Dallas / Fort Worth and Me

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

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

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.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

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.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

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.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

While tooling around looking for the neighborhood of Lower Greenville recently, I somehow ended up at White Rock Lake and came across the Bath House Cultural Center. Now, anyone who knows Dallas would probably wonder how the hell I managed to end up there when I was supposedly heading for a whole other part of the city, and don’t ask me how it happened; my only excuse is that I was suffering from a combination of too much heat, irritation at a condescending store clerk, an upset stomach, and an annoying bout of moving house. Yes, I really have been living in Dallas for 15 years, and yes, I really did get completely turned around the other day. These things happen to me. Look, shut up.*

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

It’s August in DFW, and you know what that means? Yep, dozens of days in a row with triple-digit temperatures, and not a hell of a lot going on around the metroplex — because hey, it’s too bloody hot. Thank goodness that there’s an oasis in the cultural drought we’ve got around here, and it’s called Addison.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

Even in the midst of a big city, you can find wonderful places that remind you that concrete, glass, and steel aren’t all there is to the human condition. In my own experience, possibly the best example is Central Park in New York, which is a surprisingly organic place to find in the heart of such a metropolis. I just wish I’d had a chance to see more of that city and park personally while I was stuck up there in the Northeast back in the last decade.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

Addison is a relatively small town imbedded deep within Dallas County. It’s all city, more or less; the only way you can tell when you’ve crossed over from Dallas or Richardson or wherever is when you see the street signs, which are all labeled Addison! in flowing script. I used to work there  once upon a time, and I’ve gone to quite a few events in this little “Mid-City”, as we call the prosperous burgs between Dallas and Forth Worth.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

In Part I of this exciting episode, I introduced you to my favorite state park: Dinosaur Valley, which is located just outside the town of Glen Rose, fifty miles southwest of the DFW metroplex.  Not only can you camp, hike, and ride horses here, you can also enjoy the current wildlife, and look for traces of wildlife more than 100 million years dead — the dinosaurs of the park’s name. The park offers three specific areas where you can view dinosaur tracks impressed in the mudstone eroding out of the riverbed. It costs $5 each for adults over 12 to get in; kids are free.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]

Happy anniversary, Constant Reader! I started writing this blog on June 29, 2007, and this is my 101st post. That’s a lot of writing, when you come to think about it, especially almost all my posts have exceed 500 words — often by a good bit. So let’s see; assuming I’ve written something like 800 words for each of those entries, that’s about 80,000. Zounds! As they say, words fly when you’re havin’ fun.

Bookmark to:

[Read more →]