Scraping away the rainbows

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com

Without advance notice to Cedar Springs merchants, the city of Dallas dispatched specially outfitted trucks to the Gayborhood on Monday, March 23, to scrape away, at taxpayers’ expense, the privately-funded rainbow crosswalks just installed on Cedar Springs Road last summer.

The removal operation disrupted traffic for the day and left black shadows on the pavement where the brightly painted rainbows had been.

Following Gov. Greg Abbott’s edict issued last fall that all non-standard crosswalks around the state had to be removed, and the state’s denial of Dallas city officials appeal for an exception in December, residents and businesses along Cedar Springs Road knew that the rainbows were going to be destroyed. And city officials had told North Texas LGBTQ Chamber President and CEO Tony Vedda that the crosswalk at Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn Avenue would be removed this week — but just because of city street maintenance work, not because of Abbott’s directive.

Instead, the city crews showed up bright and early on Monday morning, not giving businesses along The Strip a chance prepare for the disruption, and began demolishing all of the decorative crosswalks.

Reaction along The Strip was negative, to say.

Vedda said, “The city of Dallas’ removal of the rainbow crosswalk along Cedar Springs is not occurring in isolation — it reflects a broader political and regulatory climate that is increasingly targeting public expressions of support for the LGBTQ+ community across our state.”

Cedar Springs Merchants Association representative Chad Mantooth said, “It’s not the city. It comes from higher-ups. We need to just m ove forward and make Cedar Springs gayer than it’s ever been.”

And the Rev. Neil Thomas of Cathedral of Hope wrote that the removal of rainbow crosswalks has stirred deep concern and pain across the community. He said the crosswalks were more than just decorative, “They were visible reminders that love lives here, that dignity matters and that our city has the capacity to affirm the sacred worth of every person.

“This moment, painful as it is, calls us not to retreat, but to respond,” Thomas added.

Rainbow warrior

One attempt to do just that resulted in a ticket for graffiti.

Joseph Whiteside, 25, was ticketed at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning for spray painting and chalking one of the crosswalks at Cedar Springs Road and Knight Street. He was, however, taken into custody on warrants for an unpaid speeding ticket issued in Farmers Branch and for “VPTA” — or Violate Promise to Appear. The bond on the two charges totaled $972.40.

But Whiteside had bonded out and was back on The Strip by the end of the day on Tuesday.
On Facebook, many applauded Whiteside’s crosswalk activism, including John Anderson, who wrote, “Good trouble,” referencing a quote from the late civil rights leader Congressman John Lewis.

And on a Fox reporter’s Facebook page, Taylor Johnson, answering some of the more homophobic comments, wrote, “If colors on the ground offend you, you have bigger problems to worry about.”

The Texas Rainbow Wars started last October when Abbott, in an “I’m more homophobic that you” show of force, mimicked his rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and ordered all rainbow crosswalks across the state be removed for safety reasons. To underscore DeSantis’ hatred of LGBTQ+ people, the first rainbow crosswalk to be removed in Florida was in front of the Pulse nightclub, the building that had become a shrine to more than 49 victims murdered and the more than 50 injured at the nightclub in a mass shooting almost a decade ago.

A safety issue?

In his original order, Abbott stressed safety was the reason for removing any non-standard crosswalks, although he offered no data to back up his claim. In fact, studies have shown just the opposite: Intersections with non-standard crosswalks, such as Oak Lawn’s rainbow crosswalks, are generally more safe.

Dallas Voice pointed out at the time that there had been at least 10 traffic accidents involving pedestrians on Cedar Springs Road during the decade prior to the first installation of rainbow crosswalks on The Strip. Since the decorative crosswalks were installed in 2020, no pedestrian-involved accidents have occurred in or around the crosswalks. And while that’s not necessarily proof that the rainbow crosswalks were safer, it is proof they aren’t more dangerous.

Dallas Voice also pointed out that the rainbows on Cedar Springs weren’t the only decorative crosswalks that helped define the neighborhoods of the city. That resulted in Dallas being told to remove Black Lives Matter crosswalks on MLK Jr. Boulevard and decorative crosswalks in Bishop Arts and in Uptown.

Abbott had threatened to withhold federal funds from cities that did not comply with the order. Houston complied within days with little response from LGBTQ+ community there. Austin and San Antonio quickly appealed the order. Dallas waited until the last possible day to file its appeal in order to delay the last possible day to comply.

Appeals from San Antonio, Austin and Dallas all failed in Texas’ Republican-controlled appeals courts. But they did delay the mandated removal of the crosswalks.

San Antonio, whose mayor, Gina Ortiz Jones, is lesbian, has had the most creative response so far. While the streets in front of its gay bars may no longer have rainbow crosswalks, the sidewalks definitely do.

What next?

Dallas is still trying to figure out its response. According to Mantooth, several of the suggestions put forward so far have been just too expensive, and the merchants association, which had just partially paid for the crosswalks the city ripped up this week, hasn’t been reimbursed by the city for the cost of the now-demolished crosswalks.

An early suggestion was to mount projectors on the roof of the buildings standing at the Crossroads that would shine rainbows onto the street where the crosswalks once stood. Another idea is to add a rainbow arch over Cedar Springs Road. Other ideas include holographic signs, rainbow lighting and thermoplastic sheets. Rainbow bike racks and rainbow pole signs are already on their way.

And a number of Cedar Springs merchants have already added rainbows to their exteriors. Salon Aura added rainbow colors to its sign. JR’s wrapped a rainbow around its building. And Roy G’s, which always sported rainbows, added some additional color, proving there’s always room for more rainbows.

As for the TxDOT argument that crosswalks should all be uniform to not confuse drivers, that is certainly not the case in any city in Texas now. Some crosswalks are just two horizontal, white — in some cases yellow — stripes stretching across the street. Some crosswalks are painted vertically as multiple stripes. And some crosswalks are not painted at all but are instead marked with bricks colored red or brown that are barely visible and don’t distinctly distinguish crosswalks from the pavement.

And as of publication time, Cedar Springs is without crosswalks — just scraped blacktop and even more ruts than usual.