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Dear friend —
Have you noticed that pretty much all American cities are the same?
Okay — they’re not exactly the same. There are variabilities in size, climate, and diversity. But think about what you do when you visit a city. Take a look at The New York Times’s 36 hours travel series, and you’ll notice that the to-do list in a lot of cities is startlingly similar to that of many other cities. A few restaurants, a few bars, a few parks, a few museums. That’s basically it, anywhere you go!
Venture out of the few cuter, more pedestrian-friendly areas of town recommended in such travel guides, and the cities get even more uniform. Strip malls with Walgreens, shopping complexes with Targets and Walmarts. Fast food drive thrus and Starbucks. Gigantic Home Depots.
Is that all a city comes down to?
Is that all there is to American life?
Maybe all this not-so-unique observation of mine shows is that wherever we are, and however different we think we may be from others, we all do similar things. We are, essentially, boring and predictable Frappuccino sippers. City rankings on all sorts of criteria come out every month, but these are just arguing over small variations on the same theme.
Or maybe this shows small variations actually matter a lot, when it comes to liking where you live. Because despite the similarities, each city does give off its own unique vibe — and some vibes are a lot more appealing than others.
I’ve noticed that a lot of travel guides give enthusiastic highlights and recommendations for a city without ever getting into its vibe. They tell me where the great shopping is and which bar comes with a nice view — but rarely answer the question I’m most curious about: How does the city make you feel?
So I thought I’d start answering this question myself, starting, arbitrarily, with Dallas, where I stayed for a week in early April.
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The third largest city in Texas, Dallas is aswim in freeways. Quite often, I found myself on a freeway sandwiched by more freeways, crisscrossing above and below me in wide, white arcs. Sizable chunks of the town, in fact, seemed to be dedicated solely to freeways, as if humans, in our haste to get to the places we wanted to go, created large, empty zones of non-places —
But those freeways delivered me expeditiously to my Airbnb. The place was basic — a slightly echoey studio with a kitchenette — except walking into the bathroom, I discovered complimentary Korean sheet masks! Immediately I tabled all plans to get to know the town and got in the tub for a long soak, followed by a green tea mask.
Thus pampered, I made my way to the Bishop Arts district, a hip area of local shops and restaurants recommended to me by people I don’t actually know but kind of feel I do, due to Twitter. It was Sunday evening and the night was coming alive — happy pedestrians popped in and out of vintage stores, stopping once in a while to listen to buskers. Live music tinged with wine wafted out open restaurant windows. I bought a book at a small but well-curated bookstore called Poets Oak Cliff, which offers both the latest literary novels and obscure translated works.
In some ways, Dallas is like a small version of Los Angeles, in that both cities have small islands of interesting, pedestrian-friendly areas floating in vast oceans of bland concretescape. But Dallas is a lot less diverse than Los Angeles — no sizable Thai Town or Little Armenia here — if more so than Austin, its hipper southern neighbor. Dallas just feels significantly smaller too. Walk a minute beyond the few blocks that make up the Bishop Arts area, and you’ll hit roads without sidewalks, modest homes with people sitting out front on rocking chairs, watching the night fall.
Walking, however, isn’t the easiest way to get around Dallas. This is a city that requires you to drive a good while, park, and then walk—which is what I did the next day to get to the Katy Trail, a 3.5-mile walk-and-bike path lined with greenery. Texas in general has impressively well-maintained outdoor spaces, and this one’s no exception — beautifully shaded by trees, interconnected with a bunch of little parks, and popular with people of all ages and speeds.
Almost as famous as the Katy Trail itself is the Katy Trail Ice House, a spot with mediocre BBQ and bar food but a relaxing, chill vibe. There I met up with Brooke, a writer friend I met at the Tin House Fiction Workshop a few years ago. We found seats in the big patio of communal tables. She ordered a gigantic plastic glass of beer like a local; I got a prosecco. Brooke laughed: “You can take the girl out of L.A. but —”
“I’ve been following your travels,” she said, confessing that she too yearned for the freedom to move around at will. “We have a lot in common, you and I.”
“But made very different life choices!” I added.
Brooke’s been married forever, and has four kids. She’s also lived in the Dallas area for a long, long time, close to all her relatives and longtime friends. Does she love it here? “What I like about Dallas is so tied up with family, and everything else —” she said, which sounded like a yes, with caveats.
Other places to drive to then walk around in while in Dallas: The Dallas Arts District is home to Nasher Sculpture Center, with work by Barbara Hepworth, Miro, and Rodin as well as an outdoor garden with lovely fountains. Nearby is the Klyde Warren Park, a popular and vibrant green spot despite its being built over an eight-lane freeway and surrounded by at least three lanes of traffic on each side. From there it’s a 20-minute walk to the Dallas Farmers Market, which has two sections: the Shed, an outdoor space where you can buy local produce on the weekends, and The Market, an indoor spot with local shops and eateries open every day. Another 20 minutes and you can find yourself in Dealey Plaza, a historically meaningful place as it’s the location of JFK’s assassination, but not a place exciting to look at IRL, as it’s basically a noisy concrete square surrounded by rushing traffic.
I also drove to then walked around Deep Ellum — a bigger, grittier version of Bishop Arts with dozens of dank dive bars, tattoo parlors, little art galleries, and zany street murals. I might have liked this area a bit more had it not been for the racist street harassment — a man eating fast food at an outdoor table yelled “Konichiwa! Ching chong! Chopsticks!” as I walked by. I’ve definitely had to deal with racist shit a lot more in Texas than any other state I’ve visited so far in my nomadic journey — another serious concern that travel guides rarely address.
The night before I left Dallas I returned to the Bishop Arts neighborhood. I ate a decadent slice of red velvet pie at Emporium Pies, checked out a bookstore-coffee shop-bar called Wild Detectives (buy a book during happy hour, get a free cocktail!), and dined at Paradiso, a mediterranean restaurant with a gorgeous garden courtyard.
Should I have gotten barbecue and beer at some historic Dallas spot instead? Perhaps — but I’ve reached that stage in life where I know I’m happier when I just do what I want to do. The shrimp and cucumber salad here had a slightly smoky flavor that went perfectly with the pomegranate seeds and creamy dressing — and the sparkling chenin blanc was a bubbly goodbye treat.
Then I got caught in a downpour walking back to the car. The day had been so hot and muggy that the rain felt kind of good —
Do you like the city you live in?
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love
The unique way Asian-American women experience sexual harassment. “When I tell these stories, people are shocked because we never really tell these stories,” says Sung Yeon Choimorrow in this New York Times interview with three Asian-American women.
What it’s like to be Asian in Texas. “Being Asian here is terrifying, seriously,” says Lee “Fearless” Eui-seok, a member of the Overwatch League’s Dallas Fuel team. “People keep trying to pick fights with us. Every time they see me, it’s like Americans will come up to us and there’s even people who cough on us. … It’s my first time ever experiencing racism. And it’s always — it’s pretty severe. And they try to scare us — lots of them just try to scare us.”
Unrelatedly — lit journal Sage Cigarettes interviewed me about Cake Time and life! In it I say things like this: “Basically, I’m less motivated and I still have conflicts about whether that is good or bad but overall it does feel more peaceful.”