I have always been stupidly fascinated by the reflection in Campbell Centre from the DART Red Line train.
Red Line DART Train reflected in the gold mirror of Campbell Centre at Northwest Highway and 75.
Self Portrait
Tag Archives: DART
Dart Sunset
The other day I drove down after work to the Forest Lane DART station, parked my car, and went for a bike ride on the White Rock Creek trail. I didn’t feel very good and wondered why – later I found out the temperature was 108 F (42 C). That was the problem – even though I had plenty of cold water – that sort of heat will suck the energy out of me.
As the sun set I stopped to catch my breath near where my car was. I watched the DART trains cross the old railroad bridge near the Urban Reserve development. Some of the cool people that live there were out walking their dogs and we chatted while I snapped some shots of the bridge and the sun. I thought of the hundreds of times I’ve ridden that train and looked out the window over the trail.
Carosel at The Cedars
Tom Stancliffe, Carousel 1996
Fabricated silicon bronze, three sculptures approx. 15h x 5 x 5 each for the Cedars Light Rail Station, Dallas Area Rapid Transit authority, Dallas, Texas. Commission awarded through a national competition sponsored by DART. The sculptures relate not only in form to the landscape design but are also intended to recall the evolution of the neighborhood from a cedar forest, to an elegant Victorian neighborhood, to a now light industrial district.
Cedars Food Truck Park
Looking for something to do over the Weekend, I was drawn to the Grand Opening of a new food truck park, Dallas’ first, The Cedars Food Truck Park, down in the Dallas Heritage Village on the south side of downtown.
I rode the DART train to the Cedars Station and walked across the no man’s land south of downtown to the park.
Most of the food trucks were in a big arc around the open grounds.
A lot of trucks and a wide variety of food.
There were eighteen food trucks at the park for the grand opening. It’s a little scary how many of them I have already eaten at and written about:
- Good Karma Kitchen,
- Ruthie’s Rolling Café,
- Rockin’ Ricks,
- Rock and Roll Tacos,
- Café Con Leche,
- Four Seasons,
- Jack’s Chowhound,
- Enticed,
- Free Wheel’n Café,
- Three Lions,
- Cool Haus,
- Nammi,
- Gandolfo’s,
- Crazy Fish,
- The Butcher’s Son,
- Ssahm BBQ,
- Cajun Tailgators,
- Rockstar Bakeshop.
Since I was there early and it was still scorching hot – the lines were non-existent and I chose some sushi from Crazy Fish.
Music was provided by a three piece mountain-folk group, The Sicklies – that I know nothing about but will see again if I have the chance.
The Sicklies
Liquid refreshments were provided by the folks from the nearby bar/club Lee Harvey’s – serving up some beer from the Deep Ellum Brewing Company. Their stout was as excellent a dark beer as I have had in a long time – really good stuff.
Beer from The Deep Ellum Brewing Company, served up by the folks from Lee Harvey’s. The beer lines were plenty long – a lot of thirsty folk.
The whole evening was a blast. As the evening grew long and the air grew cooler the crowd grew until there were long lines at the food trucks and even longer ones for the beer. I didn’t stay too late – I didn’t want to make the walk back to the DART station in the pitch of night.
Sometimes the big city shows you its good side – it did tonight. I’m not sure if it was the presence of all the old historic buildings, the comradeship of the past, or if it was simply a well-planned event, but everyone was smiling and talking to each other. A happy time… with food, and very good beer.
A photographer – You don’t see these cameras very often any more. Shame, really.
Mass Transit – On the Red Line
Dallas has never been seen as a city that is amenable to mass transit. Unlike an east coast megalopolis it was created in the age of the automobile – vast suburban tracts vomited out across the endless cotton fields along the pulsing arteries of constantly rebuilt freeways. But, for fifteen years now, we have had the DART rail. Always controversial, overly expensive, oft-reviled – the colored lines – Red, Blue, Green, Orange – crawled out inexorably across the map like vines on a brick wall.
Two tattooed guys – one skinny, one not – the skinny guy stands holding his skateboard, the other one sits hunched over a single speed bicycle – like a low slung bike for a kid a third his size. I am used to bicycles used as transport – this would be useless for that. It’s a bike used as a lifestyle statement. He rocks and stares at the chain like he’s afraid it will leap off the cogs if he lets it. Tired middle aged men slumped in seats, a guy playing a game on a smartphone, and a young couple standing in the door holding hands.
These are the people I live a lot of my life with. They are the same people you live a lot of your life with. Perfect strangers. Strangers on a train. I want to know these people and I want their stories.
The two guys, the skateboard and the inefficient but cool bicycle – they may be gutterpunks but they look like they are having fun. The guy on the bike moves back and forth at each stop to let folks get to the door or their seats. When their stop comes (one before mine) he shouts, “Off to another adventure” and shoots out the open door.
Looking at the young couple makes me ache. They may be poor and doomed… but together, today, right now, they are a thing of beauty. Beauty is so rare and so fleeting.
The others… all forgettable. But I know that the forgotten folks all have stories that will raise the hairs on the back of your necks. But we all sit and sway, look around, adjust our headphones, and get off at our stops.
Prison Shuttle
I didn’t feel like it (I was exhausted and my head was pounding) but I went for a little bike ride after work. My bike was in the back of the car so I drove down to the nearby Forest Lane train station – one that the Cottonwood Trail runs by. I changed clothes in the car, which is difficult for me, and pulled the bike out of the hatchback, which is easy. While I was getting my shit together I noticed this advertising sign stuck in the grass border around the parking lot.
