There You Go, Dressing Your City Up Like a Two Dollar Whore

"...consumerist heaven, design netherworld. The new Marriott sums it up: look-at-me architecture, glitz rather than good taste, and the extinction of the regional differences that gave American cities their special sense of place. Won't somebody move this building to Dallas?" 

- Blair Kamin | Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic 
Excerpted from: "Why Architecture Matters: Lessons From Chicago"

Last week I was returning home after an evening in Dallas and was visually assaulted by yet another hilarious example of Dallas architecture. For my non-Texan friends, I know you think I live in Dallas. I don't. I live in Fort Worth. Thirty suburban choked miles in between separate cities that could not be more different in attitude and culture.

The Omni Hotel - Dallas, TX
[Photo: Dallas South News]

I worked in uptown Dallas for five years and became accustomed to seeing a new building being erected on a weekly basis. It would then be adorned with something to make it stand out from every other new building, generally utilizing some crazy Vegas style lighting scheme.  The new Omni has taken that look to a whole new level. The entire frame is covered in multi-colored LED lights and looks like someone got drunk, ate a bunch of Skittles, and then barfed on a wall. Even better, this rainbow colored barf changes color and can display logos of various kinds. Yay! Branded Skittle barf! Genius manuver.

According to this NBC 5 article "Dallas Lights: Distraction or Attraction?"  there are certain people in Dallas who think things have gotten a bit out of hand and the lighting is just too much. I, on the other hand, think it is perfect. Dallas needs its own architectural identity. There is an oft used phrase here in Texas that you can "put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig."  Downtown Dallas was ripe for even more lipstick. It was time to add obnoxious, non-sensical usage of color, light, and flash to create attention for a downtown area where absolutely nothing interesting is going on under the hood. Nothing. Downtown Big D is about as exciting underneath the visual glamour as a Community College campus at 11pm on a Monday night.

In its defense Big D's style works for them. You can tell so much about the personal style of the residents of a city by looking at their architectural styles. Maybe it is that we psychologically gravitate toward cities that reflect our personal tastes and ideals. Maybe it is that subsequent design is created to appeal toward the target market in that area. Either way, Dallas fits many Dallasites. You know that super-hot chick with the awesome fake party pontoons, collagen plumped lips, and hair extensions dressed up in a hot pink and purple tube dress? Yes, she is here and you would not think twice seeing her out for the evening. But that same woman walking around in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco? Foolish. Or a person visiting from the Castro.

Three of the Twenty "Most Eligible Chicago Singles of 2011"
[Photo: Chicago Magazine]

I hail from Chicago, where the thought of outlining one of our tallest buildings in green neon like Dallas would make most of the population feel faint.  We also tend to look like our city and we dress up like it as well. Just a simple scan of Chicago's social scene yields a sea of people coated in cashmere, covered in razor sharp tailored black on black, with vintage diamonds and wristwatches adorning their cocktail laden hands. What Chicagoans are not is flashy and neither is our architecture. The lipstick on our pig is generally more of Bobbi Brown's Rose Brown than MAC's Viva Glam.  The architectural beauty of the city doesn't need neon. It's pleasant and engaging to walk around and be human in that space. When you are in Chicago you have a feel for not just the city itself but for the people that reside within it. I so often hear from people who travel to my hometown how beautiful they find it and how much they love the attitude and culture. Architectural design is no small part of that feeling.  People don't live in Vegas, they visit it. People live in Chicago AND visit it.

The cast of "Most Eligible Dallas"
[Photo: Bravo TV Official Site]

Dallas, on the other hand, tends to be the exact opposite of the great urban spaces of the world and a significant portion of its social scene reflects that. A scan of the Big D social scene yields bright splashes of color on barely there frocks, diamonds the size of small foreign countries, a preponderance of plastic after-market body parts, and the kind of overall look that makes you say "WOW" without even realizing you said it out loud. It's bright, flashy, often very sexy, exciting, and generally is characterized by total sensory overload.

The new Omni, in all of its flash, fits in well with the overabundance of brightly coated things in Dallas. The downside is I hardly ever hear how much people love Dallas, its attitude, or its beauty. Dallas doesn't inspire, even if the buildings are fighting so hard for attention it is like Nikki Minaj was a design consultant. But not everybody wants to be inspired. Some people just like to be entertained, and for that Dallas is winning. Well, Dallas' football team isn't winning, but that is another great example of a building unparallelled in excess and grandeur and nothing inside seems to be working as a cohesive unit.

