Happy New Year

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Bill Chance

“You know how I always dread the whole year? Well, this time I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”
—Charlie Brown

For New Year here in Dallas they put fireworks on the Reunion Tower downtown – which I’ve seen before and is pretty cool. Unfortunately, they had to cancel the drone show (I’ve never seen one – want to) because of the awful accident a few weeks ago.

Still, I had wanted to ride my bike down into the Trinity River Bottoms, find a spot on a levee, set up a tripod and my camera. Unfortunately RWD (real world disasters) intervened and I had to stay home, watch TV, and listen to distant booms at midnight.

More than a decade ago, (not on New Years Eve, I don’t remember why they had the fireworks display) I did ride my bike down to an abandoned parking structure (sprinkled with homeless shit) – which turned out to be an excellent vantage point. I took some pictures with varying exposure times (from a tripod of course – carrying one on a bike is something I’m still working on). Here’s what I came up with:

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

I remember the first time I saw the Reunion Tower. It would have been a year after I graduated from college, 1979. The thing was pretty much brand new then and we drove past it on the way from Hutchinson, Kansas (where I lived, working in a Salt Mine) to the beach at South Padre Island. I was gobsmacked – the thing was so modern and odd and unexpected.

Then I saw it in the PBS movie The Lathe of Heaven (I saw it on the only time it aired in 1979 – it had a long, odd history, disappeared for two decades, but you can see it now – here’s the part with the Reunion Tower) which was filmed in Dallas, and the tower was a stand-in for the evil scientist’s ultimate reality-bending dream machine. Dallas was considered very futuristic at the time and other spots (City Hall, the Water Gardens, DFW airport’s people movers) were also used in the movie.

Then, when I moved here, for years the revolving bar at the top was a go-to spot to take visitors or to celebrate special events. I haven’t been in decades… maybe it’s time for a re-visit.

Reunion

Posted on November 23, 2019 by Bill Chance

No, I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away

—-Paul Simon, Mother and Child Reunion

Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas

Nothing So Mystical

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Bill Chance

“If there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. Nothing so mystical. It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Reunion Tower, taken from inside the Dallas Streetcar. On my way to Bishop Arts for a discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow.

Fireworks from Reunion Tower

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Bill Chance

My old commuter bicycle with Reunion Tower in the background
(click to enlarge)

I remember the first time I saw it – in 1979 (it was only a year old) and driving from Kansas to Padre Island. We took the I35 Route through Dallas (instead of I35W through Fort Worth) and there was Reunion Tower, looming up next to the highway. Unexpected, it was pretty impressive.

Not long after, I saw the tower in a little seen science fiction film on PBS – The Lathe of Heaven. Reunion Tower was part of an enormous “dream machine” that warped reality. Then, after I moved here – every now and then I’d take people up to the bar in the ball. The view from up there is pretty cool.

Now they have rebuilt and remodeled the Observation Deck on the tower. After I drove my bike downtown and watched the video show on the side of the Omni Hotel, I moved over to watch the fireworks show that was supposed to go down. I chatted with the photographers, cops, and general gawkers up there – nobody knew any details. We all assumed the fireworks would be fired from the big empty field that sits where Reunion Arena used to be.

Finally, the show started. The fireworks were fired directly from the tower itself. It was amazing – probably the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen.

I had my camera set up on a tripod. I stood there with the infrared remote, clicking the shutter open and closed. Here’s what came up.