I should be clear. I dislike Dallas, and Plano, and Texas in general. I have friends there, but that's quite anomalous as it relates to Texans as a whole.
Why?
Well, let's start with watching rolling prairie turn into what amounts to high-dollar sheep pens. My bedroom community of Plano slowly got walls built around everything, so that you couldn't go from anywhere to anywhere without going through a fucking shopping center to get there.
I watched Dallas turn slowly brown over the years from my little vantage point on top of Oak Cliff. I got sick of cars, and roads, and traffic jams. I moved to Austin, sold my car, and rode my bike everywhere.
I watched Austin slowly turn into Dallas. I bought a car because my programming job was eleven miles past the public transit system in Austin.
And all along, the 'dumbing down' of the educational system, so that the yokels wouldn't feel so (rightly) inferior to anyone who had even a modicum of intellect progressed, to the point where in this last election, fully twenty-five percent of the population believed that the man who is now President-elect is a muslim.
Well, for that matter, a SIGNIFICANT percentage of these morons will argue that the world is less than five thousand years old, and some will even 'show you' dinosaur and human tracks fossilized right in the same rocks.
I was so sick of Plano, I went to Dallas, but then had to leave to go to Austin, and eventually left for parts further west.
I'm a little leery of these local morons, and the local 'religion' of organicism, but all in all, they are a lot more intelligent than Texans, even if they are still a bunch of rubes (this is, actually, still the country that I'm in here, not a city).
But I want to get rid of my car again. I want to ride the transit. Dallas finally got an inkling of a decent transit system, but you have to drive to and from it, pretty much.
I want to go to a REAL movie theatre, and not drive two hours to get there. It's bad enough to think of the time, but the cost is a full tank of gas over the price of the ticket, too.
It would be nice to get a decent pizza. I mean, there's not much chance I'll get anything as good as Boston, but the *first* pizza place I ate at in SF was good (just picked it off the street). It took forever to find a decent one in ABQ (there are two, in fact), but this place (Ukiah) is just lost. The closest thing is 'Round Table' (a chain). It's barely passable, but it's at least not Chef Boyardee style like the other places in town.
But even movie theaters, opera, museums, transit systems, restaurants and water parks can't fix Dallas.
If you could somehow remove the Texans, it would improve it, but only marginally.
Ultimately, it's flat and plastic, like a credit card.
How my friends and family stand it is mostly their lack of exposure to alternatives, I'm fairly certain. I don't think it's an 'informed decision', in other words.
I think the best description came from Jimmy Dale Gilmore ("
Dallas"):
Did you ever see Dallas from a DC-9 at night?
Well Dallas is a jewel, oh yeah, Dallas is a beautiful sight.
And Dallas is a jungle but Dallas gives a beautiful light.
Did you ever see Dallas from a DC-9 at night?
Well, Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down.
But when you are up, she's the kind you want to take around.
But Dallas ain't a woman to help you get your feet on the ground.
Yes Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down.
Well, I came into Dallas with the bright lights on my mind,
But I came into Dallas with a Dollar and a dime.
Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eye.
A steel and concrete soul with a warm hearted love disguise.
A rich man who tends to believe in his own lies.
Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes.
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