#Fort Worth Metroplex

[fiveironfanatic]

Flew back in to DFW from Seattle, and a bunch of eclipse viewers were talking shit about Dallas on the plane. And they weren't even doing a good job at it! If you're gonna insult the Metroplex, at least do a little research first! Trust me, we talk plenty of shit about this place on our own. If you're new to the area, ask a local to show you the ropes

#dallas #fort worth #dfw #metroplex

[goodideaexchange]

Tips about moving to the Greater Dallas area from a real estate agent serving Frisco, Prosper and the rest of Collin County and Denton County Texas

#Frisco #Prosper #moving #Dallas Fort Worth #tips #why move #Dallas #Metroplex #Collin County #denton county #Youtube

[newmosbiusdesigns]

Skyline by Matt Harvey Via Flickr: The cloudy North Texas sky is reflected in the mirrored facade of the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Dallas.

#Architecture #Blue Sky #Buildings #City #Clouds #Color #Colour #DFW #DFW Metroplex #Dallas #Dallas-Fort Worth #FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS #Full-Frame #Hotels #Hyatt Regency #Metroplex #North Texas #Reflections #Sky #Skyscrapers #Sony Alpha #Sony Alpha a7Rii #Sony FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS #Texas #USA #United States #Urban #a7Rii #fav25 #fav50

[fry-house]

As y'all know I love TCM 1 and 2 but I find it incredibly funny that, despite the fact so many Texans worked on the movie, the geography in it is a fucking mess.

To start, the first movie is stated to take place in the fictional town of Newt, in the also-fictional Muerto County. Most people assume Newt to be located somewhere outside of Austin, given that's where it was filmed. Makes sense. The TCM game even goes with this interpretation, with a map showing them in the Travis County area.

But at one point in the movie, Drayton mentions needing to drive over to Childress. As if it's nearby.

Slight problem with that-

THEY'RE SIX HOURS APART. So then you think, okay, maybe Newt isn't near Austin, maybe it's farther North.

But the second movie throws a wrench into things.

If we go with this, then the Childress thing is again bizarre, as it's pretty far North. It also conflicts with the Austin area setting.

As seen here, Austin and Travis County are closer to Central Texas. Nobody from Texas would call this South, unless they were fudging it a bit I suppose.

Moving on, we have Stretch and LG's radio station being located in Burkburnett. Now, Burkburnett is another real city, and it's near the Oklahoma border. The movie seems to know this too, as the station is named K-OKLA, and the Red River (which separates that part of TX and OK) gets mentioned. Nice and realistic! However, at one point Stretch describes Burkburnett as being "at the top of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex"...

Personally, I wouldn't describe a two hour difference as being "at the top of" an area. And Lefty apparently drove two hours just to ask Stretch to play her tape on the air.

I will give them some credit though: One cops mentions sending Lefty back to Amarillo. There is in fact a Rangers department in that city. They also have the Texas vs OU game being played in DFW, which is correct, as they traditionally face off at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Points for those details! But in terms of picking a location for the main events, things are a lot more scattered.

Anyway yeah, I know it's just a movie, mistakes happen, no big deal, but the inaccuracies are just really funny to me, in particular the Newt situation. Feels like Newt is TCM's personal version of Springfield.

#texas chainsaw massacre #tcm 2 #texas trivia! #but yeah this was very amusing to map out #tcm game

[bearterritory]

#2 Bears Rally To Beat #17 Arizona

Strong Performance In Floor Exercise Keys Victory

BERKELEY - The No. 2 California women's gymnastics team was short-handed but used a clutch  performance in the floor exercise to rally for a 197.125 - 196.850 win over No. 17 Arizona on Sunday at Haas Pavilion.    The Wildcats held a 147.725 - 147.525 advantage heading into the final rotation but all-around winner eMjae Frazier and Kyen Mayhew each posted scores of 9.95 to lead the Golden Bears' floor performance. Cal finished with a team mark of 49.600 in the event with Jordan Kane (9.925), Andi Li (9.90), Ella Cesario (9.875) and Maddie Williams (9.875) rounding out the individual scoring.   "We absolutely had some stand out performances from eMjae Frazier and Andi Li, among others, but I was most proud of how we handled some adversity and then really had a lights out performance from everyone on floor," said co-head coach Justin Howell. "That was a great test for our team and I'm really proud of how they handled closing out the competition today."   Frazier also captured the beam with a 9.950 and was the meet's all-around winner with a score of 39.575. Williams won on the bars with a 9.975 that matched Arizona's Marlia Hargrove for the best individual score of the day to win the vault.   Cal was competing without Mya Lauzon, who ranks second in the country in four different events (all-around, vault, beam, floor).   "Today was an opportunity to test our depth and try out some new athletes in the lineups," Howell said. "I was incredibly proud of Miki Aderinto, Casey Brown and Jayden Silvers for making their way into some lineup spots and showcasing routines they've been working very hard on."

