(no subject)
Hello from the "Business Center" of the Holiday Inn Express in Duncanville, TX. I'm on a business trip doing stuff in Cedar Hill (a little to the south of here) this week, part of next week, and part of the week 2 weeks after next week. Duncanville is just south of the Dallas metro area - I can get to downtown in about 20 minutes, and I can get to downtown Fort Worth in about 45. I went into Fort Worth after work yesterday, and Dallas today. Let me tell you about them.
Preface: This is my 2nd real time in the DFW area. S and I were here last year, and to our surprise we really loved it. People talk trash about Dallas a lot, and maybe if you lived here it might get old quick, but if you are an art/history enthusiast and you've got a weekend to spare you really can't get much better in the USA. Seriously! And the food shocked me too - at home, Tex-Mex is one of the things I don't enjoy eating, since I gain 3 pounds just picking up the menu and its almost always generic. Not to say I still don't gain those pounds here, but the meals that S and I had were all fantastic (even the museum cafes!).
So anyway, I drove to Ft Worth yesterday listening to some Western Swing since I'm one of those dorky people who like to pack up music of the local color when traveling (kinda cool that The Ex is playing the Paradiso when we visit Amsterdam in September, but I digress). I headed straight for the Kimbell Art Museum, a museum known not only for its collection of masterpieces from Caravaggio to Piet Mondrian (dammit, they don't have examples of their Mondrians on the website - but just picture a Mondrian in your head. Got it? Well, they've got one just like it), but also for its architecture. Louis Kahn designed it, which probably elicits an orgasmic sigh to those of you who saw the documentary My Architect and a "who?" to those of you who didn't. Suffice it to say, this is perhaps the most perfect place on this planet to view artwork and the place is worth visiting just for the building. Do not confuse this with the overblown hype that surrounds that worthless dump the Guggenheim (nice enough on the outside, but a travesty indoors) - its really a fucking marvelous building. So fucking marvelous, that as I traipsed through the museum I actually whispered to myself, "fucking marvelous!" That fucking marvelous! There's also a nice show of portraiture from the modern art era on right now, which just made it even nicer.
Across the street from the Kimbell is the Modern Art Museum Of Fort Worth. Its also housed in an unbelievably beautiful building, and I am tempted to say its the best modern collection on this continent. A show is going on right now of some sculptor named Ron Mueck. Viewing the website prior, I didn't think this would interest me too much - on the web, it looks like little more than photography. But that was before I saw the scale to which these things are done, and the freakish attention to detail that's paid. I was actually disturbed! Which is of course a good thing. As with last time, there was not nearly enough time to let me soak up the goods this place can offer, but museums have to close...or so they tell me.
Those two visits were great but honestly they were exact replays of what I did last time I was here, and I thought I should see some more of the city. So I drove to the Fort Worth Stockyards since its always listed. This is where the cattle was (and to a small degree still is) sold, not necessarily something I care to celebrate but hey. It looked very similar to the tourist trap of downtown Nashville, albeit there were some authentically annoying street sections that can make your teeth fall out if you're driving over 10mph so that was a nice touch. On the way there I passed a venue that apparently Jandek just played last week - his name was still on the marquee, which made for a truly surreal moment mixed in with the honkytonks and marisquerias.
I blindly picked a Mexican restaurant for dinner (La Playa Maya) and it was okay if not memorable (reading the Ft Worth altweekly in the restaurant, I saw that their assessment said somewhat the same). Afterwards I drove through downtown and visited the Ft Worth Water Gardens, designed by DFW's favorite architect Philip Johnson, and then I went back to home sweet hotel.
And then after work today I drove up into Dallas. Amazingly luck was on my side, because had I decided on Dallas yesterday I would've been caught in the traffic from hell as apparently some explosion occurred on the roadways yesterday right where I was heading. Anyway. I was looking for a good CD shop, because surely there had to be one somewhere, only I didn't have a clue. The Lonely Planet guide (that lack of a link is intentional, by the way) mentions an area of town called Deep Ellum as being a club mecca, so I thought I might find luck there. No dice - no anything, actually. I felt like I was the last person on earth wandering through the shut down buildings and vacant streets. I finally came across a cafe, a really nice cafe in fact, called the Murray Street Coffee Shop (noticed since they had a patio with an Illy logo on the umbrella) and the nice barrista told me to head to a place called Good Records in Lower Greenville, saying it might be to my style if I liked "obscure and indie music." He even pulled out a map of the city to give me street directions. The directions were flawless, and when I walked in and immediately saw the latest Sir Richard Bishop and Colleen albums staring back at me, I saw that the store was equally flawless. I did some damage there and then headed downtown.
