texas

lousy:
alamo
politics
bushco
interstate 40 through texas
interstate 10 through texas
polyphonic spew

it's a story about satan, Iron Maiden and getting your cock set on fire by hoes.

adam, where in texas, are you going?

i want to go to brownsville

lousy:
texans

Eagle Pass, rather. though the black people/Army Base are imported/fictional.

I've been to Houston. I would like to go to: Archer City, Austin, Canyon, Childress, Del Rio, El Paso, Marfa and maybe College Station, Fort Worth, Galveston, Rio Grande City and San Antonio. And I certainly want to go to Big Bend and Guadalupe and maybe Padre Island.

i would be scared of the killer bees in South Texas.

I'm sure you're a fine person, Dominique, but when it comes to your state, I've seen way too much hat and not enough cattle.

"Mexican" food slathered in sour cream and cheese

my Dad found all food in San Antonio covered in horrible, unidentified cheese and inedible.

The BBQ doesn't come anywhere close to Kansas City or Memphis

the best bbq place in Houston didn't impress me that much, but I get fantastic Texas bbq in NYC. perhaps this is a regional preference?

and Darryl Worley's sort of nice when he's on Al Franken's show.

I don't see how Dallas is any more a sprawling urban center than Los Angeles

1) "urban"
2) the ocean (and mountains)

If I want to go see buttes and mesas and plateaus and javelinas, I'll stick with any of the other large western states who are not constantly warning me Not to Mess With Them. Otherwise, I've seen enough of this to last me for awhile.

However, Dallas is hardly lacking in personality - it just isn't a personality that appeals to everyone. It is distinctly "Southern" in a lot of ways, as far as how people greet you, and the pace at which life seems to move is probably slower than up north. We don't live so close to one another. That's actually a reason I don't really want to move up north; everything seems so crowded, packed in. But that contributes to other things about that culture that are cool, so I guess you just have to live with it.

The bad part about having everything spread out down here is that you have to drive everywhere, which surely contributes to environmental problems we do have. The traffic can be bad, but I've never noticed it being any worse than other metropolitan areas. And Dallas is metropolitan, despite whatever talk in this thread implies otherwise. It's just not "urban". We weren't built 200 years ago, and when we were built, we were built by people who apparently valued personal space. And why not? They had tons of land at their disposal. That, naturally, leads to the personality of the city, and the state.

When my friends visit, they always comment on how everyone seems to "dress up" here, which I never actually noticed myself. I guess it's true. Women do their hair to go out, put on all their makeup. That seems like a Southern thing to me, but more than that, it's a Texas thing - and more than that, I think it's a Dallas thing. I had to live in Lubbock and Denton for many years, and they weren't like that. Houston is similar, but seems more urbanized, so as a Dallasite, it's kind of turn-off. Austin really isn't like any other Texas city I can think of, but it has obvious cultural charms (including all the basic college-town characteristics), especially for Texan artists and creative people. However, on the whole, it seems kind of overrated to me (e.g., the record stores aren't really any better than ones I go to here, and really, the music scene isn't what I want, no matter how more "open" it might be. that goes double for Denton, despite the fact that its music school produces some of the best jazz players in the country).

I don't know. I'm still sad at how often this place gets put down for what seem to me to be superficial reasons. I mean, PP, Tex-Mex is hardly just dairy and "gristle" (which isn't even right: Tex-Mex is far more ground beef than gristle)? What about chili rellenos and tortilla soup and huevos rancheros? To say nothing about margaritas here! I'm not going to pretend that Dallas offers the same cultural stimuli as New York or San Fran. It doesn't, and that's part of the reason I'm moving. But it's really easy to miss the good parts about it; parts I haven't seen anywhere else.

Dallas is a little faceless. We don't have lots of landmarks

I also hope that i didn't come across too mean, Dom. Even Cincinnati has their share of abandoned warehouses.

You do have one prominent landmark in Dallas. Too bad it looks like a big giant goober.

http://annatopia.com/pics/dean/dallas/201_dusk2.jpg

Great! Excellent choice (I'm guessing gygax! knows!)!

I'm going to miss the green-lit Bank of America building.

x-post

hmm, he does now... ;)

That's an interesting way of putting it. Kinda like the "One-eyed cat / peeping in the seafood store"?

The SF Bay Area just got a little bit HOTT-er. ;-D