“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
― Simone de Beauvoir
Streetcar Line
Dallas, Texas
“I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that’s sinful, then let me be damned for it!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Hunt Headquarters Building, Dallas, Texas
Agave, Fountain, Cypress, and Streetcar.
There are hidden treasures in a modern city. They put little pockets of nature and beauty in the center of all the miles and acres of concrete, tarmac, and steel. Seek them out.
The Strangest Beers in America
What Are Some Strategies for Winning “Rock Paper Scissors”?
Bogus Grammar Errors You Don’t Have To Worry About
Perhaps security at DFW airport gets a little lax in the the middle of the night.
9 Ways to Upgrade Your Instant Ramen
12 Great Performances by Non-Professional Actors
From Esquire – a beautiful woman has a funny joke for you.
The Fifteen Worst Make Out Records Ever
Artist Re-Imagines Great Albums as Book Covers
New Orleans is over a hundred miles from the ocean, but it is barely dry. Rain comes quickly and unexpectedly… except it is always expected.
Luckily, there is a source of refuge in the Big Easy – whenever the skies open up, there is always a bar handy to seek shelter and good cheer.
Waiting for the St. Charles Streetcar, the rain came down, hard, so we ducked into The Avenue Pub (which happened to be right there).
The Avenue Pub is beer heaven. Open 24hrs. 7Days (never know when it’s going to rain). Their list of beers on tap is three pages long.
The Beer Buddha says:
“Honestly this category really isn’t fair; but why punish one bar because all the others can’t hold it’s jockstrap? We all know The Avenue Pub is THE beer bar in not only New Orleans but in Louisiana. Nothing against all the other bars in the state but you ALL know you have a long way to go to be mentioned in the same sentence with AP.”
Draft Magazine lists it as one of the 100 best beer bars in the country. They say:
“Only in New Orleans will you find a beer bar open 24/7. The staff is militant about clean beer lines and proper glassware, so even when you stumble in at 4 a.m. you get the best pint in the city. Choose from more than 47 rotating taps and about as many bottles, all focusing on American beer. Go for an exhaustive introduction to local NOLA Brewing or to people-watch from the balcony.”
The Complex City Guide has it at 12 in the 25 best Beer Bars in the country. They say,
“Louisiana may not be the first state you think of when you think of beer (sure, they’ve got Abita), but when you change state to city and beer to drunk, it’s no wonder that New Orleans has one of the best beer spots in the country. Avenue Pub features a rotating 47 taps on two floors (so you can get your exercise in between rounds) and once you mix that with some amazing Louisiana cuisine, you won’t be thinking about Bourbon Street no more. And the most important part, here in the land of to-go cups, the Avenue is open 24 hours a day. Yup.”
And all this is right there, right on the Streetcar Line, right when it starts to rain.
My only complaint – they don’t have Deep Ellum Brewing Company’s Pollinator on tap. Maybe I can send them an email.
The Avenue Pub, on St. Charles in New Orleans
A lot of taps.
No Orange Slices! No Muddling!
At the Central Expressway portion of the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority trolley line there always has been a dead end of the trolley tracks at the spot where the giant escalators plunge down into the earth for the CityPlace DART station, deep under the ground. That worked fine – the four trolley cars, Petunia, Rosie, Matilda, and The Green Dragon, all were double ended. They have dual driver’s stations, one on each end, and can run in either direction equally well.
The problem was, not all trolley cars are like that. The MATA began accumulating several cars that would only run one way. With the drastic expansion of the Dallas Streetcar System (into the new park being built over the Woodall Rogers Freeway, down into the West End, and across the Trinity River into Oak Cliff) they would need to restore and utilize these cars.
New tracks could be added into the downtown grid to allow trains to make a round trip, but at the CityPlace station there was no way to build in a loop. That station is the best connector between MATA and the DART trains, so it was impossible to abandon.
The decision was made to build a turntable, and money was found to put it in. That would allow the use of single-direction cars and would be a nice tourist attraction in and of itself. I’ve been following the progress of the construction and it was finished around the start of the year.
It looks really cool. It was designed to look good and is lit up at night with multicolored spotlights. There are some nice artworks near the turntable and places to sit and wait for the cars.
I rode the streetcar to the turntable, hoping it would go ’round, but all they did was drive onto the turntable and then go back the same way. Even with the turntable, they can’t use the single end cars until the tracks are extended on the other end. So I guess they don’t want to wear out the turntable until it is needed.
Still, it’s a nice, unique thing to take a look at. I’m looking forward to the expansion of the system, the new cars, and riding one around on the turntable. The wheels of development move slowly. Extreme patience is needed. I hope I live long enough.
The turntable under construction
The trolley turntable at the CityPlace Station.
