The project features a rainbow horizon, large bookend profiles of a transvestite, and a couple of street walkers.
According to Matt Comer editor of QNotes, the project is titled “Our Lives, Our Culture, Our Time,” and focuses on a message of love, equality and peace, and is meant to bring awareness to the local LGBT community.
The painting is located at the White Rabbit building at 920 Central Avenue which Comer goes on to note, "White Rabbit is the only LGBT-specific bookstore in the state. The building also houses the offices of this (QNotes) newspaper. Organizers say that the mural’s presence on Central Ave. will highlight Plaza Midwood and surrounding areas known for their LGBT-inclusive and friendly atmosphere and high concentration of LGBT residents and small business owners."
Cedar's Take: If you paint a wall on a "Gay" bookstore and newspaper office and it has a LGBT theme, then it is not a community project, it is an advertisement. And therefore it probably violates Charlotte's zoning ordinances.
Have a look for yourself:
When Eastland opened in 1975 it was the center of East Charlotte, a once thriving and vibrant area of the city. Over the last 15 years the area has been in a steep spiral towards ghettodom, as the demographics have shifted from white middle class to black low income as well as Asian and Latino immigrants.
The property now sits vacant, a stalemate of economic reality and crazy redevelopment ideas, including a Latino themed discount shopping complex, and turning it into a television and movie studio.
Charlotte much like Fort Mill is impotent when it comes to abandoned property. As we have seen with the former PTL tower to the south of Charlotte there is little that can be done to force property owners to do the right thing. Eastland Mall needs to meet the wrecking ball. The direction the city wants to take is "mixed use" redevelopment, but the truth is no amount of "capital investment" will change the perception of Eastland Mall.
While some city council members see a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, $13 millon is just the start of the costs taxpayers will absorb. Lost tax revenue, and demolition costs are only the tip of the iceberg, there are interest expenses and lost time value of money. Meanwhile the businesses who profited from Eastland Mall over the last 40 years are singing all the way to the bank.
DNC 2012 - What was sold as a cash cow for Charlotte has fast become a black hole of empty promises. Democratic leaders Harry Reed and Nancy Polisi have publicly encouraged their members to stay away from Charlotte. Fun raising has fallen short, small business contracts have failed to materialize and time is running out.
Meanwhile protest groups planning to converge on Charlotte seem to have a solid plan and even interest by the news media has waned. The expected windfall many Charlotte homeowners expected may have been just wishful thinking.
By the time the convention starts most uptown small businesses will have shuttered their store fronts, accepting that security restrictions and lack of customers make running a business impossible during the shortened event. They only rainbow Charlotte will see is after the DNC moves on.
16 comments:
Dear Lord,Cedar, is there no one you like?
Your prejudices and narrow views, along with your lack of intellectual sophistication cloud any kind of journalistic integrity you may wish to have.
Go after the real villains. Stop adding to the mean spirited dialogue that detracts from real issues.
So you can paint a pro pole smoker and carpet muncher mural for all to see but Cedar can't voice his opinion on his own blog? Don't like it? Start your own blog where you can attack others with own opinion.
I think the colors are absolutely horrid!!!
I also agree with 9:00pm because I do not understand why people of your beliefs get so angry at those who disagree with you.
Of late, the photos of the people flipping off a Presidents portrait because he doesn't agree with you just show your lack of intellectual sophistication.
Who exactly are you to call people names, judge and lable those who disagree with you? Just be quiet and focus on your own life instead of the opinions of others.
You act like no one can have an opinion of they disagree with your lifestyle. Get over it!!
Anon 9:00
You are an angry, ignorant person.
Your choice of childish, immature adjectives to describe gays and lesbians only shows your anger and that you are somehow irrationally threatened by anyone different.
Your intolerance and meaness only adds to the level of
bullying nastiness that prevails in this country.
What a sad little man you are.
Anon 9:36
I am not gay, idiot.
Knuckle drag yourself back under the rock from whence you came.
Did they have zoning approval for that thing?
I wonder if your statement about street walkers is an interpretation of yours or considered obvious or what they said.
Promoting illegal behavior shouldn't be on a giant sign for "community" awareness, and I would bet you're correct this should be considered advertising. As someone who thinks the more art the better, I would normally be supportive, but hope someone would have more sense than to paint giant prostitutes on a neighborhood center, gay or straight.
It's hard to see in this picture (who is the pic. credit?) so I'll have to wait and see.
And 9:00 p.m., please grow up with the hateful name calling. It's just as low and childish as flipping off the president.
Cedar, for posterity you need to keep a list of all the Potemkin projects thrown up in the name of making CLT look "progressive" for the DNC. I'd count this, the insanely expensive bike rental racks, moving the transit center...what else?
Oh, maybe rushing to buy Eastland so the city can claim it has a "plan" for it?
So easily offended some of you are.
In as much as the building houses both a "LGBT" book store and newspaper offices, and in as much as the "Rainbow" has been hijacked by the LGBT community as "their" symbol, the mural is clearly a sign and is in violation of Charlotte's sign ordinance.
They better have a permit or they have wasted their money.
Wall Signs - "Signs may be located on any building wall of a structure so long as the maximum sign surface area of all signs on one wall does not exceed 10% of the area of the building wall to which the sign is attached up to a maximum of 200 square feet"
If the scene painted on the wall was just a street scene or even a barnyard with a bunch of mules, the haters wouldn't stand a chance. But Matt Comer's need to promote the mural and calling attention to it should be enough for code enforcement to have the eyesore removed.
Props to Cedar for pointing this out.
Clearly Cedar's skewed interpretation of the sign......streetwalkers,.....seriously, Cedar?
Why are you so threatened by anything gay or african american?
You are really starting to sound like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.
Hard to take you seriously.
Go on back to working for the man, the one that actually owns the "yachts" you work on.
Cedar you forgot to use the sarcasm font. Clearly the two women holding hands are dikes and not hookers. Also the two queers in the back ground are getting ready to duck around the back of the building or some one on one time.
Welcome to LGBT utopia Plaza Midwood Charlotte, NC.
Interesting that this project was started to make the anniversary of he Stonewall Riots where New York City Police Officers were attacked.
Glorifying attacks on officers doing their job, nice!
Anon 3:23
Four Offcers suffered minor injuries, with many more rioters injured.
While I completely support the Police, NYPD did not have the best reputation in the sixties. Brutality, sexism, intolerance and payoffs were commonplace.
This was really the first time the gay community stood up to the discrimination and brutality of the NYD.
Lipstick on a pig... the building that the gay bookstore is in was ugly before, now it is just flamboyantly gay and still ugly.
While I really like street art this is a statement, "Our Time" which the rest of us have to drive past everyday.
If it is not against the law it should be, if the city doesn't do something then I guess it will be ok for every building in Charlotte to "embrace" a culture.
9:42, why so defensive then? Maybe you just don't know it yet but everyone else does.
You are the one calling everyone else names because you can't even make an intelligent comment.
You need to get a grip and find an outlet for that anger, no one will listen to you if all you can do is call everyone names who has an opinion different than yours.
Neanderthal!
Anon 10:59
Seriously, how old are you?
I'm thinking your age matches your IQ.
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