The comments from "Ashamed in FW" mentioned something that had totally not occurred to me.
That being that it is likely the sudden interest in this Shanty Town of Fort Worth Homeless People likely has something to do with the fact that in a few weeks the attention of the nation, and to a lesser degree, the world, will be focused on the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex with the Super Bowl coming to the Dallas Cowboy Stadium in Arlington.
ESPN will be broadcasting from downtown Fort Worth. City officials are expecting HUGE crowds downtown. I think this expectation is delusional, but what do I know?
Visitors driving from Arlington to Fort Worth on Interstate 30 will be driving right by Fort Worth's Shanty Town.
Back during the era of the Soviet Union, when visits by western leaders were rare, when one did get invited to a town, like Moscow, the route traveled by the leader was tightly controlled, with the route all spruced up.
Russia has a long history of creating what are called Potemkin Villages to fool visitors about the quality of life in Russia.
If the City of Fort Worth succeeds in the coming weeks in dismantling the Fort Worth Shanty Town, to remove that embarrassment from the eyes of visitors, what about the other eyesores? What if a visitor visits downtown Fort Worth and decides to head back east on Lancaster, Rosedale or Berry?
I take visitors from the Northwest on drives down those roads. My visitors are always shocked and appalled, not realizing that such Third World type squalor exists in America.
Are there plans to paint some sort of pretty face on the eyesore areas of Fort Worth? What if a visitor gets a bit lost leaving the Fort Worth Stockyards, driving around in the neighborhood around the Stockyards? That won't leave a very good impression.
On a related, but different note, back when it was announced that the 2011 Super Bowl would be played in the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium I opined that this was going to end up being embarrassing when the national press gets a look at that bizarre building plopped down in a rundown residential/industrial area.
However, there have been many events that have taken place in the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium and I have not heard a word mentioned of the urban blight that surrounds it on 2 sides.
This sort of tells me that other stadiums in America must be located in equally blighted zones. The only stadiums I have seen are those in Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Diego. All with no blight. And so, I guess I had some sort of elevated expectation of what sort of location a stadium is built.
Anyway, I hope the City of Fort Worth finds a more elevated solution to putting a pretty face on Fort Worth's Shanty Town than doing something ham-handed like when President Hoover sent in General MacArthur and the Army to clear out the Hoovervilles that had sprung up in Washington, D.C. during the Great Depression.
And.
I hope the City of Fort Worth does not send in its Gestapo Army to clear out the Shanty Town that has sprung up during the Great Recession.
