But if you miss Wichita, you’re missing something. This is on-the-cusp America, a place where old ways and new styles are beginning to blend, where empty downtowns are being revived, museums founded, and unexpected treasures lie waiting in antiques stores that have not been ruined by savvy yuppies raised on PBS “junking’’ specials.
We came for the Tallgrass Film Festival, now in its eighth year, which had invited me to show my film, “Do It Again,’’ twice over the weekend. We stayed in Old Town, which has cobblestones, coffee shops, and clubs that spring to life at night.
Traveling with a baby means taking shifts. I got to go out at night, hanging out with some of the film directors in town, and, on one joyous evening, packing myself into a van for a visit to Rene’s, home of the 24-hour taco. In the morning, my wife, Carlene, got out early, heading to the local YWCA to swim laps. By the time she returned, the kids were up and ready and we hit the streets.
There we encountered two of Wichita’s main curiosities. First, we saw the incredible amount of public art, much of it made up of streetscape sculptures meant to be discovered. We had a public art guide in hand and it became a game for our daughter, Lila, 8, to find the squirrel or the turtle. (The life-size man reading the newspaper was easier.) What was strange was that on a beautiful crisp morning, there was nobody out. As we would learn, Wichita is, like so many places, a driving city by virtue of there being no traffic and a just-developing population of downtown residents. Our company for much of the morning was stationary and bronze.
We found proper lattes and a great place to hang at Mead’s Corner and, when we were properly energized, a huge, two-floor antiques mall just across the street. They had a stuffed deer going for $10,000, which we didn’t consider buying, and endless rows of colored-glasses from the 1950s, which we did contemplate purchasing. In the end, Carlene picked up a bunch of old books and I bought a record produced locally in the ’60s with original cover art by R. Crumb.
