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This is one of the more objective posts in this thread thus far. I co-sign.
I would also co-sign with mild caveat. Houston's art scene is largely propped up by big donors and oil money. Without it I'm sure it would be dead in the water. There is a lack of a real deal organic and publicly invested art scene. I'm not saying that its bad that donors and pop money fund the vast majority of the arts in Houston but that it makes for a blander less subversive risky take on art. Every art gallery event opening or exhibition just looks "corporate-y" if that makes sense?
I like it when the art scene is both private donor and publicly invested equally.
There is that recurring "pretentious" slam on Dallas. But going back at least seven years on city-data, H-Town boosters have been predicting that Houston's population will exceed Chicago's. Now that's pretense. https://www.google.com/search?q=hous...m=122&ie=UTF-8
I've always been struck by the oft-mentioned contention that Houston is "chill" and "laid-back" while Dallas is not. I don't see how "chill" and "laid-back" square with sophistication. Might as well be Austin.
Dallas and Houston both have the same insecure "pretentious" high society wannabes. The media, other cities and individuals, and sometimes Dallas itself puts the spotlight on Dallas's pretentiousness. People confuse those folks with the actual old money types, who don't talk about money, but give butt loads of it away.
Houston is laid back and chill, and especially during the hot humid summer months when all the 1% leaves town, but like Dallas it also is a business money town where people still like work and make money and be successful, along with throwing parties, and entertain the "southern hospitable way" whereas only the best food and drink will do. The laid back mentality of Houston is more of it's southern vibe of kick your shoes off and relax after a hard days work mentality. Houston is by no means as casual as Austin is, it just doesn't take itself as seriously.
I agree with many Dallasites, when they say that they are wrongfully accused of being pretentious when they are the farthest from being pretentious.
Both Dallas and Houston have always accepted the Avant Garde attitude towards style, design, art, material possessions, recreation, religion, and thankfully philanthropy.
1) Sweet Tea was invented in St. Louis
2) They have debutante balls (veiled prophet and fleur de lis)
3) Awesome Southern cooking -- checkout Sweetie Pie's!
4) A plurality of residents are Protestant, which reflects Southern demographics rather than those of the more heavily Catholic cities in the Midwest.
5) The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, which is often referred to as a Southern Play, with distinctly Southern Characters, takes place in St. Louis.
6) Mark Twain, one of the most famous Southern Writers, is from a small town outside St. Louis.
I figured Atlanta and Dallas but why is Houston in the running? It has a great art scene and a giant theatre/opera one too but isn't Dallas just a more overall culturally dynamic city? Other texans call it, albeit derogatorily a Yankee city in the southwest?
Generally speaking, I loathe any conversation that tries to quantify or qualify "sophistication" on any city - especially a sun-belt city. Perhaps even more meaningless, vague and moronic is tying the idiom of a place being "culturally dynamic" to a notion of sophistication.
A classic definition of culture is one of a set of beliefs, customs and art output of a particular place or people, possibly at a particular time. "Dynamic" is the quality of changing. Why would a constantly changing culture be a synonym for sophistication? You are the quickest to adopt Ed Hardy T-shirts or build tacky ultra-lounges? Have new office developments? More "Maggianos" per capita and the first In-n-Out in your state? A few extra mass retail outlets for non-tailored Italian clothing? In short, what the hell are you talking about when you say something is "culturally dynamic"? The quality of dynamism seems to negate most notions of culture, unless you are talking about a culture of anarchy or a culture of being a soulless and unmemorable place to shop for things you probably shouldn't purchase and wash that week down with a visit to a mega-church.
I've spent the bulk of my life living in the Northeast and stacking some time in London and Los Angeles on top of that. I really cannot recall a time when I was party to a conversation comparing the "sophistication" of New York to Boston, or even an easy target like Philadelphia. While I applaud the OP's attempt to place some metrics around things to "consider" when assessing sophistication, they are completely arbitrary and and mostly baseless. Sophistication "is", and cannot be tallied on a scorecard - the notion of doing that for large sun-belt cities is laughable at best.
To pluck it out of the dictionary, sophistication is the altering of something through education or other experiences to make "worldly-wise" and not naive. That may be weakly correlated to being "urban" (another total BS term), but is definitely not caused by it, or Cleveland would be more "sophisticated" than Vienna. Is there some overriding movement I have missed in the course of American history that bestowed a rich deposit of education and experience on Dallas that skipped Houston? Are new Sunbelt cities really that differentiated? Certainly you cannot point to education as being a well-spring of sophistication for Dallas - they have no top-tier universities. I guess being the namesake of an 80's TV show is the experience part?
My point is this - perhaps you are confusing untraveled pretension and myopia with sophistication. Newer stucco houses and a Cheesecake Factory in a Master-planned neighborhood is not "sophistication" - it is middle-class comfort marketed as affluence. That's a good part of the sunbelt, and while you can throw stones at the truly poor cities in the South from your McMansions, you really cannot have a serious conversation on "sophistication" between McMansions. I know one thing - if you told people from my home in Boston that Dallas is a "Yankee city in Texas", you might lose some teeth.
J Treehorn has turned on the internet hard on for making sure that no one even attempts to say that Dallas has a bit more planning to its glitz than Houston does. I'm sure you read that one post, J, didn't bother to read the rest of my posts where I called Dallas a pretty faux glitzy snobby place. Or perhaps where I said that people in Houston refer to Dallas as a Yankee city in a derogatory manner. That it think its high and mighty. The only thing I gave dallas is that it has the few basic things that make it a city like a planned city layout .
Instead you chose to write a wannabe Salon.com rant.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
8,128 posts, read 7,565,972 times
Reputation: 5785
Quote:
Originally Posted by CLees
So dark-skinned people in DC arent this way? Im confused because many on here are saying DC isnt the real south but are touting Miami or Dallas as their answer.. doesnt make sense to me.. Hell, the south doesnt make sense to me so why should I be surprised.
Because idiots in this forum always have some false reasoning that anything resembling hood black culture is "southern." If that's the case Chicago is southern. In fact in many ways Chicago has much more southern traits than DC. Even within DC between uptown and southside you have "different cultures." Southeast DC is no more southern than the Southside of Chicago. And many blocks in uptown DC are like being in Washington Heights, or West/North Philly or something, street culture is street culture period, it's not about north vs south.
1) Sweet Tea was invented in St. Louis
2) They have debutante balls (veiled prophet and fleur de lis)
3) Awesome Southern cooking -- checkout Sweetie Pie's!
4) A plurality of residents are Protestant, which reflects Southern demographics rather than those of the more heavily Catholic cities in the Midwest.
5) The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, which is often referred to as a Southern Play, with distinctly Southern Characters, takes place in St. Louis.
6) Mark Twain, one of the most famous Southern Writers, is from a small town outside St. Louis.
Bruh, if some people don't consider Dallas to be southern...there's no way in heck St. Louis is!
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