The Image and Ideas of Dallas

Steam Engine in Grapevine, Texas

I arrived in Dallas in the early part of 2010 and was greeted by some snow. That was the first preconceived notion about the region that was broken for me.

I moved here with my partner from Brooklyn. I was concerned people in the South would have some animosity to New Yorkers- its that one cover of New York Magazine, which I think featured Newt Gingrich the on the cover, with the headline WHY AMERICA HATES NEW YORK. With that I suggested we say we hailed from Pittsburgh, the city we lived in prior to Brooklyn.

Eventually I got around to saying Brooklyn. It was easier that backtracking and explaining the last two years that followed our time in Pittsburgh-- in the capital of the world. It was pretty hard anyway given the license plate was still from New York and the back of the car said Bay Ridge Honda.

Compared to New York, or even Pittsburgh, we figured there wasn't much of a city in Dallas. Sure there were skyscrapers, but you couldn't really walk around or use public transit. With that we figured if we must drive, it may be wise to find a somewhat walkable suburb and at least limit travel time to my partner's work near the airport. We found Grapevine, Texas.

There was always some chance we would move again, but the four beasts that came along made it hard to find a rental, at least one in a place we would feel comfortable living. So we bought a house. The size of course made it attractive-especially compared to the 700 square foot apartment in Brooklyn.

On one of the first days here I heard the sound of a steam train. This was familiar to me as I grew up in a town with a steam train, however the sound of the train came a bit later. It's more accurate to say there was the rusting hulk of a steam engine that sat at the local landmark known as the Horseshoe Curve. For me, and many others in the town, it represented a glorious and prosperous past. Altoona wasn't a rust-belt city exactly-it hadn't been as hard hit as the towns with mills, like Johnstown and Pittsburgh. But it was always clear downtown and elsewhere that things weren't what they used to be.

Then one day came the inspiration and funding to make the old rusting hulk of metal run again. That they did, although it didn't last long before the boiler blew and the engine was removed from public view.

That was the background for me of hearing this steam engine in my new town of Grapevine. Exploring more, I discovered they also had a nice train station and the trains, while not always powered by steam, made regular runs to the Fort Worth Stockyards. Grapevine has two things Altoona didn't have, a working steam engine and a viable Main Street.

Altoona was something I left long ago, however and the infatuation with Grapevine began to dissipate. It never was an infatuation exactly, rather a best option at the time. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to live, and perhaps the best suburb in the region as far as being a distinct, somewhat walkable place. The thing is, I didn't come directly from Altoona to Grapevine. I have spent 20 years in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and San Francisco in between. After a little more than a year here, the trips to Dallas, and to some extent Fort Worth, became so frequent, and the longing for a more urban environment so strong, it became apparent that the thing to do was move.

This is the point where this blog begins.