Questions about living in Dallas

[DaveinJapan]

Hi all. I first posted this in the lounge, but was kindly directed over here to the Texas forum (I'd forgotten there were forums for each state!).

As I know there are tons of savvy DUers out there who've been around, I was wondering if I could get some advice about life in Texas, particularly Dallas. A friend of mine who's never lived abroad before (she's Japanese) is moving there in a few weeks for a year or so on business and I was hoping to learn something about the ins and outs (I was born and raised in New England, spent some time in Florida and Cali, but my experience with Texas amounts to a mere 3 days on a road trip so I know next to nothing!).

She wants to enjoy local culture (she's excited about bar-b-que cuisine and great steak places, as well as Country Music which she says she's never heard before but only read about lol), she's concerned about public transportation options (will have a license and car but prefers not to drive much), likes to travel and would like to see more of Texas and surrounding areas (without having to drive, if possible), is an avid golfer, and is also interested in knowing where to find good "home cooking" (in this case, Japanese or other asian foods) in restaurants and/or Asian/Japanese markets as well.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[northoftheborder]

1. I don't live in Dallas, but.....

I know she can find plenty of barbecue, steak, country music, plus great art museums, shopping, and other sophisticated cuisine. Dallas has a metro system, but I'm not sure how comprehensive it is. I hate to drive in Dallas. Tell her to land in Austin; she can find all of the above plus a friendly place. No metro, though. But smaller than Dallas. Easier to get around. Those who live in Dallas can be more informative.

[Honeycombe8]

2. Well, Howdy, Pardner!

I'm originally from La., but have lived in Dallas for about 27 years.

Dallas is not a huge real cowboy town. It's more like an "urban cowboy" town, if you saw that movie. There's more big blonde hair and guys in suits here than there are guys/gals in cowboy hats. (The financial industry is big here.)

Houston is more a real cowboy town AND an urban cowboy town.

Speaking of cowboys:

FOOTBALL is HUGE here, this being the home of the Dallas Cowboys. There's a new stadium in nearby Arlington (a suburb).

Dallas is home to the Texas Rangers baseball team. They made it to the playoffs last year. So she could go to a home game, if she's here during that time. (I think we have a hockey team, too, but I'm not sure. And there's the Mavericks basketball.)

MONEY: Dallas is a pretty reasonably priced place to live. I think your friend may even be shocked at the good cost of living here, compared with Japan and other large cities.

SIX FLAGS OVER TEXAS: Larger than Disneyland/Disneyworld (whatever), and loads of fun. Rides of any and all sorts, food out the wazoo, acting skits, you name it. It's in nearby Arlington. Very easy to get to.

The Dallas economy is diverse: Banking, headquarters of companies, the apparel industry, oil & gas. Mainly because of tax advantages and DFW, a large, well-planned airport that is one of the main airports in the country.

Public transportation: Dallas is very spread out, compared to its population, so using the minimal public transportation we have is a problem. We have a bus sytem and a rail system. No subways. It's difficult to live in Dallas and get around w/o driving. There are wide expanses to cover w/no reasonable public transportation. It CAN be done, if you hitch rides with friends and plan carefully (choosing a place to live near the rail, etc.). I couldn't do it.

To give you an idea, Dallas has about half the population of Houston, but has about twice the geographical area. Your friend from Japan will probably find Dallas sparsely populated, compared to Japan. I can walk down the downtown streets, where I work, and not brush shoulders with anyone.

Golf - I don't golf, but Dallas is HUGE on golf, so there should be no shortage of places for her to golf, either public or private clubs. The private ones will be costly, I guess.

Restaurants - Dallas has tons of fine restaurants. Every kind of food imaginable. I don't enjoy eating out, so I wouldn't be the one to recommend specific places. If your friend is interested in Japanese, though, I have a friend who loves food and everything Japanese; she would be able to recommend excellent Japanese restaurants in the area.

Things to do and see: Dallas has on the outskirts places where you can take horse riding lessons, or rent horses to ride, if she already knows how to ride.

SouthFork Ranch: I guess your friend may not be old enough to remember the TV show Dallas, but it was filmed at Southfork Ranch, which is not too far north outside the Dallas city limits. Interesting...and amazing (disappointing?) at how small it is, compared with how it looked on TV.

State Fair and Big Tex: Have her see the movie, "State Fair" (any one of several remakes - my favorite is with Pat Boone), and then go to real State Fair. It's the same one. It's still here. This is one thing the bus system does well...it runs frequent buses to the Fair from various areas, and drops you off in front. It's very easy.