Brown gave the Bears a 9.85 in the bars and a 9.80 in the vault, while Silvers (vault) and Aderinto (beam) each contributed marks of 9.825.   Next up for the Golden Bears is the Metroplex Challenge in Fort Worth against No. 1 Oklahoma, No. 13 Arkansas and No. 30 Washington.  

#Go Bears #UC Berkeley #Cal Sports #This Is Bear Territory

[tim-official]

today a group of four teenagers were spotted, precariously balanced on a single motorcycle, speeding across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in an attempt to complete the fabled "Mountain Goats challenge"

[ebookporn]

How Dallas Became the National Capital of International Books

Sorry, New York. The largest U.S. publisher of literature in translation, plus a thriving global books scene, resides in the Metroplex.

by Alicia Maria Meier

Just a couple of weeks ago, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Norwegian writer Jon Fosse. In a career that has spanned four decades, the author and dramatist has published some forty plays and numerous works of prose and collections of poetry, and he has won every major Scandinavian writing award and some beyond. You’ve likely never heard of him, and you’re hardly at fault. Fewer than 3 percent of all books published in the U.S. are works in translation.

Let’s say, though, you’ve found your interest piqued by the prize’s prestige and are now looking to get your hands on some English-language Fosse. It might surprise you to learn that the newly minted laureate’s main U.S. publisher is based not in Midtown Manhattan but on the corner of Commerce and South Walton, in Dallas’s Deep Ellum—and that that publisher is the country’s biggest of literature in translation.

The Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex has long been easy to malign as more highways and hair than intellectual mecca. Will Evans was ready to confront that reputation when, in 2013, he founded the nonprofit indie press and bookstore Deep Vellum. “I started shouting from the rooftops about a concept I was ridiculed for,” he says, “which is this term ‘literary Dallas.’ I got made fun of by everyone. I just didn’t care because I knew people were talking about literature.”

READ MORE

Never thought I would say this - Well, now I want to go to Dallas.

#book lovers #bibliomania #bibliophile #booksellers #bookstores #literacy #literary festivals

[fruitbasketball]

need ur thoughts on mavs vs wolves

apparently they're putting ant on kyrie for the first game

paige is gonna pass the fuck out dude they gotta get her out to a game

i mean it makes sense just matchup wise and you need guys boxing out dereck lively ii and obviously gonna put gobert on luka.

kyrie just moves so fast that a smaller guard on him makes the most sense, and we all know that ant can get up for the block. kyrie’s bread and butter is his lay package, and if ant can defend in the paint…

MANNNNN we got ourselves a game.

i will say that a denver dallas matchup would’ve been really nice just based off like the construction of the teams

but pj washington you better cook boy

honestly like i do want dallas to win bc they’re bringing dirk nowitzki to all this shit and it’s just gonna be embarrassing for the entire dallas fort worth metroplex if they don’t get it done

but i’m just excited to watch this series dude like ant and kyrie and luka oh my GODDDD

#nba #basketball #playoffs #dallas mavericks #minnesota timberwolves #anthony edwards #kyrie irving #ask

[aviaposter]

Boeing 737-8 MAX American Airlines

Registration: N350RV Type: 737-8 Engines: 2 × CFMI LEAP-1B25 Serial Number: 44462 First flight: Dec 12, 2018

American Airlines, Inc. is a major American airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the world's largest airline when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passenger mile. American Airlines was started in 1930 via a union of more than eighty small airlines. Over 80% of American's aircraft are narrow-bodies, mainly Airbus A320 series and the Boeing 737. It is the fourth-largest operator of 737 family aircraft. American Airlines is a founding member of the Oneworld alliance, the third-largest airline alliance in the world.

