For anyone who has lived or lives in the Dallas area, help me out please!
I live in a small town where everybody knows everybody. We are very personable and enjoy a cold beer at the end of the day. I spent much of my young childhood in Nolanville and a few other cities in Texas, but only on army bases. I absolutely loved it there!
Now, this upcoming summer my boyfriend and I are moving to Dallas and we have heard that Texas has simply gone downhill, rude and high maintenance people who don’t want to work. I simply refuse to believe this is true as Texas is where I’ve picked up friendly charisma and my work damn hard and play even harder ethic. So please, someone set our knowledge straight and give us a little insight as to what we will be walking into!
Texas is too big to generalize about, and I can’t speak for Dallas, but I have lived in Houston for the past few years and as far as I can tell the Texan pride and work ethic are as strong as ever. That was one of the things that drew me to this state, frankly. I think it has contributed largely to the continued success of the Texas economy in these times. (Some will argue it’s all due to the pro-business slant of the state government, but businesses wouldn’t be flocking here if there weren’t industrious people to manage and support their efforts.)
Hurricane Ike nailed Houston shortly after I arrived. The people’s response to that storm impressed me that they know how to handle their own problems without expecting the federal government to sweep in and solve everything. All this while the city was still hosting and assisting Katrina refugees at the same time. In fact, Texas workers from Centerpoint Energy are in the northeast right now helping to restore power after Hurricane Sandy. I may be mistaken but I don’t recall any Con Ed trucks rolling through the our streets in 2008 (although they may well have been busy elsewhere – Ike caused power outages throughout the northeast as well).
You’re likely to get the standard round of anti-Texas put-downs in response to your question, so take those with a grain of salt. You’ve lived here before so you already have a better informed opinion than the majority of people who’ll jump on that bandwagon. Your positive memories of Texas are still valid.
I grew up in Dallas, now live in the country and do contracting in the area. Dallas always has been, and continues to be, the armpit of the world. Explore the suburbs and smaller cities that hem it in, your experience of the area will largely be determined by income level, which suburb you choose, and your race. Not to say Big D is racist, it’s incredibly cosmopolitan for Texas with enclaves of all the different asian, southwest asian, and african immigrants you could imagine, but it’s all overshadowed by the continual catfight between the whites and traditional minorities for a shrinking economic fried pie. Let’s be honest, the Texas economic miracle is fed by laughably low wages, just as the Romney miracle will be. And remember, don’t buy a house where the neighbors have burglar bars, somebody will break in and steal your guns.
My sentiments echo those of sco3tt pretty closely and I’d lived in Dallas off and on for about 20 years all told. It’s gone through growing pains with so many moving here from north and east but it’s still a good place to live and the natives friendly. Welcome back!
Houston and Dallas are both huge cosmpolitan cities with a lot going on. Houston is one with a more working-class feel (lots of heavy industry, between the port, the refineries, and everything else) and pride in it’s diversity and ability to get things done and soldier on.
Dallas, on the other hand, is the commercial/white collar counterpart. Dallas media and “culture” seem to be defined by the 30,000 millionaire and the Highland Park / Preston Hollow actual millionaires. It’s very much more a see and be seen kind of place than Houston or Austin ever thought about being. It’s also very much not concerned with diversity, and has extreme de-facto segregation, with the majority of the black and hispanic populations living in South or West Dallas, or in strange little ghetto apartment enclaves in otherwise white parts of town.
Thank you for everyone’s insights and helpful tips…(it seems odd that someone would try to steal your guns though!) If all goes according to plan we will be living in North Dallas or Lake Highlands area. Is this this type of place where bars would be over the windows? Friendly neighborhood?
I actually live in Lake Highlands, and no, we don’t have burglar bars. We do have a number of those strange ghetto apartment islands though. So what you end up with are some really nice neighborhoods with pretty high property value houses with old couples walking in the evenings, and nice, well kept yards.
