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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In 2009 the Sunnyfest will officially start on the evening of July 2nd, at 6pm.  Rain date is 10 July.

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I’ve mentioned before that you can usually find something cooking at Trader’s Village in Grand Prairie, generally in the venerable Green Expo — and this past weekend was no exception.  On June 21, the day of the wonderful Summer Equinox, the local Filipino-American population celebrated their equivalent of Independence Day:  Philippine Republic Day, which by the calendar is actually June 12. Of course, the 21st was an auspicious day for celebration, and so it was chosen for the observance.

Like many events that occur in and around the Green Expo, the PRDC wasn’t huge, but it was interesting and fun.  There were a lot of people there, too, mostly enjoying the food.

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Bah. Humbug.

I’m going to warn you before I start that this entry contains crankiness. I’m going to try not to let it affect my review of the Festival itself too badly, but I have to tell you, it’s hard not to, considering how I was treated by the people running it. And I’m good at cranky.

First of all, there are very few pictures here for a simple reason: they wouldn’t let me take any. This is why:

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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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Still need to complete the 2010 calendar, for now please refer to the 2009 calendar.

If you have a 2010 event being planned now then let me know so it can get included in the event calendar for next year.

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Recently, one of you lovely readers used the Skribit feature in the upper right corner of this page to suggest that I review the Green Chile Festival in Dallas. Now, unlike other similarly-named events elsewhere, this isn’t your standard festival, with expensive beer and six-dollar turkey legs; it’s just a special event put on by Chuy’s Mexican restaurant. Chuy’s is a Dallas institution located on McKinney Street just off Knox-Henderson, in one of our better-known neighborhoods (which will be covered in another blog entry in the near future).  

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I recently visited Keller, which is located in Tarrant County between Dallas and Fort Worth, for their yearly Wild Wild West Fest.  Why? Because some kind reader used that Skribit app over there on the right to ask me to! Can’t turn down a kind request like that.  Well, I didn’t know quite what to expect, never having been there before; my only exposure was from the materials on their website, in which they make it clear that the festival’s paid for only from vendor fees, never taxes. That made me wonder if it was worth going so far to what sounded like a podunk event.

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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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