This Friday, after my sister graduates from the University of Texas (congrats, sis), I’m driving up to Dallas, the place I spent eleven years of my life before moving to Austin last August. I’ll be attending one of my friend’s weddings, and I’ll get to see all of those old Dallas friends that I haven’t seen in about a year. This should be interesting.
Ever since I’ve left Dallas, not a day goes by that I wish I could live there again. That is to say, I love my new home Austin, and I think that Austin is better in almost every way than Dallas. Nevertheless, I don’t hate my old home. At least, not in the way that so many Austinites seem to, with a passionate self-righteous contempt that vilifies Dallas as the antithesis of everything good Austin is trying to create. I think that picture is a bit unfair. Dallas is different, weird even, in a way that Austin could never be (and never would want to be.) But Dallas is not evil. She’s just not particularly good.
The last time I was in Dallas was this past New Years. I was meeting some friends up there, one of whom was about to go away to Marine’s Officer Candidate School, and I wouldn’t see him for awhile. We spent New Years mostly in Uptown, the epicenter of Dallas douchebaggery, at a place called “The Idle Rich Pub.” For those of you uninitiated in the Dallas stereotype, where we spent New Years tells you everything you need to know. When we walked in (after paying a cover of course) I immediately noticed that I was the only one in the bar who was wearing jeans. Unlike Austin, Dallas revels in displays of wealth and faux sophistication, as if the entire city were just some bad dream Patrick Bateman might have. I say bad dream, because while Dallas tries to do sophistication she doesn’t always succeed.
Case in point, New Years Eve, 2009. A few years ago Dallas completed Victory Park, a bizarre display of Orwellian nomenclature and hypertech setting that makes you feel as if you’re living in an actual dystopia. I guess in a way, you are. Victory Park is a park like none other. Instead of being made of earth and trees, Dallas decided concrete and streetlamps were more pleasant. At the head of the park sits the American Airlines Center, where the “Dallas Stars” play, and flanking the park sit two large buildings lined with four gigantic moving videoscreens which move along a rail rotating and combining and catching the eye with sharp flickers of light and metal. Behind you is the new W hotel, which etches out into the sky like an arrowhead and at whose base lies GhostBar, one of the most exclusive and exclusively douchey clubs in Dallas. This was the setting my friends and I decided to endure that New Years. Why? I’m still not sure.
We got there a few hours before midnight, and it was fortunate that we did, for the park itself had been roped off. Only a certain number were allowed in which required either a VIP badge, which I certainly didn’t have, or a bit of luck, which I’ve been known to fall into if I’m lucky. As the time ticked ever closer to midnight the people behind us grew more and more restless and more and more violent. People began to push and shove to get to the front, seemingly unaware that we were being held at bay by Dallas’ finest. One very drunk woman started shrieking at one guy who pushed past her. “Please bitch,” the man said, “I probably make ten times what you do.” It was the kind of insult I could never imagine being uttered in Austin. And people think Texas is all alike.
With luck my friends and I finally made it into the park itself where we could better witness the utter flashiness of women’s blouses and men’s haircuts, while observing the kind of Sodom and Gommorahesque levels of conspicuous consumption taking place. All of this while listening to one of the most comically awful bands I have ever heard in my life, whose idea of culture was playing “Sweet Home Alabama” while improvising the line “You might be a redneck” during the musical sections. This is still an inside joke to my friends and I to this day.
Okay, so Dallas might be evil, but she was my home, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to say she has no redeeming qualities. The Dallas Arboretum is the best I’ve ever been too, and Dallas has no shortage of good independent movie theaters. She even has a couple of good neighborhoods, and Northpark Mall, a place so quintessentially Dallas, is actually kind of cool. I’m just saying the place is not a total drag. I had fun while living there, mostly due to the people I met rather than the place, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of my friends again.
Actually if you ever go to Dallas, especially if you’re arriving at night, you should time it so that you’re listening to the “Blade Runner” soundtrack when you first see the neon lights of Dallas rise out of the ground in the distance. It’s actually quite cool.
