Dallas, Texas
We arrived in Dallas via Spirit airlines on Saturday afternoon to spend a few days with Karen's brother Mark and his wife Alison. Boy, Spirit's ground staff are full of the "don't you [fucking] dare mess with me" spirit.
After being duly warned about cabin luggage (only one bag including a small personal handbag) a guy tried to get on board with two largish bags. And then put up a huge fuss when he wasn't allowed to board without paying serious US$ to put the bags into the overhead lockers (one pays for this privilege or it goes under the seat in front of you).
He was shut right down when one of the ground staff said "if you cuss again you'll have more trouble than you want today" in one of those soft scary voices (if you want to be threatening whisper!). I nervously sneaked past with a "my backpack is really small I promise" grin as I boarded the plane.
DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) is a very large but efficient airport. One collects one's checked luggage right at the exit. Then you walk out. And bam you're in the car and on your way. No heat stroke risk at all (wow, this place is hot hot hot!).
That night was Tex-Mex. Generous portions. Delicious. And then just a long long catch up evening with family. With Mark giving us the low-down on Dallas.
Sunday was Father's Day and taken up with shopping for braai (BBQ) meat at the fantastic Central Market in Plano. Shopping for food in the USA always makes Karen and I so envious of our food choices in South Africa (other than the price!). Mark bought some great steaks and then it was family day with Alison's children and grandkids. Lots of fun.
Dallas is vast. Flat. And beige. I don't know why, but this dominant colour makes Dallas – except for downtown which is attractive and interesting – a bit drab. It is also a car city. Probably because of the heat, this is a city not made for cyclists. It is a car dependent city with a myriad of large highways and expressways (running underneath the highway). With fast food joints, shopping and strip malls, and huge auto-dealerships just a slip-way to the right.
Then Monday. And this was the day for Texas BBQ at Pecan Lodge. Of course brisket was on the menu. And it was totally delicious.
Mark and Ali
Pecan Lodge is in Deep Ellum which is a really cool multicultural food, bar, art, local shop area in downtown Dallas. It's really great. Originally a major railroad junction area, it was classified as a Cultural District in 2020. Definitely worth a visit.
After lunch we headed downtown for a JFK Assassination tour.
JFK Memorial
The assassination of JFK has created a massive secondary industry of tour guides, conspiracy theorists (experts) and writers, video and book publications, museums and probably more reddit/ groups than one can count (you can go down this rabbit-hole at your own risk!).
Our tour was a 90 minute excursion in the assassination area with our guide, in true conspiracy style, asking lots of "but what about" questions. The tour covers the shooting at Dealey Plaza, a view of the 6th floor (which is reputed to be the site from where Lee-Harvey Oswald took his shots: the first shot missed but JFK was then hit by two subsequent shots – but, perhaps, not from the same place ....).
The longer tour takes you past Oswald's boarding house. It's supposedly not been changed. And the smell of the carpet would indicate that that's probably true. And then onwards tracking Oswald escape route until he was captured. Actually the more interesting element of that part of the tour was driving through Oak Cliff (south of the Trinity River). It's a multicultural area of Dallas with a strong hispanic community (including very over-the-top bridal and prom dress shops).
Would we recommend this tour? For sure. It's historic. Interesting. And gives a real insight into US conspiracy theory culture around the dodgy behaviour of the CIA.
Graffiti on the fence of the"grassy knoll" -- basically a car park
The last day in Dallas was a cultural trifecta: art, shopping and baseball.
The Meadow's Museum is second only to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid in the scale of its collection of Spanish art including works by El Greco, Velàzquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Mira and Picasso. For us the centrepiece is Caltatrava's "Wave" whch sits at the entrance to the museum.
Wave is Calatrava's first large-scale sculpture to be permanently installed in the United States. The sulpture measures 40 feet deep and 90 feet long with 129 equally proportioned bronze bars. These bars are connected to a mechanism that makes it rock sequentially, imparting to it a four-cycle, wavelike motion. The sculpture was installed over the shallow, slow-moving water on a black granite pool, which reflects this movement. At night, the sculpture is illuminated from the lighting in the pool.
Then we were into the high-culture of looking at cowboy stuff. Karen has an innate desire to own a pair of cowboy boots so we went downtown to checkout what Wildbill's Western Store had to offer.
Short answer. Lots and lots. But none that we wanted to buy. Except of course a TEXAS trucker cap (which was a gift from Mark).
Then off to the Texas Rangers Stadium in Arlington (like the White Sox stadium, it also has a shitty corporate financial services name: Globe Life Field).
More than a stadium it is an entertainment complex and the F&B offering (with massive screens) is simply super and stupendous (and shows what can be done when you have the money to design a great stadium, including having the insight that women need bigger and more toilets than men). And the police are super friendly (handsome too hey!) and willing to be photographed with a strange woman with a strange accent when asked by my sister in law, Ali!
You walk into this stadium at ground level and then are just lost for words. It is vast. And covered. And you don't walk up.
This is an amphitheater where the baseball field is down from ground level surrounded by tiers of seats. The main ground level concourse goes around the field and gives one a 360° view of the playing area. As for the game, just like the White Sox, we jinxed the Rangers and they lost to the New York Mets 6-7 (06-18-2024).