Then, a few blocks away, you’ll have a set of entirely minority, extremely low-income, Section 8 apartments with high crime, obnoxious behavior (loud stereos, screaming fights on the streets, gunshots, etc…) and all that stuff that goes with low income housing.
Generally speaking, the neighborhoods in the area hire off-duty cops to patrol the neighborhoods, so it’s not particularly high-crime.
I grew up in Dallas, and now live about an hour west of it. It was terrible then, it is terrible now. The people are the worst part.
The state itself is doing its best effort to turn itself into a theocracy. I work in education, (I’m not a teacher) if you have children or plan on having them, then you have a even bigger reason not to come here.
I suspect like most places, you’ll find people’s answers are generalizations based on their own individual experiences. You’re experience will depend on your coworkers, neighbors, etc and there are good and bad people everywhere. I think you’ll find that North Dallas in general has a white-collar, yuppie (is that still a word?), soccer mom/dad atmosphere. It’s up to you if that’s a good or bad thing. It’s also more international than most parts of Dallas (or Texas for that matter) due to high tech industry and corporate headquarters in the North Dallas area - a South Korean coworker moved because, in his words, too many foreigners were moving into his nice neighborhood.
I live in Lake Highlands and I highly recommend it. I don’t know of any area that has houses with bars on their window. There may be some not so great apartment complexes but they aren’t terrible and violent crime is pretty low for the most part. I walk my dog late at night every day in my neighborhood for years and have never seen anything remotely sketchy.
There is a very good sense of community in Lake Highlands, with lots of parks and neighborhood activities like festivals. If you’re in to the outdoors, White Rock Lake is literally just down the street. It doesn’t have a lot of great restaurants and shopping, but downtown is maybe a 15 minute drive and Lakewood (the hipper neighborhoods just to the south) is about 5 minutes. Due to the high number of urban roads but fairly low population density, traffic is non-existent. That’s really my favorite thing about it besides all the trees.
If you have school age kids, check out the local elementary and jr. high as they vary a lot. Overall though, the schools, which are in Richardson ISD (despite being in Dallas), are pretty good. Lake Highlands is a great high school. You won’t find better neighborhood schools in the city proper other than magnets.
I meant Dallas in general, like if you were to go out to dinner in an expensive restaurant, or out on the town. Lake Highlands isn’t really like that- it’s very suburban despite being not really a suburb in the latter-day definition. I was surprised at the crowd a few weeks back at the Lake Highlands Oktoberfest actually.
As far as the crime goes, I live at Forest @ Abrams, more or less, so I’m not far from the apartment clusters between about Greenville and Audelia on Forest, and over near Skillman @ Audelia.
Those apartments are every bit that bad; the DPD ghetto bird flies around a couple times a month, it’s not unusual to hear cop sirens frequently, and if you look on the Dallas crime map, those apartments are pretty bad.
The ones in an area roughly east of Greenville @ Park are pretty bad as well.
Well howdy neighbors. Dallas can be snobby and awful, but there are normal parts and fantastic parts. I’m country and have a home near where you’re looking to move, and I couldn’t be happier. Crime is no big deal. I often forget I’m a part of the big D since it feels like a medium-sized town rather than a big 'ol city. We have block parties, block captains and free-range children. This is the eastern part of Dallas too. What is so cool is I am 10 minutes from Northpark mall and crazy good places to eat. Hell, there are even great places to eat here now. Plus, there’s the Bishop Art’s District about 15-20 minutes away.
If you and your boyfriend are considering an apartment or even if you want a house but want to get a feel for Dallas first, try a 6 month lease in the Village. My assistant loves it there and they’ve redone many of the complexes. If you’re relatively young you can meet people and get a good feel for the part of Dallas that works for you.
I agree with you about Greenville @ Park, I wouldn’t walk through there most times of day if I had a choice. I live next to one of the other clusters you mentioned and while it is certainly not a place I’d want to live, I don’t really fear walking down the street in front of it. It’s mostly just poor families and recent immigrants trying to get by. It’s nothing like finding yourself near Fair Park or some neighborhood south of the river.