Poster for Aviators. aviaposter.com

#airliners #aircraft #giftforpilots #boeing #boeingpilot #boeing737max #b737 #b737max

[mariacallous]

The Texas Observer and Bellingcat have identified the leader of a white nationalist group that distributed antisemitic and racist flyers in Weatherford, Mineral Wells, and Eagle Pass, three small Texas cities, over the last year. In an online conversation with the Observer, Rhett Murry Loftis, a 23-year-old resident of Weatherford, admits he leads the Parker County Active Club. 

“I’m a fascist, there’s no denying that,” Loftis said in a series of direct messages. 

Loftis, a former musician, said he first got active in the white nationalist movement in 2021 after spending several years lurking in online forums. In April 2023, Loftis formed the Parker County Active Club, which he described as a “white nationalist fight club.” Loftis also admitted that he organises white nationalist activism under the name of the Texas Nationalist Network.

Parker County is located in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex in north central Texas and, in addition to the county seat Weatherford, contains parts of Mineral Wells and Fort Worth. The local Active Club is part of a decentralised network of “Active Clubs” that has spread across the United States and the global since 2020.

Described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as among the nation’s most active white nationalist groups, they use a combination of online propaganda, martial arts training, in-person gatherings, and small-scale demonstrations to drive recruitment and create new clubs. Bellingcat has previously reported on their presence in California and the Netherlands.

Jared Holt, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focused on extremism and human rights, said these white supremacist clubs “are increasingly organised and resourced and could pose even greater threats to public safety and community wellbeing in the immediate future.”

Like other Active Clubs, the one in Parker County promotes white nationalist and neo-Nazi ideology, such as the “Great Replacement Theory” and the white genocide theory, which proclaim the Jewish population and non-white immigrants pose an existential threat to the white race. Posts from the group’s Telegram chatroom quote Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Videos show members making stiff-arm salutes. 

Loftis told the Observer that he does not identify as neo-Nazi. But he acknowledged he collaborates with them.

“Although I believe some form of Fascism is the answer, National Socialism is not that,” Loftis said. “I do admire Hitler and I believe the Roman salute is a powerful symbol of White power….One of my main passions is to help facilitate cooperation and collaboration between various pro-White groups.”

The two active clubs in Texas, the Parker County Active Club and the Alamo Active Club, gathered for demonstrations outside the state Capitol in Austin in 2023 and somewhere near San Antonio in 2024, according to posts in their Telegram channels. Although the number of Texas members is unclear, photos and videos indicate that at least a dozen young men are involved.

While Texas Active Clubs have maintained a relatively low profile, Tennessee Active Club members made national headlines last year when they acted as security for a controversial right-wing mayoral candidate who was arrested on charges of promoting prostitution in the mid-1990s in Dallas. Researchers have expressed growing concern about the growth of this extremist network.

Photos and videos in the Parker County Active Club chatroom document overlap with other white nationalist groups, including Patriot Front, the White Lives Matter movement, and the Goyim Defense League. One video shows Loftis distributing antisemitic flyers with members of the Goyim Defense League whom the Observer identified in prior reporting. 

“Active Clubs can best be understood as modern-day skinheads, as they often engage in the same networks, activities, and ideologies,” Holt said. “They are wearing a very thin veil, but I worry it might just be enough that it’s left some people confused as to what is going on here. This is the same old hate with a new wig and makeup.”

One of the earliest posts in the Parker County Active Club chatroom emphasised the importance of maintaining good operational security and not revealing identifying information. 

Loftis was confirmed to be the leader of the Parker County Active Club by the Observer and Bellingcat because of social media posts, images, and music he shared online. 

[chaos-grimlin]

HIIIIII RAZ HERE BACK AT YA WITH ANOTHER FANFICCCC

Just A Radio Girl (Chop-Top Sawyer x Reader)

Intro: over the last 13 years over and over again reports of bizarre, grisly chain-saw mass-murders have persisted all across the state of Texas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has not stopped. It haunts Texas..and it seems to not have a end... till...the cannibalistic family comes across a brave Radio station dj who ends up making one of the family members fall in love with her

Word could:986

Chapter 1 - Annoying assholes

Two drunk teenage boys drove recklessly down the isolated Texas roads as one held their arm out the car window and fired a gun at a mailbox, hitting it and laughing. The teen fired the gun at anything he could to cause damage.

