Very few people in this cosmopolitan city can say that they're native Dallasites, but I'm one of them. A Baby Boomer born and raised by parents who also were natives of Dallas. This means I've seen the city go through quite a few chameleon-like changes, and I have family members who can tell stories about the horse and buggy days here. My maternal grandfather T.J. McCallum walked from Alabama to Texas beside a covered wagon when he was 8 years old, and my maternal grandmother Alice Lewis McCallum was part Cherokee. They were first wave Texas frontier folk. The pioneer spirit that drew my relatives and the early settlers to Dallas seemed to possess a genetic-level integrity that made people humble, and made them appreciate the simple things of life. Those were the folks who made Dallas the place I knew as a child. Though it was a big city even then, it was a gentle city of simple taste and pleasant pace. Then, something shifted, imperceptible at the time: shopping malls, suburbs and super highways were invented. Speed and greed took hold at a deeper level.

This generation of Dallasites likes glitz and glamour, brand new and squeaky clean. Anything "old" –like vintage architecture, for instance– just looks like hand-me-downs to Dallas folks. The basic rule of thumb: if it's used, tear it down. Historic buildings are bulldozer fodder here in a city where developers rule. It's enough to make lovers of architecture cry, looking at the early photos of Dallas. It's shocking how much has been sacrificed in the name of progress. The Dallas Public Library actually has an online archive of Lost Neighborhoods. Naturally, the neighborhoods they show contain none of the magnificent structures they've ravaged, no, they just show the buildings that no one can fault them for tearing down, while skipping the evidence of all the beauty and integrity of what's been destroyed here.

Of course, the Lost Neighborhood archive focuses almost entirely on historic buildings that have been converted to lofts. In other words, this archive exists to promote real estate profitability, not to honor the history or the glory of the buildings themselves.

Most of the only remaining noble old buildings are in the downtown area. When I was growing up in Dallas, my father worked downtown in an elegant Art Deco building that is now a City of Dallas Landmark, built in 1931, by the Dallas Power & Light Company.

I remember it as gleaming and marbled, the lobby uplifted by high columns like a temple, glowing with light, every surface absolutely pristine. Like the rest of the renovated old landmarks, Dallas Power & Light has now been converted into expensive lofts. The one consolation: at least it wasn't torn down.

Downtown Dallas, in those days, was a vital business hub. The area is a mix of bad seed and new breed now, striated by renovation and dereliction. This summer, I happened to be downtown at the library during a sudden, rare July rain. It was an unexpectedly flattering atmospheric, this downpour amid the nearly 50 days straight of over 100 degrees temperature, as if the buildings momentarily breathed in the quenching rain. I was glad to have my camera along to capture such a vivid, yet strangely lonely cityscape. You can see more of my photos of downtown Dallas here.

Even though the cowboys wear suits with their Stetsons and boots now, Texas is still a lawless frontier. Only one in eight businesses in this state are even bothering to pay sales taxes.

The business of Dallas is business. One hears many claims of grandeur about being the biggest and best, a trait so stereotypically Texan that it's embarrassing. For instance, the January 2006 issue of Chief Executive magazine ranks Dallas as the number one state for business in the entire country. Pardon my sneer, but the image comes to mind of a used car salesman who's trying to pass himself off as an important executive. Maybe it ranks number one in business because there are so many shady dealings that are given free reign up the ladder of success. The mantra here is More, More, More for Me.

Texans love to play the size game so much that they even compete against themselves for the status of bigger, taller, better. None of the participants seem to see any absurdity in this. Take for instance, the statue of the giraffe at the Dallas Zoo. Deliberately constructed to be the "tallest statue in Texas" at 67.5 feet, it is a zoo landmark right beside Interstate Highway 35. This distinction was, however, short-lived. In a flourish of one-upmanship, another statue was soon constructed beside Interstate Highway 45 near Huntsville, a monolithic figure of statesman Sam Houston that was ever so slightly taller than the giraffe. Desperately intent on not being upstaged, the Dallas Zoo had the giraffe sculptor add a tongue and a blade of grass to the giraffe's head, effectively retrieving their coveted ranking of tallest sculpture in Texas. Nevermind that it looks pretty silly, a mammoth giraffe with its tongue waving in the air.

Being the biggest calls for high stakes and total commitment. It's a wonder we didn't construct an additional peninsula to the coastline so that we could retrieve our rank from Alaska as the biggest state in the union. Seriously, it's a wonder that Texas didn't declared war on Alaska over this insult.

See the entire litany of "bigger and better" rankings on the Dallas Chamber of Commerce site here. And size freaks can knock themselves out with these lists:
Big stuff in Texas :: list of 20 includes "largest urban colony of bats in North America"
Firsts, Bests & Notables :: list of 30 includes "first covered shopping mall in America"

While we're on the subject of sculpture, here's the number one notable on MY list. Most Convincing Evidence of Hideous Taste in Art in Texas: the massive granite teddy bear sculptures beside Turtle Creek in Lakeside Park. Please, someone call the Art Police and lock these things away! Protect us from further harm to the impressionable formative aesthetics of future generations of Texas children!

Dallas permits such atrocities yet lays flagrant claim to having "the largest urban arts district in the country." Apparently the strategy of the Dallas Arts District board of directors was that if they made it big, it would automatically be considered good. This crafts a convenient guarantee that no matter how bad the art is that fills up those 17 square blocks appointed on city maps as "the Arts District," it will still be the "best arts district" in the entire country because it is the biggest. And by the way, the Arts District demolished several wonderful old buildings from the 1920's in order to expand their territory in this so-called "Arts District." One of the buildings that they didn't flatten is the historic Cathedral of Guadalupe. They did, though, flatten its rectory, and put a parking lot there instead, leaving not even enough ground to plant a tree in its remaining scant perimeter.