Dallas 2007

My most recent trip to the USA is to Dallas in 2007 to attend conference. For some reason I bought my camera with me, primarily because I remember all the episodes of Dallas my mum watched in the 1970s.

Note This article is part of our USA Retrospective series, featuring images captured on an early generation Nikon CoolPix E5700 digital camera with 5 megapixel resolution. Please forgive us if they do not meet your expectations of photographic quality.

My expectations of the city are purely based on the TV series. I was expecting gold tinted windows on skyscrapers, oilfields, general opulence and men walking around in big hats and cowboy boots. I also remembered a certain Kennedy being shot from a grassy knoll.

I didn’t expect the downtown to look rather run down, coming off an oil bust and bank crisis, with boarded up shops. The glittering skyscrapers are still there, and long goods trains still snake past Union Station everyday, which I can view from my hotel room at Hyatt Reunion. It felt eery to be walking on the grassy knoll and around Dealey Plaza, looking at the Book Depository and the spot where President Kennedy and his wife were assassinated in 1963. We took a McKinney Avenue free trolley to a historical district full of upmarket shops, and visited a mall (NorthPark Center).