As for people getting upset about how bright Dallas has become I recommend they do one of two things:

1. Embrace the fact that they have an identity now that doesn't just say "Welcome to Dallas" it SCREAMS it in your face and then punches you in the eyes. Then it tries to hump your leg. Why is it humping your leg? Because the Botox has seeped too far into the frontal cortex and Big D doesn't know why it feels sexy but it does. So sexy! Oops, nip slip. Let's go to VEGAS!!! What's your name again?
   
2. If it's too bright at night for any normal person coming to Dallas to handle and convention tourism dollars are declining then take a page from Fort Worth's book. During the late night the downtown buildings scale back all their lighting to minimal so the residents can sleep. Yes, downtown Fort Worth has residents. Lots of them. They live, work, shop and play without ever moving their cars. I was one. People living in an urban environment? Weird, isn't it?

Facebook Stalker-gories

It seems as if Facebook "upgrades" weekly to something that proves to be more irritating than useful. As a woman who spent her last two relationships with men more irritating than useful I would love to be able to filter out my online social life into some easy-to-follow corralling. Google+ gets it. Too bad nobody actually uses Google+. He's like the nice guy you know you should be dating but keep sticking with the bad boy because he's going to change.

I recently accepted a friend request from one of those "Monday Morning Motivators". MMM's are people that regurgitate cliche advice, always before 10am, to movtivate you. In reality it's probably an attempt to motivate themselves and you are just stuck there as an unwilling accomplice.

While I respect the fact that you want to "Dance like no one is watching" I don't recommend spreading that advice to the Facebook world. I can 95% guarantee that if you walk into your place of business on Monday before 10am and start dancing with abandon it will not be a career enhancing move. The only exception to this rule is if you work at an Interpretive Dance Studio, and even they have rules. If it takes your Facebook post to get me to "Seize the Day" I probably have a job so uncomplicated it will soon be done by robots or a college intern.

So Facebook, let's steal something from Twitter and Google+. There we are able to sort the people we are following into Lists. Practical lists that say "I do want to hear you, just not all of the time" <---Also a good tag line for love relationships on a Monday morning.

Proposed Initial Categories:
1) Monday Morning Motivators who are out there ensuring that today is going to be the best day since the concept of days were invented.

2) Friends from High School who you accepted to find out what they were doing, only to remember you didn't really like them very much.

3) Friends from High School that you didn't like at all back then but for some reason could totally hang around now which makes you both happy and feel very weird about who you have become.

4) People who are so sexually attractive you would show up if they invited you to a dramatic reading of a pamphlet on Fire Safety.

5) People who are so sexually attracted to you they will show up if you host a pamphlet reading.

6) People you dated who now try to use passive agressive tactics via Facebook to make you jealous you left them. You haven't defriended them because that would be admitting it's actually working and you can't handle any more.

7) People you dated that you like to use passive aggressive tactics via Facebook to make them jealous.

8) People who post super cute animal pics. {Note: This category is AWESOME}

9) People who post things that are actually funny. {Note: This category needs more people}

10) People who post everything they do professionally, confusing a personal page with a Fan Page or their work account. It's so much fun going to work with someone ALL DAY LONG.

11) People who use Facebook as their religious pulpit  even when they are not ordained in any organized religion (or even some disorganized ones) outside of the Church of Aberrant Spellers.

12) People who are opposed to almost everything you stand for politically and can be hidden completely during election year.

13) People who agree with you on almost everything you stand for polically and should also be hidden during election year since you will spend all your time defending their honor against the idiots who post on their pages.

14) People you don't actually know In Real Life but wish you did.

15) People you do actually know In Real Life and wish you didn't.

16) People who invite you to every single thing they do via Facebook invite so that your Inbox looks like an event planner had too much Champagne at the pre-party and threw up in there.

17) Last minute dates when people in Category 5 are not available and people from Category 6 will be at the event that people from Category 16 invited you to and announced you are attending.

18) Bipolar Posters who from post to post either love or hate something/someone with so much fervor that you have to check their account every day to know what you can say when you see them in real life.

19) People that are clearly insane and you must keep them on your Facebook to ensure that you will never EVER be in the same place at the same time.

20) People who Check In at places you would never want to go join them, like their bathroom.

21) People who Check you into places without your permission and then have to apologize all night when that creepy guy you have blocked from your personal posts shows up for Happy Hour.

22) People who have children that are so amazing they must be made out of a Super Space Aged Polymer and they aren't even made of little bits of real children at all. 

23) And the most important category...
People who are so important to you in your life that if they do any of the aforementioned 22 things it doesn't matter because you love them so much you would read anything they post. Even posts that make you sick to your stomach, give you a headache, make you cry, make you laugh, or make you shake your head and contemplate day drinking.

For the record, I fall squarely into a few of these as well. But you already know this, don't you?