“WOOO!” he screeched as he leaned his head out the window and aimed the gun at a “RE-FIGHT, BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO” sign and fired. The bullet hit the L in the word Battle, this caused the boy to let out a string of hysterical giggles and wheezy laughs, before aiming the gun again, this time, the bullet hit a street sign.

Soon the drunk boy fully shot down a Battle Of The Alamo. “WOO!!” The driver spat out as he took his eyes off the road “Woo! Hook them horns, baby! We are on our way to the BIGGEST party in the world!” The driver said before he looked over to his buddy. “OH YEAHH!” His buddy replied.

Meanwhile in Burkburnett Texas a young girl who went by the name of Y/n, sat in a chair, slightly dancing to the beat of the music that played through her headphones, till, the phone rang.

Y/n picked up the phone and pressed it to her ear and moved closer to the microphone that sat on her large desk.

“Red River Rock ‘n’ Roll Request Line! This is Y/n” Y/n said cheerfully through the phone and microphone as she waited for the person on the other side of the line to answer. 

“This is for Glen and could you tell the girls at Mesquite High just to leave him alone?” A woman's voice rang out through Y/ns ears and a smile spread across her face. “Heh got it! And I believe it! Glen is off-Limit now! This is Y/n on a open request line on K-OKLA in Burkburnett Texas. Red River Rock ‘n’ roll, from the tippity top of the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex”Y/n said and after she did, she quickly turned the dials on her tuner and turned up the music on the next song and started to slowly dance along.

_Back in the car_

The two boys drank from two tall beer bottles before one grabbed a small hand held phone and started to dial the number for the Red River Rock ‘n’ Roll request line while the other one reloaded the gun. “Heck, let's give Y/n a call, see what she says” the driver said as he punched in the final number.

“What kind of name is ‘Y/n’ anyway?” The one with the gun said with a cackle “No idea” the driver replied.

_Burkburnett Texas_

Y/n stopped her little dance party as the phone rang again. She picked it up with a small eye roll and pressed it to her ear. “Red River Rock ‘n’ Roll Request Line!This is Y/n!” Y/n said as she looked over to the glass window, the one that L.G sat behind.

“Yo! Y/n!” A drunk voice hissed out happily over the phone “This is the one and only buzz!” the harsh voice said before another one jumped in “AND RICK THE PRICK!” the other slurry male voice said with a snarky laugh. “And from all the boys from Wheeler High to all the senior girls who are so stuck up, boy, your on the road to nowhere!” The harsh voice said.

“Oh! You mean ''We're on the road to nowhere?” Y/n asked with a peaked interest. “Noooo! Baby!  Were on the road to Texas-OU weekend in Dallas” The more drunk boy started “YOUR on the road to nowhere” He added with a hyena laugh. “Hook them horns baby! WOOO!” The driver said.

“Hmmm real funny guys you wanna hang up now? Your kinda tying up the line” Y/n said, growing impatient with the two boys on the line. “Hey…come on” Y/n added.

“NO WAY BABY!!!” Voice one said with a chuckle “We got ALOT more requests!” Voice 2 screeched out. Y/n looked over at L.G with pleading eyes, hoping hed help her hang up the call, but L.G did nothing.

_Back in the car_

“Hey check it out dude!” The driver said as he pointed the phone at a truck driving by. “Lets play a little chicken with the farmer here” He added. As he buddy laughed (god bro gets annoying-) “WOO!” The driver yelled as he turned the wheel harshly so he was driving right to the truck to the point he could have hit the driver head on.

“COME ON BABY COME ON” “COME ONN” “COME ON MAN” Both boys screamed out with laughs.

The blue truck honked its squealing horn and swerved to the left but the boys swerved too, staying head on with the truck…Soon.. The truck was forced to go off road to avoid getting hit..

“THAT WAS GREAT!” The driver screamed out before his buddy took the phone from him to keep aggravating Y/n.

“You got that babe?sweet cheeks?Dolllll facceeeee answeeerr ussss” Trying aimlessly to get Y/n to answer him.

_Burkburnett Texas_

Y/n stood there, unplugging cords, trying to get the two boys to hang up. “Yea, later Sports, just hang up okay?!” Y/n said, trying to get the two to hang up. “No way!” The man on the other side said with a string of slurred laughs.