Dallas Summer Musicals: At Fair Park. Easy to get to. Easy to park (also, the Dallas bus system runs buses to Fair Park). Good musicals. (Fort Worth has great musicals, too...at Bass Hall. It's small, easy to get to, good acoustics, easy to park.)

Dallas has a good opera (I'm told) and symphony hall.

Museums: Dallas Museum of Art is interesting, but Fort Worth's Kimball Museum is better and has better exhibits (the King Tut exhibition went to Kimball, for example).

I hope she's not here from June through August. It's sizzling hot here, and the sun is super bright and glares. Dallas has a fairly high skin cancer rate, I think, so tell her to be sure and wear sun block during those months. And a hat. And very dark glasses.

Recommendations might be helped by accessing http://www.zagat.com/dallas.

Other things to see: Downtown has a World Aquarium. It's not big, but it's awesome. Plan to spend 2 to 3 hours there. As with other places, easy to get to, easy to park, the rail runs nearby, and buses go nearby. Driving is best in Dallas, tho.

The Dallas Zoo. It has a good reputation. I don't like zoos, so I've never been. But others tell me they had a good time. And a little train takes the people around; you don't have to walk everywhere, unless you want to.

Downtown Dallas: The Good Guys (tv show) shoots downtown occasionally, so if she gets lucky, can maybe see the two stars. I have. Near Thanksgiving Tower is where a lot of tv shows & movies are shot.

Shopping: Dallas is a great place to shop...you can either lay down serious money (remember, Ross Perot, former Prez Bush, Don Henley, and plenty of other extremely wealthy people live here), or there are tons of places to go bargain shopping. For anything. It's a clothing mecca, but anything can be found here. There is an Asian bargain shopping area, but I went there once, and it was hard to get around it (hard to explain), and it looked like just junk to me. I'll never go back, but others tell me I went to the wrong places.

Lakes: Dallas is land locked, but there are man made lakes around here. Some large enough for boating and whatnot. Others "inner city" with jogging/walking/cycling sidewalks. Needless to say, don't go alone at night. Dallas, like any big city, has a robust crime rate.

RODEO: Besides taking horse riding lessons, or renting horses to ride, there is the Mesquite Rodeo. Mesquite is a suburb, and that rodeo has been going on since forever. That is probably the one place she can see a collection of REAL cowboys.

The best thing about Dallas is, I guess, that it's a big city, but not too big. It's fairly easy to get around, so she shouldn't be afraid to drive here. Unlike Houston, the streets here were well planned, and traffic moves, with few bottlenecks (though they do exist). The people are fairly friendly. There are basically several major freeways that'll get you anywhere you need to go.

That's about it.

[Honeycombe8]

3. Maybe you can tell us about living in New England? I've always wondered

about that. New England would be, what...Massachusetts? Vermont?

I've been to Boston a few times on business, and NY, but that's it. Pics of the northeast are beautiful, but I hear it's so expensive to live there. How do people cope w/all that snow?

[DaveinJapan]

4. Well, I was born and raised near Boston but also lived in NH for a time...

Snow sucks, I hate it. :p It's great if you like skiing though.

As you probably know from Boston, the seafood is really good in NE. What I really love is traveling to out-of-the-way small towns, they've got lots of character and many are quite picturesque.

And of course sports are huge in N.E., there's a huge rivalry between Boston and New York and I know some Bostonians who literally hate the place (personally, I love N.Y. lol).

If you ever have a chance to go on vacation, go in the fall when the leaves are changing color. Rent a car and just drive...ANYWHERE North or West of Boston will do (South is all urban all the way to NYC...not so great).

Don't know what else I could say that you can't find in a guide book though...oh, the "Chinese" food in N.E. (really more of a Polynesian thing) is very unique. It's far from authentic lol, but I've not tasted anything like it anywhere else in America OR China! We loves it. Gotta try that if you're around.

Also, if you REALLY want to get away from it all, way Northern N.E. (NH, Vermont, some parts of Maine) is about as far away from "it all" as you can get I would say. My Dad owns a ski lodge WAY North in NH, almost to the Canadian border, and it's extremely peaceful except for your occasional bear in the parking lot. :)

Any specifics you're wondering about? I'm sort of drawing a blank, but of course there's lots more I could write about if you can think of an interesting angle.

