Published March 02, 2008 12:33 am - Desire for a youth center in the City of Plattsburgh resurfaces in the minds of local youth and young adults. After years of experimentation, the issue is still as perennial as peonies.
SPECTRUM: Painting a familiar picture
Local painter not first voice to call for all-ages hangout
By NEALE GULLEY
Contributing Writer
Two years ago, as an undergraduate student in western New York, Lizabeth Allen decided something felt wrong.
"We didn't completely agree with the conservative Christian society we were studying in," the local painter said.
The plan was to drop out of Houghton College, attend nearby Monroe Community College and open a kind of studio. After all, she and her friends had been spending most of their time off campus, hanging around the art galleries and cafes in nearby Rochester.
"All of us had so many different kinds of gifts, I guess you could say. I was really into art. My friend Dan Bish, he was really into karate. And he wanted to have a karate studio. So it was going to be a kind of art gallery/karate studio," she said.
ECLECTIC ASSOCIATION
She never did open the place, but the idea grew into an ardent vision for Allen, one she kept with her when she moved to Plattsburgh in 2006.
It's a new twist on an old idea: to open an all-ages hangout in the City of Plattsburgh.
Of course, Allen knows one person's idea of art is not necessarily the same for another, especially insofar as the law is concerned. She and a friend got 100 hours community service apiece for spray-painting graffiti underneath the Smith Weed Bridge last year.
But she estimates she has since spent considerably more time in pursuit of a different kind of community service. She is trying, through word of mouth, contacts with underground booking agents and an eclectic association of enthusiastic local artists, to ferment a community arts infrastructure already known to many as Koinonia.
The last, closest thing to satisfying the perennial desire for a downtown youth center lapsed in 1999, when Something Cool went cold. An erstwhile ice cream and soda-pop shop, Something Cool occupied the space at 22 Brinkerhoff St., now home to Taco Loco, from 1997 to '99 and became popular with teens and adults.
Before that, hubs such as the White House on Oak Street had tried and failed.
Allen, 21, thinks it's time the pendulum started swinging back toward the all-ages crowd.
"All we have are bars and a ton of cops," she said. "It's kind of intimidating for high-school kids; they just automatically feel like a bunch of hoodlums."
BROAD-STROKE MESSAGE
Allen hopes to someday obtain property in the city -- somewhere to attract and display hip and edgy artwork and musical talent -- but in the meantime, the goal is to organize the publicity already surrounding concerts held in the basement of Trinity Church and perhaps form a working relationship with North Country Cultural Center for the Arts. The nearly revitalized Strand Theatre is a serious temptation to some in the music community who are interested in attracting notable bands.
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