Fort Worth Weekly's 2011 Best Free Spirit, Watchdog & Old Guy Was Not Me

Fort Worth Weekly Best Of 2011 Edition

While Elsie Hotpepper and I were foraging for Horse Apples today I got a call telling me I needed to get this week's Fort Worth Weekly, with it being the annual "Best Of" issue, as in "Best Of 2011."

I usually find this type thing a bloated ad magnet. That and I rarely know the person, place or thing the Reader's or Critic's choices choose.

So, I got this year's Best Of 2011 and thumbed through it, and just like I thought would be the case, most of the choices were unknown to me.

However, there were a few I recognized, particularly on a couple pages in the "People & Politics" section.

For instance, I have met the Critic's Choice for Free Spirit, Layla Caraway. Personally, I think Ms. Caraway is more of a Watchdog than a Free Spirit. I think Elsie Hotpepper should have gotten the Best Free Spirit of 2011 accolade.

Kevin Buchanan was the Reader's Choice for Watchdog. I may be remembering wrong, but wasn't Kevin Buchanan a big proponent of Fort Worth's failed Streetcar to Nowhere Plan? That doesn't seem very Watchdoggy to me. The Critic's Choice for Watchdog was North Central Texas Communities Alliance.

My view of NCTCA is the group has very good intentions. I don't know how successful the group's Watchdogging is. However, there is this other group I would have picked as the Best Watchdog of 2011 had I been the critic making a choice. I would have picked the Trinity River Improvement Partnership (TRIP).

TRIP was sort of recognized in the "Culture" section in the Locally Made Film category, where the Reader's Choice was the award winning TRIP documentary, Up a Creek. The Critic's Choice was a locally made film I've not heard of called Pioneer. Apparently Pioneer has also won awards.

Another of the few names I recognized was Clyde Picht. The Critic's Choice for "Old Guy." I manned a booth for awhile with Clyde Picht at this year's Prairie Fest. I liked him. But, I did not think of him as an Old Guy.

In the "People & Politics" section and the "Culture" section Durango Jones and the Durango Texas blog were picked as the Reader's & Critic's Choice by no one in any category. What a shocking omission.

Granny Grassroots' Harping Harp

Also left out of being the Best of Anything in 2011 was another person I met at this year's Prairie Fest, who co-manned a booth with me for much longer than Clyde Picht, that being the entity known as the Granny Grassroots.

Granny Grassroots, while not the Best of Anything in 2011, according to Fort Worth Weekly's Readers and Critics, did place a large ad in the FW Weekly Best of 2011 edition.

Methinks Granny Grassroots would also have been a good choice as Best Free Spirit of 2011.

Watch Granny Grassroots' video below and you'll see what I mean by free spirit. Who but a free spirit would haul her harp to the Trinity River to sing a song to the litter as it floats by?