And thanks TONS for all your advice on Dallas...funny you mentioned Disney, I live right down the street from Tokyo Disneyland but yeah, I'd have more fun at a 6-Flags too!

I'll pass on all this good advice to my friend, she'll appreciate it!

[DaveinJapan]

5. More on coping with all that snow...

As an adult, it's just a fact of life you learn to live with. Shovel out, brush off the car and head to work (you need to set your alarm early on snow days).

As a KID, though, it was pure joy. Talking to so many friends that grew up in warmer climates, I was shocked to learn that they missed out on what we New England kids knew as the very BEST days of the year (second only to birthdays and Christmas, of course!)...

Waking up and looking out the window to see snow falling heavily, we would RUN down to the kitchen and listen to the radio give the "school closings" report (repeated every 10 minutes or so), and painstakingly listen to hear if our town was one of the closed ones. Along the way, we heard of towns nobody EVER hears of except for school closing days, so we learned them all. "Okay folks, here's an updated list of school closings...Allton, Alston, Abingdale, Arlington, Allsberg (hurry up, hurry up!), Brighton, Binghamton, Burlington has a three hour delay (oh, no, that's a bad sign!), Cambridge, Dedham, Dorchester (come on! come on!), ... Medfield, Medford" YAH! WooHoo!!...

And then we'd proceed outside and throw ice-balls at our friends all day long.

The BEST moments of childhood summed up with something as simple as school closings. :)

Of course, some days were lame. We'd wake up and pathetically tune in the radio while our parents chuckled (less than 6 inches of snow was usually a no-go...we'd have to slog to school anyway in the slush), but we were dumb enough to listen intently anyway while they announced outlying regions (lucky bastards! :p), and never get to our town. We listened through 2 or 3 rebroadcasts though, ever hopeful.

[texastoast]

6. Tell her to go to Austin, not Dallas

Dallas and Houston are low on my list (and I've lived in both).

Austin is just the best of Texas (and I love San Antonio).

Austin is cosmopolitan, urban, Texan, artsy, hip, and just the best place to be in all of Texas (except for a few country places where nature rules).

The food is just supreme. The Texas Culinary Academy associated with Le Cordon Bleu turns out a bunch of great cooks who are in hole-in-the-wall places preparing incredible food. Google austin asian markets and you will find all sorts of places. One of the best Thai places is on Sixth Street.

B.D. Riley's on Sixth has just great local music and pub food. The Pit has good Texas barbeque. The Soap Creek Saloon is not as cool as it was in the 70s, but I hear it's a neat place in its new locale. The County Line makes some mean baby back ribs.

Tell her to find out about the Willow City Loop drive. She'll like that. It's an excellent use of a car.


You can get around in Austin if you stay central pretty easily.

http://www.capmetro.org/riding/schedulesandmaps.asp

http://austin.about.com/od/gettingaroundaustin/p/Dillo_Shuttle.htm

[NoPasaran]

7. Sorry, Austin is full!

You can only move to Austin if you find two people who will leave.

Sounds, harsh, I know, but that's the rule.

[sonias]

8. Plus the two people moving out have to be Rs

That's a new supplemental rule too. :evilgrin:

[texastoast]

9. She's a temp

Come on, just a year?

[sonias]

10. I'm just kidding

But NoPasaran is completely serious. He's our Austin immigration enforcer. :shrug:

[w8liftinglady]

11. West End is fun...some good clubs and places to eat...

Oak Lawn is home to some very upscale restaurants and gay/lesbian clubs
University Park is where Bush lives.
There are many cool places in Dallas.When you find out exactly where in town she'll be staying,let us know,and we'll give you the lowdown...

[Justitia]

12. Ok, I've just got to pipe in for Houston, since no one else has!

I've lived in San Antonio, Dallas and now Houston. Spent lots of time in Austin.

While they all have their charms (and all VERY different, which is cool), I like actually living in Houston the best!

I know your friend is going to the Big D, but maybe she can come to the bigger H instead :-)

Just a little Houston boosterism!

[tammywammy]

13. Well there's good news and bad news

She'll have to drive, there is some public transportation, but if she lives in Dallas and wants to see for instance Grapevine, it'll be in a car. Also if she wants to do a weekend trip to Austin/Houston/San Antonio, car it will be.

It all really depends on where she ends up living. I live in Arlington, and there's a ton of Asian markets near me. In the area are plenty of golf courses. DFW is a big area, do you know where exactly where she is going to be settling? Even Dallas has different areas, North Dallas, Highland Park, Knox & Henderson, etc.