"Yee Haw" Dallas by Ramonq

click: Dallas music

I arrived in Dallas late at night and the bus from the airport took me through the Downtown area. Dallas from afar at night was amazing. The glass and chrome skyscrapers were dazzlingly lit up like Christmas trees. It looked like a scene from a science fiction film.

Nightmare at Elm Street

Texans like to think that theirs is the biggest state in mainland USA, but never ever mention Alaska because that spoils any myths about Texas being the sole oil-rich wild territory in the whole confederation. The Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) conurbation is the largest in Texas, so one can surmise that this would be a city of legendary Texan proportions. Well I must agree that the metropolis is very vast and it sprawls as far as the horizon. But forget about the yee-haw cowboys on the ranch, because in Dallas, you're more likely to see urban "cowboys" whose prowess aren't lassooing and branding bulls, but transforming small "mom and pop" stores into huge multinational conglomerates. Dallas is a city of rugged individualists and this mentality is ingrained in a lot of, but definitely not all, Texans.

Dallas is a "can do" city. Its gung-ho optimism has transformed this once backwater two log-cabin town in the 1840's, into a wealthy city today for such a relative short period of time. The personality of the Dallasite was caricatured by the world-famous telenovela aptly entitled "Dallas" back in the greedy 1980's. Perhaps this is why Texas is becoming the new California of the USA and Dallas is slowly catching up Los Angeles as an economic super-city because its populace are a driven and pragmatic lot.

The city began as a vision from one man, John Neely Bryan who chose the spot to initially set up a small trading post after he surveyed the area along the Trinity river and on the path of the proposed North/South Texan highway. Bryan then invited settlers from nearby areas to move into his site until it became a viable small village. Trickles of settlers arrived attracted by its location. Many farm goods and construction materials passed through the city and soon Dallas became a centre for buffalo trade in the 1860's. The arrival of steam trains through Dallas doubled its population within a year. Grand hotels were built but most large buildings were mainly utilitarian in the form of warehouses because Dallas was the last stop for passengers going further west to stock up on supplies. The turn of the century transformed the town into a small city with new infrastructure being built. Dallas underwent a second boom when oil was struck in East Texas during the 1930's even at the height of the Depression. Dallas soon became the financial centre for swaggering oil tycoons.

Dallas became a worlwide centre of attention in 1963 but all fro the wrong reason, when John F Kennedy was assassinated at Dealy Plaza in Downtown Dallas. Most of us have heard of the infamous conspiracy theories and the grassy knoll from the popular media such as films and books. We have seen various film footages of the chilling assassination of the young president. But to be actually on the spot where it all happened has a voyeuristic appeal to it. It's quite eerie because this seemingly mundane, boring part of Dallas is now its number 1 tourist attraction.

The opening of DFW in 1974 paved the way for opening up Dallas to the global business. Soon large Texan companies moved to Dallas and set up headquarters there. Downtown Dallas mushroomed upwards with the construction of glass skyscrapers. Dallasites love their suburbs and the city has spread far and wide leaving Downtown abandoned after office hours to the homeless and mainly poor black itinerants. Like many large American cities, Dallas faces serious urban problems such as racism, drugs and crime. But Dallas is a can-do city. Finally they're doing something about its poor public transportation with the DART system. I used it a lot and I was thorougly impressed.

4

5

• Pros:Urban Cowboy lifestyle
• Cons:You need a car
• In a nutshell:The Big Texan City