For Family & Friends
This saddens me. Not so much that somebody has started a shuttle service to the local prisons (For Family and Friends) – if there is a need, there should be someone to fill it. It saddens me that there is such a need.
And look at that bus! I can see chartering a van to take my friends and family for an afternoon visit at the slammer… but who could fill up that bus? That thing has a dual rear axle – that’s a serious hunk of bus there. Are they are thinking about more than mere visits? That bus would be useful for a prison break. You could take a whole unit over the fence and drive them to a nice afternoon at a baseball game all for one low price. I wish that was true… over the obvious fact that there are enough folks up the river that you can fill a bus up on visiting day.
Across the parking lot is a cheap gas station that has a constant flow of shady characters moving in and out with bags full of bottles. I guess the people that run the shuttle service figured out (maybe with extensive research and a focus group or two) that friends and relatives of incarcerated jailbirds tend to walk through this lot – maybe carrying their cheap booze to the train. People riding the train with alcohol won’t have a car they can drive to the pen. They would need a shuttle.
I haven’t seen that ad anywhere else.
So I climbed on my bike and went for a short ride. My head never stopped pounding, so I only went a half-dozen miles or so, stopping at a shady bench to read a short story on my Kindle. While I was loading my bike back in the car for the trip home I watched a few folks walk through the lot… but nobody asked for a pen so they could write the phone number down.
Bike Lids
Mockingbird Station, Dallas, Texas
According to the DART web site, these bike lids were all bought with a federal grant and meet all homeland security requirements. I had to think about that for a while – I guess it’s harder to hide a bomb in these, compared to the old bike lockers. There are 142 of these all over the system.
Commuting Works For Me, but I have a DART issue
Bike Friendly Dallas – DART Bike Lids and Katy Trail Phase III progress
Poetry in Motion
I rode the DART trains years ago when they started operating – in the first few days. It felt like luxury then – so few folks ventured on board, sitting in plenty of space, the cars gently swaying. It was like the opening of a new highway – vast reaches of empty tarmac. It is as if the whole billion dollar enterprise was constructed just for you – a new world of dignity and comfort.
That did not last long. The crowds grew with frightening rapidity until, within weeks, I was relegated to a mere straphanger – standing for the whole commute, grimly gripping a hand hold trying not to fall during a lurching curve, propped up partly by the warm bodies of the other riders – all crammed in like ripe sardines.
The only escape from the uncomfortable situation of mass humanity on the train is to look around for a Poetry in Motion poster. These are posters, with poems printed on them. New York has been doing this for decades. The program is done by DART in association with the Poetry Society of America. They work with transit companies all across the country.
The other night I was crammed in, packed, but could turn my head and read “World Trade” by Jim LaVilla-Havelin.
When I look down the road into the enormity of sky
all I see – golden arches
a mammoth American Flag
and the big rigs screaming down
the Old Laredo Highwayall
dwarfed
by
the blameless sky
and for a second I am transported out of that crowded commuted cattle car into… somewhere else.
After a bit it is all too much for me so I start to crane my neck. There, if I dip my head I can see next to the exit door… that woman thinks I’m staring at her… tough, I can see another poster. It’s
On the Patio, Dallas
by Isabel Nathaniel
The prickly pear and yucca
dug from a roadside
do fine in pots. Sun,
sunflowers. The August heat.
Petunias, pinks, and even the geranium
probably don’t belong. With watering
they hold on. One morning
I fed them organic fertilizer
made entirely of sea-going fish.
I hosed the place till the hanging baskets
dripped and the fence soaked dark.
There rose the brackish smell of bays
and wharves and I turned my head
to the distance as if to hear
the regular slapping of the sea.
And I can hear the slapping of the sea over the rat-tatting of the rails.
On farther, past the kid with the dreads holding a bicycle in the aisle there’s a poem, in Spanish.
En la Sangre
Pat Mora
En la Sangre
La niña con ojos cafés
y el abuelito con pelo blanco
bailan en la tarde silenciosa.
Castañetean los dedos
a un ritmo oido solamente
por los que aman.In the Blood
The brown-eyed child
and the white-haired grandfather
dance in the silent afternoon
They snap their finger
to a rhythm only those
who love can hear
And here I am, at my stop. That trip didn’t seem to take so long.
Animated Train
Red Line DART Train reflected in the gold mirror of Campbell Center at Northwest Highway and 75.
Then and now, DART train and the White Rock Creek Trail
And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going.
—-Bruce Catton
I like to take pictures of the DART trains. While I was exploring the Cottonwood Trail I snapped this one of the intersection of the Cottonwood and While Rock Creek Trails.
- The southern terminus of the Cottonwood Creek trail, where it connects with the White Rock Creek Trail. The DART train is crossing White Rock Creek over the trail.
Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you’re one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?
—-Marc Maron
And here’s a picture of the trail from the train, showing the spot I took the picture.
The White Rock Creek Trail from the DART train. I don't know what the crap on the window was. I probably don't want to know. It was on the outside, at least.
Here is what it looked like this Saturday. I took this picture from the train with a better camera (my Nikon is back from repairs). Look how much greener everything looks after only a rain or two over the last weeks.
The trail runs through some thick woods between the train line and the creek south of Forest Lane. There is a nice rest area built there. This homeless guy was sitting in the rest area, reading and writing in his notebook. We talked about the weather and I helped him find a lost sock.
I took this picture of a homeless guy at a nice wooded rest area along the Cottonwood Trail.
Here is the same spot along the trail taken from the passing train. There is usually a homeless person (different ones each time) camped out here, but today it was deserted.
Bill Chance 