7 TIPS FOR A WEEKEND LOST IN DALLAS
There’s an unreal amount of angry lightning all around. Strange, it was sunny just an hour ago. I’m stuck inside a rented Hyundai in this northeastern corner of Texas. Then, the radio broadcast stops abruptly for what must be the single most terrifying public announcement for someone stranded in commute. “Severe weather warning, 100 mph winds, inch, and a quarter hail. Risk to cars, trees, rooftops, and mobile homes. Stay inside concrete or masonry buildings, keep away from windows. Effective until 7:30pm”. Great! A Tornado warning in the middle of a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam. Welcome to Dallas. There’s more to come.
If you have been alive around the 70s Dallas means one thing to you – J.R. Ewing. If you were around a decade or two earlier, Dallas might also ring familiar as the place where President Kennedy was assassinated. Yep, oil and guns – the two most quintessential stereotypes of Texas, also define the history of one of its major cities. How quaint.
With that in mind, I woke up the following morning (having survived the twister warnings), ate a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon & hash-browns, holstered ma 6-shoot Smith’n’Wesson, put on ma shiny white Stilton Hat, emptied ma chewing tobacco in the nearest brass spittoon and road away downtown (in a drab rental) to discover what this former cowboy settlement has to offer to the 21stcentury buckaroo.
1. Pioneer Plaza
Unlike the enormous geographical sprawl that makes up the Dallas Metropolitan Area. Downton Dallas is quite small and easy to navigate. Finding Pioneer Plaza is easy. It’s the most extensive public open space in the area, which makes locating it a breeze – even to the navigationally-challenged. Unlike the concrete jungle around it, the park is a marvel of what Dallas must have looked like before it was made into a railway settlement somewhere in the mid 19thcentury.
A low-lying rocky bluff leads down to a small stream where a heard of “long-horn” cattle – driven by three rugged cowboys – quench its first on the way to that 19thcentury train to the slaughterhouses of Chicago. The statues of the 30-odd cattle heads and their 19thcentury drivers, is inspiring. Touring throw the still bronze statues transports the viewer into a forlorn wild-west dimension, long since gone and forgotten. The stark contrast between the modern city and its past borders the poetic.
Pioneer Plaza’s statues are decidedly Texan not only in look but also in size. The larger-than-life livestock and cowboys are actually really larger than life – about 15% larger than what they should have been. The rocky bluff? Fake! And so is the man-made, naturally-looking small stream. Here’s Texas for you, son!
But Pioneer Plaza has something else, authentic, and sinister, hidden just behind the fake bronze Cattle Trail.
2. Confederate Memorial
This specific attraction might very well be the single most s site to experience current American politics and divisions, first-hand. No other place so vividly projects the forces that threaten to break 2019 America Apart. Here goes…
Just behind the glitzy cow’n’cowboy sculpture lies an old cemetery featuring the quiet graves of Dallas first mayors, early business leaders and a few heroes of the Texan Revolution. Behind it lies a cover-up. It used to be the city’s oldest public sculpture, erected some 120 years ago to pay tribute to the soldiers and generals from Texas during the American Civil War.
Now, however, it is a bizarre (and somewhat eerie) black shrouded wrapping that looks more like a work of Christo the artists, than the public turmoil it is.
Texas fought for the losing side, the side that – among other things – also supported slavery. In Trump’s divided America, commemorating long-dead Confederate soldiers has become an extremely political and toxic issue. What did the folks of Dallas municipal council do? Use the monument to create an open discussion about Texas legacy of racism? No! to try and settle the schism between commemorating the many brave souls that dies with the defunct legacy they fought to preserve? No!