“L.GGGGG” Y/n cried out, trying to get L.G to hurry up with disconnecting the two boys “I'm trying Darlin!” He said over his microphone that led to her room

And soon…the boys hung up but they left many other slurry comments before doing so..

#chop top x reader #sawyer #idk why #texas chainsaw massacre #chop top #leatherface #nubbins sawyer #I love Chop but why he look like.a rat someone pulled from their sewer pipe??

[texasobserver]

“The Long Road to a Juneteenth Museum” by James Rusell, from the January/February 2024 issue of Texas Observer Magazine:

(Museum renderings courtesy BIG)

When Fort Worth activist Opal Lee was invited in 2021 to stand alongside President Joe Biden as he signed the bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday, “I could’ve done a holy dance,” the 97-year-old told the Texas Observer recently. “But the kids said they didn’t want me twerking.”

Dancing—and twerking—aside, Lee is clearly used to ambitious projects. She’s often referred to as the grandmother of Juneteenth, mostly because of her 1,400-mile walk, Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., September 2016 to January 2017, seeking recognition for the day that has come to represent freedom for American Blacks. Although the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863, slaves couldn’t be freed where the countryside was still under Confederate control. That ended in Texas on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston and brought the news.

The latest project of Lee and her allies, to create a museum in Fort Worth honoring Juneteenth, is turning out to be equally ambitious. What began as a modest collection in a small house in the neighborhood where Lee grew up has become a key part of an effort to revitalize Fort Worth’s Historic Southside neighborhood. The most recent and much grander incarnation of the museum is due to open in 2025.

Along the way, the honors paid to Lee—a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, a painting of Lee for the National Portrait Gallery, and the Emmy Award-winning documentary Opal’s Walk for Freedom (2022)—have helped bring attention to that neighborhood, just as they did to the Juneteenth campaign. But tragedy and poverty have held hands there for a long time, and revitalization efforts sometimes find tough sledding.

Lee’s roots run deep into the soil of the Southside and into personal memories of another June 19. On that day in 1939, a mob of racists—about 500 people, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram—raided the house there that Lee, her parents, and two brothers, had recently moved into. The family promptly moved out.

A portrait of Opal Lee from the National Portrait Gallery (Courtesy of Talley Dunn Gallery)

The raid was traumatic. Lee told the Star-Telegram in 2003 that afterward her family was “homeless and then living in houses so ramshackle they were impossible to keep clean.” The experience led her to become first an advocate for affordable housing and later an activist regarding homelessness, hunger, and Juneteenth. 

Eighty years after the raid, another violent incident a few blocks away would inspire a new generation of Southside activists.

Lee, a retired elementary school teacher and counselor in the Fort Worth school district, also spearheaded the rebuilding of the Metroplex Food Bank (now the Community Food Bank), founded the urban Opal’s Farm, and served on numerous local boards, including the Tarrant Black Historical and Genealogical Society.

Through all that time, she worked to draw attention to Juneteenth. “She was always teaching about Juneteenth” in middle school, said Sedrick Huckaby, the Fort Worth artist who painted Lee for the National Portrait Gallery. “She was always teaching about our heritage and about taking pride in who you are.” Allies like the late Rev. Dr. Ron Myers, a Mississippi doctor and minister, lobbied legislatures across the country and in 1997 helped pass a congressional joint resolution recognizing the holiday. Lee worked on building local support.

In 2014, on the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth, she asked friends and family to donate to a celebration of that, in lieu of buying presents on her birthday. A story in Fort Worth Weekly called her “part grandma, part General Patton” in leading the effort. Two years later, she was putting on her walking shoes for her own personal march on Washington. “If a lady in tennis shoes walked to Washington, D.C, maybe people would pay attention,” she said in her deep, raspy voice, recalling her motivations for the trek. It took another four years after her walk, but the national holiday happened.

Juneteenth has been celebrated by Black Americans for more than 100 years, including in Fort Worth. Texas was the first to designate it a state holiday, in 1980. Since 2020, 26 states, propelled by the murders of Black citizens George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police, have followed Texas’ lead, according to the Pew Research Center. 