On Thursdays, the phenomenal Dallas Museum Of Art is open late, as are the other endorsable museums nearby, so I went in to see the exhibitions only. The latest one is an excursion of Stabiano, one of the 3 cities destroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79ad. Everything in the exhibit, mostly frescoes, dates from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD, and was only discovered in the last 50 years. Just astonishing - some of the depictions of the gods borders on what Art Deco aimed for two millenia later. The other exhibit, perhaps even MORE up my alley, is all about the Societe Anonyme, a collective/gallery headed in part by Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century. Lots of the great names of 20th century art, but almost all of them works that don't get published often - they've just been sitting silently in the collection at Yale over the past 60 years. But even nicer are the complete unknowns whose names haven't aged as well as, say, Kandinsky or Stella. I ended up going through this exhibit 3 times before I could say goodbye. And it should be said the rest of the museum is outstanding, particularly (again) the modern art and the ancient Greco-Roman artifacts. Oh, and did I mention its free on Thursdays too? The icing on the cake.
After saying all that, I decided to take Lonely Planet's advice and head back to Deep Ellum, to dine at an acclaimed restaurant called Deep Sushi. The name put me off a bit, but I trusted what they said and S mentioned she had heard of it. Well, I got there, ordered green tea for starters, and was told that they didn't have any, and would I like regular tea instead? I don't think I need to say anything more. So I've learned that not all cuisine in this town is fabulous, sad to say. But still, they've got stats good enough for the baseball hall of fame for sure, provided their drug record is clean (hell yeah it has to be, doesn't Texas execute you if its not?). And then I came back to the hotel, where I worked on research for the upcoming Netherlands adventure in September and typed this love letter to you.
So bottom line: forget JR Ewing, forget George W Bush (oh, if only), forget the swagger and forget all of George Strait's exes. The fact of the matter is, Dallas/Ft Worth is the ideal weekend getaway, particularly over the next couple of months while all of these referenced exhibitions are still on. And that's to say nothing of the essential Sixth Floor Museum, which is fascinating regardless of your Kennedy mindset. Which gives me one final thrill to add about the city, because you get that weird rush when you drive over the Kennedy death scene (marked with an X on the road, even) as you're preparing to get on I-35. And really, if a city can make you excited to rent a car for such a purpose, even in a sprawling traffic-laden metroplex like this one, they have to be doing something right...
Preface: This is my 2nd real time in the DFW area. S and I were here last year, and to our surprise we really loved it. People talk trash about Dallas a lot, and maybe if you lived here it might get old quick, but if you are an art/history enthusiast and you've got a weekend to spare you really can't get much better in the USA. Seriously! And the food shocked me too - at home, Tex-Mex is one of the things I don't enjoy eating, since I gain 3 pounds just picking up the menu and its almost always generic. Not to say I still don't gain those pounds here, but the meals that S and I had were all fantastic (even the museum cafes!).
So anyway, I drove to Ft Worth yesterday listening to some Western Swing since I'm one of those dorky people who like to pack up music of the local color when traveling (kinda cool that The Ex is playing the Paradiso when we visit Amsterdam in September, but I digress). I headed straight for the Kimbell Art Museum, a museum known not only for its collection of masterpieces from Caravaggio to Piet Mondrian (dammit, they don't have examples of their Mondrians on the website - but just picture a Mondrian in your head. Got it? Well, they've got one just like it), but also for its architecture. Louis Kahn designed it, which probably elicits an orgasmic sigh to those of you who saw the documentary My Architect and a "who?" to those of you who didn't. Suffice it to say, this is perhaps the most perfect place on this planet to view artwork and the place is worth visiting just for the building. Do not confuse this with the overblown hype that surrounds that worthless dump the Guggenheim (nice enough on the outside, but a travesty indoors) - its really a fucking marvelous building. So fucking marvelous, that as I traipsed through the museum I actually whispered to myself, "fucking marvelous!" That fucking marvelous! There's also a nice show of portraiture from the modern art era on right now, which just made it even nicer.
Across the street from the Kimbell is the Modern Art Museum Of Fort Worth. Its also housed in an unbelievably beautiful building, and I am tempted to say its the best modern collection on this continent. A show is going on right now of some sculptor named Ron Mueck. Viewing the website prior, I didn't think this would interest me too much - on the web, it looks like little more than photography. But that was before I saw the scale to which these things are done, and the freakish attention to detail that's paid. I was actually disturbed! Which is of course a good thing. As with last time, there was not nearly enough time to let me soak up the goods this place can offer, but museums have to close...or so they tell me.
