We Need to De-Dallas Dallas

Our gray-green flannel needs a swift kick

by Shannon Wynne

It takes each of us to De-Dallas this town.

30KDM

Could we get another to make a set?

Why is Dallas so void of style? We just got back from Austin and I could not help but notice how much more style the people in that city have. Not just in apparel, but in nearly everything. Their architecture has balls and is not square. You see almost nothing that looks like that abortion of a shopping strip that houses The Grotto across from the Crescent. Somebody must just not allow that stuff to go up in that town. There is a true interest in the arts and people give freely of their time to live it. Live music is attended with optimism. People in Austin support their local merchants. People don’t litter. People wear fun stuff.

Visually, Dallas people seem boring to me. At the Aimee Mann show last night at the Lakewood the crowd looked like gray green flannel and jeans–no spark, no cool–just dull.

In Austin there are groovy accessories on folks that spice up a crowd and give me something to watch. I like that. Ugly people in Austin and New York, and by that I mean from birth and on the outside, look great cause they are not hung up like folks in Dallas.

It’s like in New York–people have balls and wear cool shit. There was a woman at the Whole Foods yesterday in Austin with a true wide brim straw hat and it stuck out 20 inches in every direction...and she wore that bastard with pride. You just don’t see any balls here. Backstage at the Ray LaMontagne set at ACL there was this 60 year old balding guy that had shaved all his hair except the hair that formed two little hair wings on his little head like he was Mercury–balls I say.

30KDM

Austin has its slogan; we have ours.

A fat chick in New York has a better chance of looking hot than a fat chick in Dallas. Why? Cause she has style. She knows how to accessorize, she knows what not to wear, and she has balls! This is not the same as fashion. Fashion is lame. Fashion costs bucks usually, and it is very temporary. This is about picking and choosing what the hell you are going to put on that day that will help keep you weird, and I mean that only as a reference point. Life is not long. Don’t build buildings that are void of interest, and don’t build to suit fashion. Don’t wear shit without a little twist or you are going to Dallas your whole life away.

We must all be soldiers to de-Dallas this mess of a city which has long lost it’s groove. Little sister Fort Worth has not lost its groove–so why must we? I don’t want to have to leave this town, but it is so frigging lame. We have an opportunity to build something great with that big bridge that is crossing the Trinity, but chances are we’ll value engineer it to death and spoil the cool. We’ll screw it up just like we did the first Town Lake proposed by Trammell Crow in the 70s. We’ll screw it up like we did by not putting the Cowboys into Fair Park. The politics are just too much for most of us, but we can grow our hair out or put on a cool pin our grand mother left us, or add a little color to the gray green flannel that we chose to wear today.

Shannon Wynne is the head honcho at 8.0, The Flying Fish and The Flying Saucer.