Since last winter went so swimmingly, let's try it again! TFS has very graciously opened her home in the west San Fernando Valley to me again. This time her daughter AS (and dog and cat) are there too. Two women + two dogs + two cats = not my usual solitary winter again. Huzzah! Place name links like Los Angeles, CA go to Wikipedia. Place name links like Los Angeles use a local tourism or government website.
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Downtown Dallas |
| 2014.02.28 |
Arrived in Dallas |
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Well we made it half-way across the country, to Dallas, TX . TFS's production was pushed a day so we could be more leisurely, and after El Paso, TX we stopped overnight in Abilene, TX . Not much to say about those two places because we stayed on the outskirts of both and hit the road after coffee and the newspapers. The trip was pretty uneventful, except for some wicked fog about an hour after El Paso, for about a half-hour - thick pea-soup stuff that kept my eyes glued to the road stripes and visibility of about a 100 feet. Not that it slowed me much - 80mph was doable. Not long after that fog lifted we entered into the flattest part of the trip: rolling hills much like home broken by a few rocky hills here and there. Easy driving, except as a truck route we had to contend with large semis passing each other at relatively glacial speeds to break our fast progress. Got stopped by Highway Patrol an hour before El Paso but the young officer took a look at my registration and asked where we were headed and let us go without even a warning. I was only doing 85 in a 75 zone. Perhaps my small car made him expect to find some kids driving or something.
Getting into Dallas was a trial - lots of road construction grinding traffic to a crawl at best. Dallas seems to need a lot of roadwork, even on surface streets.
Now for the less-fun part. We're staying at a boutique hotel, the NYLO Dallas South Side, which by its location and design was built primarily as a tax-break opportunity, with someone's wife kept busy making the place all warehouse-y and industrial-modern. Ceilings are high, floors are all varnished concrete, walls are brick, which makes the rooms cavernous and hollow and cold. So much for taking my shoes off. The bathroom door is a warehouse-style slider with a 1-inch gap all around which lets the sound of every fart and piss-splash bounce around the rest of the suite. Ingeniously, there's an 1x8-foot window onto the room from the shower stall, which though frosted bathes the rest of the suite in light from the bathroom. And the neighbourhood is a wasteland. It might be a place worth being in a decade or two, but right now it's a blight of tumble-down warehouses and vacant lots and dodgy liquor stores - the most prevalent of any retail establishment in the area that I could find after a couple hours scanning with Google Maps. There are a couple trendy eateries selling frou-frou sandwiches on frou-frou plates at frou-frou prices, and a couple or three bars selling 10-dollar drinks. Oh, and the offices of the Dallas Police Department across the street. This will be a fine area to leave behind us when TFS is done - there's no "here" here. Kudos to the developer for trying though.
The building does have a history - it's the old Dallas Coffin Company, built in 1911 and occupied until the 1940s when it went out of business.
TFS's office is in another reclaimed warehouse, the old Sears Roebuck & Co. Catalogue Merchandise Center. A funky old place similarly devoid of much life, with offices on the main floor and loft-condos above. One would have to be a real urban pioneer to live around here since there are no amenities, save for the above-mentioned liquor stores, for miles.
Last night we did find somewhere decent to eat called, ironically (probably purposely) in the city where John F. Kennedy was shot and killed, Lee Harvey's. A dive bar with only a few tables inside and most tables outside around a couple firepits, with a surprisingly creative menu.
Now to finish on a positive note: the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ . We spent 3 or so hours there and could have spent more if we didn't have to get to El Paso, TX . A real treasure of a museum on the northeast edge of Phoenix, boasting a collection of 15,000 instruments from around the world, 5,000 on display. I used up 2 camera batteries taking pictures which I'll post once I get through a backlog of things from Los Angeles. Since there's very little to do around these parts without navigating the convoluted freeway system around Dallas I'll have some time on my hands. |
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