Steve Wood is an artist, organizer, and Colorado College graduate who founded Concrete Couch, a nonprofit focused on building community through creative art projects in the Pikes Peak region. I spent two afternoons with Steve walking around Concrete Coyote—a community-centered park in Colorado Springs that Steve helped to build. In this piece, I imagine Steve is named “Junk Man,” if only to accentuate his zany, creative, and dream-like qualities. What follows is my interpretation of Steve, his mission, and the Concrete Coyote community of South Royer Street:
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Junk Man dreams about playing soccer. He wants you to come. He says that in Mexico, people play against the church wall and everyone watches. Junk Man says the old women pinch your cheeks and call you bonito and pequeño.
“Soccer is the universal religion,” says Junk Man. “No—too strong—the universal language. You only need a ball and people.” He craves what he found in Mexico. That is a community.
For now, just two people pass the ball back and forth in a pen. Junk Man hits the ball against the concrete, sending it skidding along the rugged surface to me. We play in an enclosure tucked in a corner big enough for three on three, outlined in plastic with metal posts and two tiny goals.
Around us is a place called Concrete Coyote: like an education center meets modern art park. It has housing and trails and a river with a bridge. It has pathways and people and, of course, a soccer pit. From the soccer pit, I can see a giant pumpkin, pointy wooden sculptures, and a traditional tea house. Sandwiched between railroad tracks, houses, and grungy auto body shops, Concrete Coyote is like the hippie neighborhood: always friendly, always inviting, but a little out of place.
As we play soccer, our movements are disrupted by the sporadic horn of a train as it passes by. The Junk Man tells me to imagine people playing soccer together. Then, the smell and noise won’t matter. “If you use the small ball and everyone comes, it will be fun,” he says. Suddenly, I’m dreaming about Wednesday night soccer matches on Royer Street. As he talks, I begin breathing in the smell of community bbq, imagining the train’s horn drowned out by the cheering crowd.
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Hey Junk Man, what's your vision?
Junk Man dreams about filling the soccer pit with people. Junk Man wants everyone to come and play. Junk Man wants the troublemakers, the cheek-pinching Mexican ladies, the dirt bikers, the “wacky white guys,” the Switchback soccer team players, and the train enthusiasts. Junk Man says it’s worth it if just one person comes.
Junk Man wants to strengthen the community and he knows there is no playbook. You can study how to build a community for years, but you cannot come in and build a community alone. Junk Man says that community comes from barbecues with unhoused people and bioretention systems and rock sculptures and listening to people’s wants and needs. Junk Man says you don’t need expensive houses, you need tiny homes without leaks and warm fires and, of course, people.
Beyond the soccer pitch, Concrete Coyote is not just Junk Man’s vision. The people of Royer Street dreamt of a park, and he provided the tools to build it. Junk Man helped build dirt tracks for dirt bikers, tea houses for architecture enthusiasts, and long grass prairies for environmentally-minded girl scouts.
As we walk around Concrete Coyote with a group of high school students, someone has the idea of a zipline between two ravines. “Sure,” says Junk Man. “We just need some anchors.” “Have you considered vegetable oil cars?” says another student. “I’ll talk to my brother-in-law.” Every idea is a serious inquiry. Concrete Coyote has rock statues and a dinosaur-sized pumpkin. It has a 20-foot sparkling hammer, two tiny houses, traffic cones, and a tea house. That is what happens when you take every idea seriously.
Junk Man wants you to know it’s a community effort. Concrete Coyote only exists because the community showed up to create it. What Junk Man is not telling you is that these five acres of concrete slopes, gravel paths, and community-built sculptures interlock together only because Junk Man figured out how to fit them. Junk Man talks with the train company and the government and the skeptics. He raises money and wakes up early on Saturdays to meet with the community. There’s paint infused in his fingers and covering his car. Junk Man hustles and converses and builds and thinks and never stops moving.
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If you see the world as art, everything and everyone has potential, there’s little time to talk about yourself.
Junk Man doesn’t like to talk about himself. You’d never know that he’s traveled to Mexico or that he studies community engagement unless you ask, and even then, you might have to ask twice. Junk Man prefers to disappear into other people’s stories.
“Not the best craftsmanship,” Junk Man says, pointing to a wooden statue. “But they had fun and learned how to use the tools and plan and create.” Junk Man keeps walking as we pass an overgrown birdhouse. “My friend’s son designed this, he comes up with all these crazy ideas and I just help him.”
Some people think if you build something, people will come. Junk Man thinks differently. He thinks if they build it, they will come.
Junk Man expects a lot from other people. “Sorry, my coworker isn’t here, she said that she’d come,” Junk Man mentions to me in a moment of exasperation. Then Junk Man sighs, “Lilly manages community meetings and takes care of her sister, it’s her third year on the payroll. But she’s only 18, I keep forgetting.”
Junk Man knows he wants children to play next to train tracks and girl scouts to use power tools and 18-year-old professionals as coworkers. And it always works out because Junk Man believes in people.
“Hey Junk Man, remember that time when you listened to the problem child who wanted to build with the cardboard?” asked a woman stopping by. “Remember when everyone thought he was troubled, but he wasn’t so troubled?” Junk Man does not remember.
If you only give out respect then you’ll only receive positive results and mature responses.
Junk Man knows a lot about a lot. He uses big words like a “bioretention system,” but then he pauses. It’s not that complicated: “Just trees that absorb water.” Junk Man speaks with an awareness of his education and works to make complex ideas approachable to everyone. Junk Man wants to be approachable.
Junk Man finds people. High schoolers who can’t cut glass, school teachers, government officials, the train lovers and haters.
If you treat the world with kindness, if you just try to talk to people like humans, they will come.
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The trains still make a lot of noise as they honk, but Junk Man says that once the trees grow in, you won’t hear them as much. Maybe he can have campouts. “Imagine,” he says. “What the kids will think—s’mores and tents and you won’t hear the train as much.”
Some call Junk Man crazy. He wears wild in the blues of his eyes. His pants hang with splatters of paint, he wears two hats and camouflage gloves. He talks about Lilly and his son and asks you what you think instead of talking about himself. Junk Man makes art but he also does art. He dreams and he creates and he doesn’t need to speak a lot because he does a lot. Junk Man wants you to come and play soccer on Wednesday at 1100 S. Royer St. by the big hammer. Even if you don’t play, it will be fun.