In Fort Worth, Lee and volunteer Don Williams had been working for years to gather artifacts related to local Black history and Juneteenth, including paintings by local Black artist Manet Harrison Fowler, scrapbooks chronicling local Juneteenth celebrations, and memorabilia from the locally filmed movie Miss Juneteenth. Lee inherited a house from her late husband Dale, a retired school district principal, and turned it into the first version of the Juneteenth museum. It housed the growing collection and hosted multiple Juneteenth events and, at one point, computer classes.

While the collection grew, the building, run by volunteers, was deteriorating. Like most public places, it closed in 2020 as COVID-19 spread. After the pandemic, it did not reopen, and the collection was moved out. Then early on the morning of January 11, 2023, it caught on fire. The remains were demolished to make way for the new museum. 

Around 2019, Lee, granddaughter Dione Sims, and former Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce executive Jarred Howard had started talking about the possibility of a new Juneteenth Museum. They began buying land around the site of the old house. Howard long had a vision to help his old stomping grounds and wanted to both commemorate the holiday and spur economic development. Well acquainted with developers and architects from his Chamber days, he solicited requests for proposals for a building that could meet those goals. First, local architect Paul Dennehy designed a five-story building with a gallery, event space, and residences. In early 2020 it was pitched to neighborhood association leaders. Too tall, they said, and out of step with the neighborhood. In 2021, local architects Bennett Partners produced a plan for a playful mixed-use campus, estimated to cost about $30 million to build. 

In 2022, a new plan, bigger in scope than Lee could have imagined two decades ago, was unveiled. The current proposal is for a 5-acre complex housing a National Juneteenth Museum, with a theater, restaurant, art galleries, and a “business incubator” space to spur Southside entrepreneurship, designed by the internationally renowned architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). The price tag is an estimated $70 million. So far, the nonprofit National Juneteenth Museum, formed in 2020, has raised about $30 million of that, mostly from major donors and foundations, Lee said.

Douglass Alligood, a partner at BIG and the chief architect of the currently planned museum, got an earful during his field work on the project, including from Lee’s friends and supporters. In multiple visits, he met with Lee as well as neighborhood leaders. The conclusion:  The museum had to represent the community and not be divorced from it.

“We were inspired by the neighborhood typology—the homes that feature historic gabled silhouettes and protruding porches, also known in context as a ‘shotgun’ house,” he said. “Neighborhood groups and community members found that, together, the BIG and KAI Enterprises [the local architecture firm] design teams demonstrate a deep understanding of the Juneteenth story and commitment to work with the local community to celebrate the holiday’s history and local culture of the Historic Southside.” 

Eleven rectangular glass-clad building segments, with peaks and valleys of varying heights, will create a star-shaped courtyard in the middle. “The ‘new star,’ the nova star represents a new chapter for the African-Americans looking ahead towards a more just future,” Alligood said.

Fine, locals said, but what people there really need is a grocery store.

It was a cold morning in early October, and Patrice Jones needed help unloading herbs. She was in the courtyard of Connex, a new three-story business and retail complex about two blocks from the planned site of the museum. Jones and a group of volunteers, mostly in their 20s and 30s, from Southside Community Gardens, are planting their 79th and 80th backyard vegetable gardens in the neighborhood, she said proudly. It’s pick-up day for those who’ve already established gardens.

The initiative is part of the larger By Any Means 104 effort, named for the 76104 zip code, and co-founded by Jones in 2020. The group’s focus on local issues includes addressing the lack of fresh food in the area instead of waiting for a grocery store. Jones, a feisty advocate and former claims adjuster, has run it full time since 2021. If the city can’t get them a grocery store, she said, they’ll teach residents to grow their own food.

The Juneteenth Museum is important, Jones said, between handing out herbs and greeting volunteers. But in her circles, she said, people also ask, “Can we get a health clinic? Can we get a pharmacy?” And of course, “Can we get a grocery store?”

According to a 2018 University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center report, the 76104 zip code has the lowest life expectancy rate in Texas and a high maternal mortality rate. It’s also a victim of what Jones calls “food apartheid,” a term she prefers to “food desert,” an indicator of an area with little access to fresh foods. Desert implies it’s natural; apartheid, she said, is an intentional act. She blames city government and its white-dominated culture.

But hunger is not a sufficient reason for a grocery chain to decide where to open a store, even if it could be part of a historical complex.