They just covered it up and hope it would somehow go away. It didn’t. The cover-up is, in fact, a “cover-up”. It is so hypocritical, it is poetic. Which brings me to the next attraction:
3. Dallas Museum of Art
The museum lies just off Dallas “Arts District” (more on that later) and is a welcome respite from the heat and humidity – a staple weather condition of this city. With free admission and an ample amount of air condition, a visitor to the museum can
relax and begin to appreciate the deconstructive modern architecture of the concrete structure. Moving from structure to content, describing the internal exhibits of the museum will ultimately sound arrogant and dismissive. Dallas is best known for oil wealth and nouveau-riche taste. This isn’t New York, and the place is not the Met.
What it does have is a potpourri collection of various art pieces from all over the world. Precisely the sort of thing you’d expect of a 20thcentury oil tycoon on a global purchasing frenzy. The museum does excel when it leaves the international pretensions behind and focuses on the local. The “dust bowl” art collection covering the crisis years of the 1930’s Depression in Texas, is powerful, moving, and memorable. The collection covering everyday Texan life throughout the 20thcentury is emotional, effective, and worth the visit.
Uninterested in the harsh life of simple Texans?
There’s a Dior exhibition too.
4. Gigantic Eyeball
Yes. The title ain’t lying. Smack in front of the Joule Hotel gardens lies a 10-meter-high eyeball – as if torn out of the face of some colossal Cyclops. Looking over Main Street in Downtown Dallas this fiberglass sculpture stares motionless at the passersby. Looking at it, all I could think of was George Orwell’s’ quote for 1984 – “Big Brother eye is watching you.”
This place marks the edge of Dallas “Arts District” – a small part of the city’s downtown area containing many public sculptures. As for me, the real art laid just off that area on the corner of Main and Arcad streets. It’s called Chophouse Burger, and it has one of the best virtuosic paddies in town coupled with a genuinely creative Truffle Parmesan Fries. Now that’s something worthy of a museum!
5. Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Ross Perot, the recently desist tech billionaire was quite a character – and so is the museum he built. Located just outside Dallas central downtown area, the building is a worthy monument to the guy who nearly changed American politics back in the early ’90s. The experience starts with the beautiful, modernistic building, and continues inside with one of the best contemporary collections such a nature and science museum has to offer. Getting lost inside one of the five exhibition halls (the structure is much bigger than its looks may suggest) is easy. The rich, excellently maintained exhibition covers geology, natural history, the human body, engineering, energy, and more. If you have time for one museum only, this is the one to visit. Regardless of age.
But then, there’s another museum you are very likely to visit instead.
6. The Sixth Floor
Strange name for a museum, especially one of such importance. After all, very few places can claim to have changed world history.
This one did.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was on a trip to Dallas. His motorcade lumbered slowly through Dallas Downtown, turning right on Main street and then immediately took a sharp left in Dealey Plaza towards Elm Street. Many came to cheer Kennedy, amongst them was Lee Harvard Oswald. Lee wasn’t cheering. He came to shoot the President, and he picked up the perfect spot to do it. Armed with Carcano infantry rifle equipped with with a telescopic sight, he positioned himself directly above the corner, on the sixth floor of an old storage building, and waited. At 12:30pm Kennedy’s open limo was slowly taking that sharp left turn onto Elm Street. Oswald waited for the car to properly line up and then squeezed his rifle trigger three times.
Kennedy dies almost instantly. The rest is history. Five decades later, the storage building is still there. Now a museum, The Sixth Floor takes the visitor through the torrid days of the early Sixties, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. As the visitor winds through the different objects, the narrative slowly focuses on JFK and that fateful visit in Dallas. Like a well-designed movie script, the time slows down until it reaches 12:30 and puts the visitor in the same window the assailant used 56 years ago. If you are a history geek, and actually, even if you’re not, The Sixth Floor Museum is highly recommended.
7. Rented e.scooter
These small electric mopeds are a true gift to any person wishing to tour a modern city with speed and ease. They are thrown just about everywhere and are available for a quick rent via Uber, Lyft or a dedicated app. It’s pure functionality and ease are almost unbelievable. Just open the app, look for a charged e.schooter near you, scan the barcode, and hit the road. Lave it at your final destination. That’s it.
Genius!