Those two visits were great but honestly they were exact replays of what I did last time I was here, and I thought I should see some more of the city. So I drove to the Fort Worth Stockyards since its always listed. This is where the cattle was (and to a small degree still is) sold, not necessarily something I care to celebrate but hey. It looked very similar to the tourist trap of downtown Nashville, albeit there were some authentically annoying street sections that can make your teeth fall out if you're driving over 10mph so that was a nice touch. On the way there I passed a venue that apparently Jandek just played last week - his name was still on the marquee, which made for a truly surreal moment mixed in with the honkytonks and marisquerias.
I blindly picked a Mexican restaurant for dinner (La Playa Maya) and it was okay if not memorable (reading the Ft Worth altweekly in the restaurant, I saw that their assessment said somewhat the same). Afterwards I drove through downtown and visited the Ft Worth Water Gardens, designed by DFW's favorite architect Philip Johnson, and then I went back to home sweet hotel.
And then after work today I drove up into Dallas. Amazingly luck was on my side, because had I decided on Dallas yesterday I would've been caught in the traffic from hell as apparently some explosion occurred on the roadways yesterday right where I was heading. Anyway. I was looking for a good CD shop, because surely there had to be one somewhere, only I didn't have a clue. The Lonely Planet guide (that lack of a link is intentional, by the way) mentions an area of town called Deep Ellum as being a club mecca, so I thought I might find luck there. No dice - no anything, actually. I felt like I was the last person on earth wandering through the shut down buildings and vacant streets. I finally came across a cafe, a really nice cafe in fact, called the Murray Street Coffee Shop (noticed since they had a patio with an Illy logo on the umbrella) and the nice barrista told me to head to a place called Good Records in Lower Greenville, saying it might be to my style if I liked "obscure and indie music." He even pulled out a map of the city to give me street directions. The directions were flawless, and when I walked in and immediately saw the latest Sir Richard Bishop and Colleen albums staring back at me, I saw that the store was equally flawless. I did some damage there and then headed downtown.
On Thursdays, the phenomenal Dallas Museum Of Art is open late, as are the other endorsable museums nearby, so I went in to see the exhibitions only. The latest one is an excursion of Stabiano, one of the 3 cities destroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79ad. Everything in the exhibit, mostly frescoes, dates from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD, and was only discovered in the last 50 years. Just astonishing - some of the depictions of the gods borders on what Art Deco aimed for two millenia later. The other exhibit, perhaps even MORE up my alley, is all about the Societe Anonyme, a collective/gallery headed in part by Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century. Lots of the great names of 20th century art, but almost all of them works that don't get published often - they've just been sitting silently in the collection at Yale over the past 60 years. But even nicer are the complete unknowns whose names haven't aged as well as, say, Kandinsky or Stella. I ended up going through this exhibit 3 times before I could say goodbye. And it should be said the rest of the museum is outstanding, particularly (again) the modern art and the ancient Greco-Roman artifacts. Oh, and did I mention its free on Thursdays too? The icing on the cake.
After saying all that, I decided to take Lonely Planet's advice and head back to Deep Ellum, to dine at an acclaimed restaurant called Deep Sushi. The name put me off a bit, but I trusted what they said and S mentioned she had heard of it. Well, I got there, ordered green tea for starters, and was told that they didn't have any, and would I like regular tea instead? I don't think I need to say anything more. So I've learned that not all cuisine in this town is fabulous, sad to say. But still, they've got stats good enough for the baseball hall of fame for sure, provided their drug record is clean (hell yeah it has to be, doesn't Texas execute you if its not?). And then I came back to the hotel, where I worked on research for the upcoming Netherlands adventure in September and typed this love letter to you.
So bottom line: forget JR Ewing, forget George W Bush (oh, if only), forget the swagger and forget all of George Strait's exes. The fact of the matter is, Dallas/Ft Worth is the ideal weekend getaway, particularly over the next couple of months while all of these referenced exhibitions are still on. And that's to say nothing of the essential Sixth Floor Museum, which is fascinating regardless of your Kennedy mindset. Which gives me one final thrill to add about the city, because you get that weird rush when you drive over the Kennedy death scene (marked with an X on the road, even) as you're preparing to get on I-35. And really, if a city can make you excited to rent a car for such a purpose, even in a sprawling traffic-laden metroplex like this one, they have to be doing something right...