Bruce — slightly built, scruffy bearded fel­low with kind eyes and strong opin­ions — embod­ied Fayetteville.

Bugsy wasn’t the only ani­mal in the lounge, but he was acknowl­edged. The ele­phant in the room as usual stayed invisible.

Bruce’s death and that of his busi­ness might be har­bin­gers of a Fayet­teville trans­for­ma­tion so many of us love.

The col­lege town will be rein­car­nated simul­ta­ne­ously with the cur­rent ero­sion, don’t get me wrong, and the new Fayet­teville might be as good or bet­ter, but that will take some doing, by Fayet­teville char­ac­ters with smarts, energy and cun­ning, and it ought to start right away. Loss of quirky shops and local cafes, and the increase of cor­po­rate calo­rie troughs might turn Fayet­teville into Ben­tonville, and that’s no way to get the Wal­ton Arts Cen­ter back.

In recent weeks, Scarpino’s (hand­somely ren­o­vated com­mer­cial build­ing hous­ing a gelato empo­rium, Ital­ian restau­rant and rental ban­quet hall)) announced it would be run by a pro­fes­sional man­age­ment com­pany, adding a flo­ral shop (?). Kos­mos, a Greek gyros (fast-food) place next door, has grabbed a loca­tion on Col­lege Avenue, not say­ing if it would drop the cur­rent site. A Chipo­tle Mex­i­can Grill has a coming-soon sign at the old train sta­tion — it’s a chain. Waf­fle House is going in kitty-corner from Fly­ing Possum/Kosmos. It’s a chain. But that one will be won­der­ful — a hot break­fast after a night of club­bing or a show is a won­der­ful thing.

This incar­na­tion of the Dick­son High Street began in 1992, with the open­ing of the Wal­ton Arts Center.

Before that, the Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas enter­tain­ment strip, West Dick­son Street, was pretty rough, beer joints and pool halls. Fly­ing Pos­sum Leather was there through­out, of course, as was the beloved George’s (founded in 1927). With the WAC, it didn’t go upscale like Palo Alto’s Uni­ver­sity Drive so much as trendy, a small-scale Austin or Bloomington.

It’s just not that Ben­tonville is promised a big­ger WAC audi­to­rium, with pro­mot­ers vow­ing to use the orig­i­nal one for “appro­pri­ate” shows, but it’s a symptom.

Fly­ing Pos­sum likely won’t come back. It’s true that restau­rants come and go. And the nation’s Good Depres­sion (because ours is a Good Gen­er­a­tion not the Great­est Gen­er­a­tion), has much to do with retail­ers clos­ing more than opening.

Paid park­ing was cited by Kos­mos as one of its rea­sons for mov­ing (or expand­ing?). The man­age­ment of Doe’s Eat Place, a small regional steak chain, has signs in its win­dows snip­ing about the park­ing meters. There’s good rea­sons for metered park­ing. Local gov­ern­ments are suf­fer­ing losses of rev­enue through drops in sales and prop­erty taxes, due to the Good Depression.

But offi­cials and busi­ness coun­cils ignore that eco­nom­ics is more than math. The eco­nom­ics of aggra­va­tion plays a part. Peo­ple will drive five more min­utes to avoid pay­ing a quar­ter, much less the dol­lar an hour in down­town Fayet­teville. Valet park­ing is barely higher than metered on Dick­son, includ­ing the tip (in Bordino’s alley). What’s eco­nom­ics say about that, besides that it’s cheaper than Kansas City. But, Bugsy, “we’re not in Kansas.”

I don’t want to close this bit­ter­sweet mem­ory of an over­cast March after­noon full of gui­tars and brews with a rant about the new paid park­ing. The meters are a symp­tom, even with their hip irony of being solar-powered, of the com­ing broad trans­for­ma­tion of a quirky downtown.

Mat­ter of fact, I’m opti­mistic. Dick­son always will have bars and grills, due to cam­pus being blocks away. Frankly, I don’t see the Wal­ton Arts Cen­ter mov­ing for many years. Our orig­i­nal WAC took six years to go up, and  years of infor­mal plan­ning before that.

Ben­tonville might never build that 2,200-seat mon­u­ment. Peo­ple there told a TV sta­tion “the new cen­ter will be a good thing for peo­ple who live in rural Ben­ton County too because it will spare them a drive to Fayetteville.”

The big audi­to­rium is intended for mul­ti­night per­for­mances of shows like Wicked, at $60-$90 a seat. Noth­ing pre­dicts Broad­way sell-out like the phrase “rural Ben­ton County.”