Tag Archives: skyline

With Cities, It Is As With Dreams

Posted on by Bill Chance

“With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Downtown Dallas from the Commerce Street Overlook (Please click on image for a larger version on Flickr)

Downtown Dallas from the Commerce Street Overlook
(Please click on image for a larger version on Flickr)

Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters

Posted on by Bill Chance

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire

Dallas from the Trinity River Bottoms

Dallas from the Trinity River Bottoms

City Full Of Dreams

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Ant swarming City
City full of dreams
Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve”
― Charles Baudelaire

Dallas, Texas From the Trinity River Bottoms (click to enlarge)

Dallas, Texas
From the Trinity River Bottoms
(click to enlarge)

Lines of Power

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery. ”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Shade Structures, Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas

Shade Structures, Continental Bridge Park,
Dallas, Texas

I Would Hate To Be Murdered In A Lounge Chair

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I would hate to be murdered in a lounge chair. You would lose not only your life, but a chance at a nice nap.”
—-Armando Vitalis, From Hell’s Heart I Stab At Thee

Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas (click for larger version on Flickr)

Continental Bridge Park,
Dallas, Texas
(click for larger version on Flickr)

I try not to take so many photographs that don’t have people in them. But there aren’t many folks on the Continental Bridge Park on a workday afternoon, even on a preternaturally warm autumn day.

The few people that did walk by as I ate a takeout sweet potato were interesting enough:

A large young man with headphones – he sauntered by and I saw him at a distance once he reached an unoccupied section dancing by himself.

A young couple, very casually dressed, moving around in some sort of elaborate ritual in each open area. I think they were planning a wedding on the bridge – or at least a photo-shoot – and were trying out all the angles.

A couple with two chihuahuas. They passed one way with the dogs on leashes – then returned with the dogs loose. I later saw them chasing the pooches along the Trinity River Levee – they must have seen something interesting.

—-but the bridge is very long and narrow, and the interesting stuff was too far away. So all I did was sit in one of the lounge chairs and read a couple of horrifically gruesome short stories.

For example, in one an astoundingly stupid young man is experimenting with an ethanol-based homemade hair gel when he accidentally ignites his coif with a cigarette. Aflame, he runs into the road in a panic where he is struck by a speeding wrecker. The impact flips him over a rail into the Sabine river, which does serve to extinguish the flames – but before his friends can rescue him a large alligator drags him off by the head.

Things go downhill from there. If you don’t believe me – the story seems to be available online.

Flinging Itself To Pieces

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Trinity River Bottoms, Dallas, Texas

Trinity River Bottoms, Dallas, Texas

Street Lights As Planets And Stars

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There was a sky somewhere above the tops of the buildings, with stars and a moon and all the things there are in a sky, but they were content to think of the distant street lights as planets and stars. If the lights prevented you from seeing the heavens, then perform a little magic and change reality to fit the need. The street lights were now planets and stars and moon. ”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

I was riding my bike west down Gaston under that awful elevated freeway and when I emerged I saw the final stages of sunset over the crystal spires of the city. The moon was a tiny thumbnail shaving floating in the sky. I pulled over into a weedy lot and fished my camera out of my pack.

As I was shooting, a guy in a car at the light said, “I was coming in from the east on I30 and the sun was a big orange ball behind the city.”

I nodded and tried to think of something witty to say, but the light went green and he shouted, “Gotta go.”

Downtown Dallas at sunset.

Downtown Dallas at sunset.

City of Cables

Posted on by Bill Chance

It’s a giant factory-state here, a City of the Future full of extrapolated 1930’s swoop-facaded and balconied skyscrapers, lean chrome caryatids with bobbed hairdos, classy airships of all descriptions drifting in the boom and hush of the city abysses, golden lovelies sunning in roof gardens and turning to wave as you pass.
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Geometry and Nature

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
― Galileo Galilei

Trinity River Bottoms
Dallas, Texas

Trinity River and Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

Trinity River and Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
—-Pythagoras

Downtown Dallas, Texas

Downtown Dallas, Texas

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.
—-Federico Garcia Lorca

View From the Levee

Posted on by Bill Chance

The City of Dallas is slowly working on developing the long-neglected river bottoms along the Trinity River. In conjunction with the opening of the Continental Avenue Bridge Park a limited system of hike and bike trails were opened up in the river bottom called the Dallas Skyline Trail.

Map of the Dallas Skyline Trail

Map of the Dallas Skyline Trail
(click to enlarge)

These trails will eventually be extended to the south to connect up with the Santa Fe Trestle trail once the work on the I45/I30 “Horseshoe” project is finished (if we all live long enough).

For the time being, the 4plus miles in place will have to do. I took the DART train down there to explore. The biggest problem right now is lack of access on the downtown (north) side of the river. I had to ride across the Continental bridge where there is a steep ramp down the levee into the floodplain and the trails. The limited (2) trail heads open now, with one more to open in a few months, is fine if the trail system is used for recreational riding, but if it is to help with car-free transportation, they need more access points.

I rode the whole system and wanted to check out another possible point – on Commerce street, behind the city jail complex. The trail climbs the levee and it may be another spot to get to the system – though it’s hard to find and there isn’t any parking very close.

At any rate, the view from there is nice – in all directions.

Part of the Dallas Skyline Trail. The Commerce Street Bridge, Old Railroad Trestle, Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. (click to enlarge)

Part of the Dallas Skyline Trail. The Commerce Street Bridge, Old Railroad Trestle, Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
(click to enlarge)

The paved trail climbs the levee. That’s the Commerce Street bridge in the foreground, with graffiti on the pillars, a bit of the old railroad trestle, and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the distance.

Top of the levee, with the Dallas Jail in the background.

Top of the levee, with the Dallas Jail in the background.

The top of the levee is paved the short distance to Commerce Street behind the sad monoliths of the Dallas Jail and its parking garage.

Dallas Skyline Trail on top of the levee.

Dallas Skyline Trail on top of the levee.

In the other direction the trail is paved for a short way along the tip of the levee. Beyond is a gravel road which is rideable with a mountain bike.

Trinity River Floodplain

Trinity River Floodplain

The open floodplain of the river bottoms, across to Oak Cliff. The construction of the Horseshoe can be seen in the distance.

Nice levee top view of Downtown from the Dallas Skyline Trail. (click to enlarge)

Nice levee top view of Downtown from the Dallas Skyline Trail.
(click to enlarge)

To the North, there is a great view of the downtown skyline from the top of the levee.