10 Really Stupid Things About Dallas

As much as we love to complain about Dallas, most of us love living here. And it is, for the most part, a pretty awesome place to live. We have good sports teams (most of the time), good theatre and art, and a cost of living that doesn’t make us want to fling ourselves from the nearest bridge. Still, this ain’t a utopia, not by a long shot.

If you’ve lived in Dallas for more than about three weeks, it’s likely that you’ve noticed plenty of stupid stuff, even if you haven’t paid attention to local politics or conservative talk radio. In fact, you’ve probably experienced at least five (but probably all) of these 10 really, really stupid things about Dallas.


The traffic
Yeah, yeah, complaining about Dallas traffic is so 1980, but it still totally sucks. We’re not even complaining about rush hour, when it’s expected that the roads are going to be congested with the millions of people in this city and its adjacent suburbs trying to get to their jobs. It’s the spontaneous, totally unexplained jams at 2 p.m. on a Thursday that make you an hour late to your nail appointment that really piss us off.


The Omni’s LED Billboard
There is so much potential for the LED billboard at the Downtown Dallas Omni Hotel to be a beautiful addition to the landscape, but most of the time it looks like someone barfed up some Las Vegas casino carpeting. Even worse is when the logos of whatever conference is at the Convention Center are totally interfering with your ability to take a cool selfie in front of our world-class skyline.


It sucks to be outside
The heat notwithstanding, Dallas isn’t exactly a great place to be outside. When it is hot, the (probably) billions of pounds of concrete that our city is built on suck it up and retain it to make us as miserable as humanly possible. And it’s not even just us who think that — last year, Outside Magazine (a bunch of hippies) declared that Dallas was the worst outdoor city in the country, thanks to its awesome combination of a lack of green spaces, bad air quality and CO2 pollution. Don’t even get us started on the pollen.


There’s no swimming in White Rock Lake
At this point, you probably wouldn’t want to go swimming in White Rock Lake. It’s probably teeming with so many dirty needles and old tires that it needs to be condemned and cleaned up by the proper authorities, but how cool would it be to have a huge lake in the middle of this hot-ass city that you could actually swim in? Yeah, you could take a kayak or canoe, but who wants to sit in the open sun when you could be in actual, refreshing water? It boggles the mind.


Micro-neighborhoods
Dallasites are very picky about their geography, and you had damn well better know your Vickery Meadows from your East Dallas from your Lakewood from your Casa Linda. It seems as if every damn street in the city’s nicer neighborhoods is its own unique neighborhood, and that’s just a little ridiculous. Forgive us if we’ve not yet figured out exactly what Kessler Park or Junius Heights is. We’re too busy being worried about you running us over with your SUV to pay attention to those precious little markers that adorn your street signs.


Potholes
Potholes are not just a stupid thing about Dallas, they are a serious problem that no one with any power to fix them seems to give a shit about. We should probably all send the City of Dallas a bill for the tires we’ve bought and new car alignments over the years, but they’d get to them as quickly as they do anything else. In the meantime, just pray that you never have to ride a bike to work and/or increase your life insurance policy.

The lack of radio diversity
Dallas is pretty solid in the major musical categories — pop, hip-hop, Tejano and rock — but anything else is a little harder to find. KXT 97.1 is technically an “indie” station, and WRR 101.1 plays classical music, but KNON 89.3 is where you’ll find the most musical diversity. We’re not asking for obscure world music here, but an Americana station or some kind of unique new format would be really, really good news.


First Baptist Church
No one is bashing anyone’s religion here, but First Baptist Church in Downtown Dallas is ridiculous. As if it weren’t bad enough that Robert Jeffress is a hateful bigot who takes every opportunity Fox News gives him to spew hatred about gay people, women and everyone in between, First Baptist’s new home is an entirely absurd piece of architecture. Maybe instead of building that gigantic swoopy glass thing that hangs ominously over San Jacinto, they could’ve fed a million or so hungry kids.


How far away Denton is
Denton is like a vacation from Dallas, or at least that’s what we’ve heard because it’s too damn far to drive there. Denton is (supposedly) a land of wonderful music, fine art, good theatre and even decent restaurants, but it’s just too far way to consider on a regular basis. Especially when it means you’ll have to take I-35 after pounding 20 penny pints or whatever cheap libation the children are drinking these days.


Victory Park
Even though it’s relatively new and a nice space, Victory Park should be re-named “Empty as Fuck Park” because that’s what it is nearly 100% of the time. It has a few restaurants, but unless the Mavericks have won another NBA Championship or it’s New Year’s Eve, Victory Park is a complete ghost town. At this point, we’d damn near take another strip mall or chain restaurant just to make this beautiful space feel useful.