Oak Cliff Becomes Cool

Dallas Observer
Jim Schultze // February 25, 2010

Can an entire city reverse field?

From World War II until now, the beckoning horizon in Dallas has been the cool, air-conditioned neighborhoods north, where houses are new and low-slung, lawns are pool-table smooth and garage doors open by themselves.

But if North Dallas has been the city's field of dreams for decades, then 10 miles south and across the river, what do we call the clanging, potholed automercado of W. Davis Street in North Oak Cliff? The word we're never supposed to use—because it's snobbish, hurtful and has racist overtones—is slum.

But there you have it.

Is it even conceivable, then, that half a century from now, Davis Street could be the city's leading edge—its realm of cool and aspiration, the Seinfeld-land of a post-automobile urban tomorrow?

MORE