Nothing to See
Sep. 10th, 2006 01:22 amI've been working on a list of cities I would, and would not move to if I had the opportunity. In most cases, it's based on cities that I've travelled to at one time or another. I've never moved out of Texas, so I guess sometime in my life, I should actually consider it. My biggest question tends to be, can I handle snow? I've never been in a place that had significant snowfall...or even snow that lasted more than a day. It scares me.
Places I'd Move to:
Boston
SF Bay Area (Preferably somewhere like Palo Alto or Cupertino, but I doubt I could afford it.)
Chicago
Washington DC
Austin
Maybe:
Montreal (language and snow problems)
San Diego
Madison, WI
Houston (been there, done that)
Honolulu (isolated)
Off the List:
Los Angeles
Baltimore
St. Louis
Kansas City
Memphis
New Orleans
any city in Florida
I'm reserving judgement on cities that I haven't visited, but intrigue me, like Atlanta, Seattle and Toronto. I haven't spent enough time in Philadelphia to know.
Otherwise, in our terrible boredom today, we went out to the Dallas Galleria. That's actually the name of the mall. Houston has had "the Galleria" for almost 45 years, so when they opened up a mall in Dallas some 20 years ago, they had to make sure to let everyone know that this is the Dallas one.
Now over the last couple of weeks, we've visited all the malls in our area except Valley View. Valley View is the old, ghetto mall. I remember when it opened, sometime in the 70's where it was clean and modern, and it was where I got my Sears Toughskins - when we didn't have to order them from the catalog store in East Texas. Now Valley View is the mall that sells Disco Jesus plaques next to the moving waterfall pictures.
The Dallas Galleria has had a Macy's store since it opened. The Houston location added a Macy's in the eighties in an area that you have to know how to get through Saks Fifth Avenue to find. It's a pretty peaceful area. they were both the last stores when Macy's pulled out most of it's stores in Texas in the 90's. I mention this because this was the big weekend when Macy's took off the name Foley's in the southwest, among other names across the country.
The Dallas Galleria has it easy as the Macy's there doesn't have to change a thing. In Houston the Galleria has both a Macy's and a Foley's, and they had already closed the Lord and Taylor, another department store owned by the same company. I'll bet the much older Macy's in the quiet part of the mall will close after the holidays. While the Dallas Galleria store will do fine, I'm going to guess the Valley View store, the one that once was a Sanger-Harris, will close since it's only a few blocks away. Why they build malls a few feet from each other, I'll never know.
The Dallas Galleria is not a mall for us. It's the mall with the fancy stores, like Gucci and Versace (pronounced Ver-sayse but the trendy twink behind us today). There's nothing with a big and tall section. Many stores are just there to impress the travelers that we are some sort of fly-over state shopping oasis. We did notice that the stores got cheaper and trashier as you went higher. this is easily seen as sister stores from the Gap corporation are stacked up at one end of the mall. Banana Republic is on the ground floor, Gap in the center, and Old Navy on the third floor.
On the scary third floor, we found a store that sold a repainted knock-off Batman doll as Superman in the window, the sad "learning toys" store that no child would ever want something from, and Hot Topic.
Chris, remembering
xkot's old post about crying in front of Hot Topic asked me if I wanted to reproduce the photo, I said no, because I'd have to cry in front of Torrid instead.
One of the worst things is that the Stroller Bear population is really low at the Galleria. The bearish folks just don't travel there. Really, if you're going to people watch, the better looking crowd in my book is at Stonebriar Center. Even the upscale Shops at Willowbend is better especially as there's the cute bear who manages the pretzel shop there. The Galleria has more pretty people who surprisingly can't pronounce Versace.
We bought nothing, but it did get us out of the house, where we're suffering with a problem with our air conditioning. It also got us to walk - yea exercise! -and waste our time without spending money on some movie that we'll just realize isn't worth the $6 for a matinee showing.
Places I'd Move to:
Boston
SF Bay Area (Preferably somewhere like Palo Alto or Cupertino, but I doubt I could afford it.)
Chicago
Washington DC
Austin
Maybe:
Montreal (language and snow problems)
San Diego
Madison, WI
Houston (been there, done that)
Honolulu (isolated)
Off the List:
Los Angeles
Baltimore
St. Louis
Kansas City
Memphis
New Orleans
any city in Florida
I'm reserving judgement on cities that I haven't visited, but intrigue me, like Atlanta, Seattle and Toronto. I haven't spent enough time in Philadelphia to know.
Otherwise, in our terrible boredom today, we went out to the Dallas Galleria. That's actually the name of the mall. Houston has had "the Galleria" for almost 45 years, so when they opened up a mall in Dallas some 20 years ago, they had to make sure to let everyone know that this is the Dallas one.
Now over the last couple of weeks, we've visited all the malls in our area except Valley View. Valley View is the old, ghetto mall. I remember when it opened, sometime in the 70's where it was clean and modern, and it was where I got my Sears Toughskins - when we didn't have to order them from the catalog store in East Texas. Now Valley View is the mall that sells Disco Jesus plaques next to the moving waterfall pictures.
The Dallas Galleria has had a Macy's store since it opened. The Houston location added a Macy's in the eighties in an area that you have to know how to get through Saks Fifth Avenue to find. It's a pretty peaceful area. they were both the last stores when Macy's pulled out most of it's stores in Texas in the 90's. I mention this because this was the big weekend when Macy's took off the name Foley's in the southwest, among other names across the country.
The Dallas Galleria has it easy as the Macy's there doesn't have to change a thing. In Houston the Galleria has both a Macy's and a Foley's, and they had already closed the Lord and Taylor, another department store owned by the same company. I'll bet the much older Macy's in the quiet part of the mall will close after the holidays. While the Dallas Galleria store will do fine, I'm going to guess the Valley View store, the one that once was a Sanger-Harris, will close since it's only a few blocks away. Why they build malls a few feet from each other, I'll never know.
The Dallas Galleria is not a mall for us. It's the mall with the fancy stores, like Gucci and Versace (pronounced Ver-sayse but the trendy twink behind us today). There's nothing with a big and tall section. Many stores are just there to impress the travelers that we are some sort of fly-over state shopping oasis. We did notice that the stores got cheaper and trashier as you went higher. this is easily seen as sister stores from the Gap corporation are stacked up at one end of the mall. Banana Republic is on the ground floor, Gap in the center, and Old Navy on the third floor.
On the scary third floor, we found a store that sold a repainted knock-off Batman doll as Superman in the window, the sad "learning toys" store that no child would ever want something from, and Hot Topic.
Chris, remembering
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One of the worst things is that the Stroller Bear population is really low at the Galleria. The bearish folks just don't travel there. Really, if you're going to people watch, the better looking crowd in my book is at Stonebriar Center. Even the upscale Shops at Willowbend is better especially as there's the cute bear who manages the pretzel shop there. The Galleria has more pretty people who surprisingly can't pronounce Versace.
We bought nothing, but it did get us out of the house, where we're suffering with a problem with our air conditioning. It also got us to walk - yea exercise! -and waste our time without spending money on some movie that we'll just realize isn't worth the $6 for a matinee showing.