The Green Dragon trolley car on the turntable.
Video of the turntable in action
TX: With Bright Lights, McKinney Avenue Trolley Turntable Will Open This Week
Dallas — McKinney Streetcar Turntable Underway
McKinney Avenue Trolley Turntable to Open
I have ridden and written about three of the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority trolley cars – Petunia, Matilda, and Rosie. There was one more that I had never ridden (or at least didn’t remember riding) – The Green Dragon (MATA does have one more car – but it’s used for maintenance. They have several more being restored).
The Green Dragon is an unusual looking car. The driver’s station at each end looks like it was tacked onto a regular car. Its roof is flat and sort of sticks out and even looks like it dangles down a little bit.
It was built in 1913 (it will be a hundred years old next year) and ran in Dallas for 46 years. It ran on McKinney avenue and the SMU students gave it the nickname “Green Dragon” back in the day. She was retired in 1956 and used as a hay barn in North Dallas for a few decades. For a while it was used to display Roger Staubach’s Jersey in a sports museum in Grand Prairie.
I was happy to see the Green Dragon pull up to the Central Expressway Trolley stop. She is a large car and has a very smooth ride. From the inside, you can see the wooden bulkhead that marks the transition from the curved roof of the car to the flat roof of the cab. It doesn’t look as odd inside as it does when the car is clanking down the track.
The Green Dragon is a sweet ride and a great way to get around Uptown.
There are four operating passenger streetcars in the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority‘s fleet of trolley cars. I had ridden (and written about) two of them – Matilda and Rosie. I decided to take a shot at getting on another of them and sat down at the trolley stop next to the Dallas Museum of Art and pulled out my Kindle to read a bit and wait for the car.
I was rewarded when a little streetcar named Petunia pulled up. I had not ridden this one yet.
The old streetcar next to the Art Museum and the glass towers of downtown.
Petunia was built in 1920 and is a “Birney Safety Car” named after her designer, Charles O Birney. Birneys were known for their bouncy ride. Petunia ran in Dallas until 1947. For the next 30 years, she was stripped of her running gear, then equipped with a stove, sink, bed, refrigerator, easy chair, and blue curtains, and used for a residence. She was acquired by MATA and rebuilt – with shock absorbers added to even out the ride.
MATA Photo - Petunia before restoration.
She was packed with shoppers, commuters, and tourists (and me) and off we went across Woodall Rodgers and up McKinney Avenue. I chatted with some folks about child-raising and looked at all the folks eating in the restaurants and walking from bar to bar. Some young tourists kept going up to the streetcar engineer with a map on an iPad and tried to show him where they were trying to get to, but nobody could figure anything out.
The added shocks must work because Petunia has a much sweeter ride than the similarly sized Rosie. It was a fun and comfortable trip uptown.
There is something really cool about a trolley – whether it’s clanking through the crowded streets of Dallas or the misty neutral ground of New Orleans. There are plans for a real expansion of the trolley in Dallas… through the new park nearing construction on across the river into Oak Cliff. I wish they would hurry up – nobody lives forever.
Petunia in Uptown, at the other end of the line.
The Streetcar Renaissance in Dallas
The On-Line Birney Safety Car Museum
I was sitting around with a head full of memories of one of my favorite things – the St. Charles Streetcar in New Orleans. I came to a sudden realization – Dallas has a streetcar too. It isn’t as famous or as beautiful – but it is there
It’s called the McKinney Avenue Trolley, or the M-Line. It’s an important part of Dallas’ hard work at becoming a real city, with a vibrant downtown. The line has been here for quite some time, and runs along McKinney Avenue from the Downtown Arts District out through the West Village and on to connect up with the DART train line at the underground Cityplace Station. Although it is operated by DART, the trolley is free.
Originally, the trolley was viewed as a small, quaint tourist attraction – and it is. However, now that a large population is beginning to move into tony uptown condominiums it is becoming an important transportation artery for the young professionals to get to their offices in downtown. Now, the trolley line is about to expand – first through the new park being constructed atop the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, then on through downtown and across the river into Oak Cliff.
Again, I remembered the trolley as I was on the DART train headed downtown and decided to take a ride. As I walked along the sidewalk a couple of tourists from Henderson, Nevada asked what train to take to catch the trolley.
“Well, actually, the trolley is only a few blocks away, and I’m walking there now, I’ll be glad to show you,” I said.
“Does it go around downtown?”
“No, it doesn’t go around through the skyscrapers. It goes out through Uptown, which is more interesting anyway – there’s a lot of restaurants, shops, and stuff.”
So we chatted as we walked. I always wonder about tourists in Dallas. It’s a pretty nice place to live, but a terrible place to visit. It’s not a tourist type of place.
