Destination: Fuel City [pt. 1]

Ok, so Fuel City isn't an actual nickname for Dallas, rather the name of a place in the metroplex to buy supposedly some of the best tacos around. I didn't get a chance to eat there during my visit however, mostly due to the fact that we did not have a car in which to drive to said gas station/convenience store/taqueria located in a desolate area just southwest of downtown Dallas, surrounded by roads and highways. I've done some things I consider fairly adventurous in my travels: paragliding in Colombia, hiking a Volcano in Guatemala, showing my gringo face in Caracas, but trying to see Dallas for 3 days without a car might be one of the most irrational of all of them.

The truth is though that you don't need a car to see where Dallas puts its focus. "30,000 dollar millionaires" was the phrase that a friend used. Though I had been told that before that Dallas is a city all about showing off one's wealth, or "appearance of wealth" to be more specific, I had a hard time believing that such a blanket statement could really be so easily applied to the 4th largest metropolitan area in the country.

Rewind a couple weeks before I boarded a plane for DFW to join a couple friends on a Third Coastin' research trip to Fuel City (it's catching on already!). A combination of thriftiness and stubbornness had led us to the decision to forgo a rental car and attempt to see the city using public transportation alone. Reputation be Damned! I was determined to use the same method I would use for seeing any other city: get on a bus or train to somewhere, walk around til things were no longer interesting, and then get on a bus or train for a new part of town and repeat.

Interestingly enough, the public transportation part was not the hole in the plan. DART proved to be a more than capable transit system, and thanks to God's greatest gift to mankind, Google transit on a smart phone, it was surprisingly easy to move around the city. No, the real flaw in the whole operation was that there just wasn't much to see. Despite some research, we were left more or less underwhelmed by the various areas of town we visited. Downtown, Deep Ellum, "M" Streets, Greeneville, Oak cliff, Bishop Arts District: all of them failed to strike any sort of tone with my hipster, new urbanist soul. There were pockets of bars or shopping districts here and there, but nothing that would scream out major metropolitan center and Beta world city.

So where do the rebellious youth, the jaded hipsters, the upwardly mobile young professionals, the awkwardly lost cowboys go in Dallas? Why did everywhere we went feel about as lively as downtown Detroit? Uptown baby. The only place we heard, the only place anyone ever said to go, was Uptown. A trendy, chic area north of downtown that is the anything and everything to Dallas as far as I could tell. Populated with bars, upscale restaurants, galleries, condo buildings, this is where you want to be. It's exactly the type of area that I would've expected to find in Dallas, streets crawling with the "30,000 dollar millionaires".

I should be careful not to come off as too bitter or scathing towards people who like nice things, new buildings and post modern minimalist decor. Really I had no problem with Uptown other than the fact that it seemed to have sucked the life out of every other district in the city, which seemed a real shame to me. I say this in all honesty, that it was almost startling how few people there were out and about in the city while we were there. Downtown Dallas made downtown Milwaukee look like Manhattan by comparison. Deep Ellum was the alternative area that was either in decline or hadn't yet taken off, depending on who you asked, and though the area around "M" streets and Greeneville seemed to have a nice laid back atmosphere, there wasn't a whole lot there to begin with.

Even though this was my first trip to Texas, I want to refrain from forming too many concrete opinions of it overall. Perhaps it should be fairly obvious that Texas isn't know for its world class, cosmopolitan cities. The Texans themselves were more than friendly, constantly surprising me with their congeniality towards us as visitors and customers. The service we received at the bars and restaurants we went to was impeccable, which augmented the dining experiences even more.

To step aside for a moment, this trip represented exactly why I've started this blog in the first place, and why food has become so central to my traveling experience. If you truly want to go everywhere in the world, you will eventually come to the realization that every city is not as cosmopolitan as New York, as charming as San Francisco, or as romantic as Paris. Sometimes you're going to end up in Montgomery Alabama, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, or in Dallas, Texas. Food is the ultimate safety net in these situations, because no matter where you are, there is bound to be something good, local, traditional or best yet all three, that will help you better understand where you are right then and there.

In this respect, Dallas did not disappoint.

to be continued....