Dallas / Fort Worth and Me

If anything, the 2009 / 2010 social year for the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex looks to be even busier than the 2008 season. As I did for 2008, I’ll track the events for 2009 and 2010 month by month, and continue to add new events as I find out about them. I’ll attend and write about as many as I can, but of course there are certain times of the year when there’s just so much happening I just can’t make it to everything. That’s where the Skribit voting app on the top right side of the homepage comes into play. You can make suggestions for new events right there, and vote on the ones you’d like me to write about. For those instances in which two events overlap, I’ll pick the one with the most votes to attend.

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As All Hallow’s Eve approaches (that’s Halloween to you and me), the entire metroplex is gearing up for a scarefest. Of course, the big grocery and department stores have been ready since, oh, July.  The local towns and cities haven’t taken it to that extreme yet,  quite, but they’re usually in gear by mid to late September. It seems that I’m the late one, because I’ve waited until just over three weeks from the event to concern myself with this particular harvest festival.

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Recently, I had the pleasure of experiencing the incredible Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, which is located on the southeast shore of White Rock Lake. Now that spring’s mostly here, I figured it was a great time to finally visit. I was right. They’re right in the middle of their Dallas Blooms festival, which lasts from March 8-April 13.

All I can say is, “Wow.” I was highly impressed.

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In the so-called Mid-City of Arlington, Texas, nigh unto the Ballpark in Arlington where the Texas Rangers play baseball, lies the Metroplex equivalent of the Magical Kingdom: the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park. While there are other Six Flags parks scattered across the USA, this is the original.

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In the heart of the Fort Worth Stockyards, in a converted warehouse a few yards from the Visitor’s Center, lies the amazing historical repository known as the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Despite the name, it’s not merely a place where individual cowboys (and, yes, cowgirls) are lauded for their achievements; it’s also a storehouse of the items that working cowboys actually used in the heyday of the profession. They’ve also got a powerful large collection of wagons used by everyday people back in the 1800s and very early 1900s. Think of it as a hybrid facility that covers everything from frontier Texas life to modern rodeo, with the wagons acting as continuity, and you’re not too far off.

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 There’s an oddly provocative castle plunked down on the edge of downtown Dallas — right next to one of our main arteries, Interstate Highway 35 — where all and sundry can see it. It’s called Medieval Times, and while the prices inside are straight out of the 21^st century, the goings-on are positively, well, medieval. So hey, if you want to get medieval on someone’s butt-tocks (as a brilliant Forrest Gump parody of Pulp Fiction once put it), this is the place to do it.

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In my last entry, I regaled you all with tales of the delicious Plano Balloon Festival, the 29th iteration of which I attended on Sunday, September 21.  In addition to all the typical festival stuff — you know, free swag, expensive food and drink, pushy newspaper venders, and purveyors or every type of chintz you could imagine — there was also excruciatingly bad karaoke, which I don’t often see or hear (you were supposed to be able to win the karaoke machine). Oh, and there were numerous Balloons of Unusual Size, as well. It was fascinating just watching them get inflated. And as you can see, there was quite a crowd watching this day.

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Last weekend, I caught the tail-end of the EDS Plano Balloon Festival. This is one of cool events that keeps the city of Plano on the map, and it’s one of the highlights of the local social year. I’ve only gone once before — it was back in the 1990s, and though I was alone, I had a pretty good time. See, this isn’t just a balloon exhibition; as with most festivals, there are vendors galore, selling everything from Pampered Chef products to vacations in the Cayman Islands. Last time I went, I bought a couple of nice hand-crafted deck chairs for the patio that lasted for about ten years. Wish I could remember the vendor I bought them from — they were a good deal, and I could use some more!

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On September 19, I attended an unusual event: the Addison Oktoberfest, a classic beer festival  that’s supposed to be the biggest outside of Munich. While I didn’t think it was all that huge, it was big enough, and we had a good time. Aside from a couple of tastings, though, we didn’t have any beer; it was simply too expensive. It was more expensive than airport beer, and that’s expensive indeed.

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In Part I of this entry, I treated you to my first impressions of Grapevine’s Grapefest, a festival that was new to me, despite having lived in DFW for more than 15 years.  Truth is, I don’t get over to Grapevine much, except to go to the Mall — and I’ve only been there a few times.

When last I left you, we were about halfway down the rather lengthy midway , very close to the town square. It included an attractive, old-fashioned gazebo style band shell, and this lovely piece of art, though I have to admit that this person got a better picture than I — they got the band shell in there, anyhow.

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