So I dropped them off at the trolley stop by the Dallas Museum of Art and went on – I wanted to visit a couple other places before I rode the trolley. A couple hours later I was back and sat down to wait for a car. While I waited, trying to read a little, I was bothered by an aggressive, obnoxious panhandler who became abusive when I didn’t give him any money.
Experiences like that make it difficult to maintain feelings of charity and goodwill to all even during the holiday seasons. Downtown is getting a growing population of hard-core homeless panhandlers that are becoming problematic as the city is trying to increase the livability of the place.
While he was yelling at me, my streetcar arrived so I turned and got on board. The car was packed with about half tourists and half office workers on the way home. The residents helped the tourists with information on the trolley route and points of interest along the way.
Dallas doesn’t have a neutral ground like New Orleans does, so the streetcar has to fight its way through traffic like everybody else. It makes for a slow, rattling ride.
Another difference between Dallas and New Orleans is that here, all the streetcars are unique. This day, I was lucky enough to draw Rosie, the oldest operating streetcar in the country.
Rosie, turning around at Cityplace
She looks good for 102 years old
Rosie was built in Philadelphia by the J.G. Brill company in 1909. It spend many years running along the rails in Porto, Portugal. It was the first car that the M-Line restored and ran on the opening day in 1989. Since it ran past and was sponsored by the Crescent development they gave it the name “The Crescent Rose.” This was shortened to “Rosie.” Since it is now over a hundred years old, it is usually used for special events and charters, it was a rare treat to have it out on a regular run. It’s a popular car – a common subject (another).
Down at Cityplace Station they are building a turntable so that they can begin operating some trolleys they have that are only able to run one way.
The turntable under construction
I wasn’t in the best of moods and the trolley still can’t hold a candle to the St. Charles line – but I am excited about the plans for expansion. I can see sitting for a while watching that turntable go round. I think I need to come down some more and ride some of the other trolley cars – the “Green Dragon” looks like fun
The grandest ride in America was the St. Charles streetcar. You could catch the old green-painted, lumbering iron car under the colonade in front of the Pearl and for pocket change travel on the neutral ground down arguably the most beautiful street in the western world. The canopy of live oaks over the neutral ground created a green-gold tunnel as far as the eye could see. On the corners, black men sold ice cream and sno’balls from carts with parasols on them, and in the winter the pink and maroon neon on the Katz & Besthoff drugstores glowed like electrified smoke inside the fog.
—– from The Tin Roof Blowdown By James Lee Burke
The St. Charles streecar in New Orleans is one of my favorite things in the whole world. If you have never ridden it, put it on your bucket list. Now.
The best time to ride the streetcar is at sunset on a hot late summer evening. The windows open and the breeze from the motion sweeps the sweltering afternoon away as the purple sky darkens beyond the southern mansions and ancient oaks. You sit on the wooden seats jostling as the machine tumbles down the neutral ground. The lights flicker mysteriously and each new section of track is greeted with a flash of lightning, a clacking cacophony, and a whiff of ozone from under the wheels.
The streetcar becomes a time machine… no… not that… it is a timeless machine. The streetcar is exactly as it was ages ago, the floods, Katrina, countless Krewes from countless parades gone except for the risible plastic beads hanging from the trees, the mansions, the music, the food… all are distilled into a parallel pair of rails and high voltage overhead that lumber from the edge of the French Quarter way out past Tulane and Audubon park.
The streetcar is not only a tourist attraction – you share your ride with office drones from downtown banks, lawyers from big firms, and dishwashers nodding off after a long day – the heartbeat of a city brought cheek-to-jowl together. It isn’t very fast – waiting for riders making change at the old-fashioned boxes, drivers bracing themselves to swing heavy levers, stopping at lights while the cross traffic fights out of the way. You can almost walk this fast. But you get there and the getting is everything.
When we are in town we usually stay in a bed and breakfast on St. Charles not far from Tulane and when I wake up in the morning I always like to lay in bed and listen for the streetcars. When you ride them they are all jangling and jump but somehow, from outside, they are smoother, slick steel wheels and sliding commutator sparking along. A bell at the intersections if the cars don’t move fast enough.
Like all of New Orleans, it’s hard to figure out why there aren’t more fatalities along the route, with the traffic, walkers, runners all thrown together with few signs and fewer rules. But they get along, somehow. They always do.
Inside the St. Charles Streetcar
One of my favorite spots is this unassuming little coffee shop at St. Charles and St. Andrews. I like to sit out front, sip my coffee, and watch the streetcars go by.
It was Sunday and the Saints were playing downtown. The Saint Charles Streetcar was crowded.
Saint Charles Streetcar, beads still in the trees.
Getting off the Saint Charles Streetcar in the Garden District.
Bill Chance 