Grocery store owners “use different metrics,” including population density, said Stacy Marshall, president of Southeast Fort Worth, Inc., an economic development group. “We can’t yet make a compelling case.” The area needs more housing, he said. “Build density—rooftops—and grocery stores come.”

Marshall is a force in bringing new development to the southeast part of the city, a large historically and ethnically diverse area that includes the Historic Southside.

 Since he took the job a decade ago, “development has gone gangbusters,” he said. But development has also brought gentrification: “It’s so expensive to purchase dirt here and get a single-family home,” he said. One Dallas real estate firm put together a $70 million deal for a mixed-use development in the area, but it has stalled.

The Juneteenth museum site is within the Evans-Rosedale urban village, a city designation focused on bringing investment to the area. It’s seeing an uptick in interest from developers, but nowhere near what’s been promised by local officials.

“There have been attempts in the past. There’s the Evans Avenue Plaza, but most people don’t know about it,” said Bob Ray Sanders, communications director for the Fort Worth Black Chamber of Commerce. The plaza, also part of the Evans-Rosedale village, is meant to be a community gathering space and includes a new library. About a mile away is the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods, which houses numerous city offices.

Many of the neighborhood’s nagging problems date to the mid-20th century, when integration meant, ironically, the loss of many black-owned businesses, while highway construction—as it did in many American cities—cut off Fort Worth’s Black community from downtown and wealthier neighborhoods. “By doing that, people on the Westside [turned] a blind eye to people on the Eastside,” Sanders said.

Housing construction seems to be picking up, mostly on an infill basis. But while developers are buying homes, Marshall said, they are mostly sitting on them and waiting until they can get higher prices.

Longtime assistant city manager Fernando Costa said development work in historic urban districts presents more challenges than creating new neighborhoods from pastureland. Beyond the physical complications of older infrastructure, historic preservation concerns and, often, environmental problems left over from earlier development, Costa said, such projects “require getting existing neighborhood involvement.”  

There’s also the issue of crime. According to the Fort Worth Police Department, nearly 560 crimes were reported in the 76104 zip code between mid-May and late November 2023. Assault, larceny, drug and alcohol violations, and vehicle break-ins made up more than three-quarters of the reports. That’s compared to 165 in the same time period in the mostly-white, wealthy 76109 zip code in West Fort Worth.

In the early morning of October 12, 2019, white police officer Aaron Dean, responding to a welfare check at the house, killed 28-year Black woman Atatiana Jefferson, who was playing video games with her nephew. Dean was later found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Jefferson’s murder lit a fire under a younger generation of activists who aren’t waiting for change, such as Jones, who also worked to get police accountability in response to the murder, and Angela Mack, whose doctoral thesis is about Jefferson and the neighborhood.

“I’m a good, ol’ fashioned Funkytown Black nerd,” said Mack, an instructor in the comparative race and ethnic studies department at Texas Christian University, where she received her doctorate in English rhetoric.

After Jefferson’s murder, Mack changed her thesis topic to address that tragedy. She saw that, between her mother and the national media, two different stories were being told.

“When we’re thinking about the Southside, we think about Fairmount and the Medical District in terms of revitalization. But when you cross the highway, you’re in an area with crime and poverty,” she said, drinking a latte at Black Coffee, one of the few coffee shops in the area. “When people [look] at the community, people are looking at what’s not here. It’s a deficit model of communication instead of seeing the good that’s here.                                                                

“I’m not anti-development,” she said, but economic development shouldn’t be the museum’s purpose.

“When you’re building something, it should not be [a question of] how many people we employ, but how does it help define the Southside? The development will come. I’m concerned about who controls the narrative,” she said. “The main focus should be how does this speak about our history and heritage.”

Jones also worries that history will be lost. She’s afraid that rising property values will push out poor people.

Sims has heard those concerns before. Property taxes go up with any new development, she said. And everyone’s going to complain, even if they want change.

When the museum opens in 2025, Lee just wants to make sure she’s there to see it.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said. She’d be 99. “I hope I’m still here.”

#black history #Black History Month #Texas #texas history #fort worth #north texas #juneteenth #museum #museums

[butch-texas-guarddog]

Woof! Love your blog! Where in Texas do you live? Thinking of moving to Houston.

