Time to change your definition of cool

In this day of recognizing all types of diversity, I don't think it is very good marketing to try to sell downtown Elgin as the place for "cool people" as DNA Executive Director Tonya Hudson said recently. Creative professionals such as engineers, architects, web developers, graphic designers, consultants, lawyers, film makers, artists, writers, professors, are all part of the creative class she coined as "cool people" that are to some degree moving into or working in downtown Elgin.

She helped me remember as an adolescent in high school feeling on the fringe as I was not one of the "cool students." I couldn't wait to get out of high school because of the feeling of not belonging with the "cool students."

As I distanced myself from my high school days I learned to realize that we celebrate the merits of all types of people and it is very narrow-minded to consider one type as the "cool kids." If you wanted to expand on Tonya's definition of "cool" I would say that a working man or woman who has the earning power to not need or ask for a downtown Artspace rental subsidy so they can live and practice their "creative hobby" would be more than "cool."

The downtown has been subsidized by the working class taxpayer's money in countless creative ways by the city for almost 40 years now, and as a working man I know that isn't "cool."

So I might not be a DNA executive director but I do know that what the downtown needs is working men and women who pay their own way and don't require a rental subsidy or building incentive. Please don't forget that it was the creative professionals or so called "cool people" who got our economy into the mess it is now and it is the working class taxpayer who is being asked to bail them out. How "cool" is that?

Clarence Hayward

Elgin