Thanks bud! I live just south of the Fort Worth -Dallas metroplex in a city called Burleson

[sunder-the-gold]

What is a good iconic, but not cliche, location to indicate an illustration is set in Texas?

The Texas sought would be idealized, as if "Heavenly Texas " or "Realm of Forms Texas."

Or what characteristics for a background holding 1 large fantasy creature and two anime-esque fantasy characters would strike as true in spirit or experience to those familiar with the land of Texas?

At least in the way Avatar can take from geography or landscapes to add "realism " or reference to the real world while being it's on thing.

Texas has a variety of biomes. We have deserts, rivers, lakes, forests, beaches, mountains, and basins. None of them are more iconic than the others.

In terms of civil infrastructure, there's the Alamo, the oil fields, the off-shore oil rigs, and the Fort Worth Stockyards.

The Stockyards are a piece of Texas history enshrined in Texas modernity. These days, downtown Fort Worth is a business hub for white-collar work. But the Stockyards are a physical reminder of the city's origin as a railhead. A center for trading, slaughter, and rodeos.

(So, incidentally, your fantasy megafauna might be a bull, with at least one of your anime protagonists trying to ride the furious beast without getting bucked off. That's a funnier, less sad idea than the fantasy beast being herded into a slaughter house.)

The cattle industry changed and left Fort Worth behind, so the city started to host new businesses, and the stockyards became a monument to a fond past as well as a tourist location for modern revenue. It still hosts rodeos.

Another part of Fort Worth's character is its rivalry with nearby Dallas, its larger and more prestigious sister-city within the Northwest Texas metroplex. Between them, in the smaller city of Irving, lies the Dallas/Fort Worth international airport which became part of the world's travel network.

DFW is almost a city in its own right, and practically a modern monument of infrastructure itself.

The DFW metroplex forms the top of the "Texas Triangle", with Austin and San Antonio forming the western point and Houston and coastal Galveston forming the eastern. These three metropolitan points form the triangular area where most Texans live.

With all that light pollution to blot out the "big and bright" stars, some might argue that the Texas Triangle can't qualify as "the heart of Texas"...

But I would ask, "Is Texas the impartial wilderness that knows no borders, or is it the people who call themselves Texans?"

#asks #sunder says #texas #home

[tlwebb]

Darkness over Dallas: a Mage the Ascension fiction series

Hello and welcome to this series. Darkness over Dallas tells the story of a gathering of awakened mad scientist, witches, wizards and weirdos who are drawn into a plot to turn the nightfolk conspiracies of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex into a war zone. The series of short stories and novellas will be 12 episodes long, with episode six currently in early first draft

The series so far

Episode One tells of a fateful Ethertech car rally that turns into a demolition derby when a potential racer is rejected and returns with murderous intent.

Rally survivor Doctor Minerva Featherstone enlists the aid of a Technocractic Action Scientist to grapple with leftover questions and also zombies.

Rally survivor Albert T. Edison tries to solve the entire mystery in one go and ends up wrecking just about everything around him when things go south in the digital web

The Hollow Ones of North Dallas stumble into the web of deceit and not all of them will escape the mysterious hidden fortress they seek to claim.

Rally survivor Dwight Cogmeister journeys to the Hollow Earth to question the scientist who trained their attacker, finding unexpected allies and the most vile of foes in exotic Valentine Station!

To be continued

#fiction #science fiction #science fantasy #urban fantasy #mage the ascension #world of darkness #changeling the dreaming #technocratic union #society of ether #hollw ones #storytellers vault #werewolf the apocalypse #vampire the masquerade #ttrpg stuff

[tasktechnology]

University of Texas At Arlington

Do you want to know about University of Texas At Arlington ?

The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), located in Arlington, Texas, is a prominent public research institution that was established in 1895. It is one of the 14 institutions that collectively form the state-wide University of Texas System. UTA can be characterized in the following key aspects.

History: The University of Texas at Arlington has a long history that began when it was established as Arlington College. It evolved from a little private school to a significant research organization throughout time.

Location: The campus is located right in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, one of the country's largest urban areas. Students have access to a variety of businesses, professions, and cultural opportunities thanks to this advantageous location. UTA excels in the classroom.

If you need more information click here.

#University of Texas At Arlington #University of Texas System