A Late In The Day Tandy Hills Hike Has Me Pondering Why Downtown Fort Worth Is A Ghost Town Today

An observant person might look at the photo you see here and deduce, due to the long shadow, that the Shadow of the Tandy Hills Thin Man had himself a late in the afternoon Black Friday hill hike today.

That observant person would have deduced correctly.

The Tandy Hills looks different late in the day than it looks under the more direct noon day sun. I rather liked seeing the sun so low on the horizon, creating dark shadows where usually I see no shadows.

During my regular hiking time today I was busy doing my Black Friday shopping. It took me about 15 minutes to complete this year's Christmas shopping.

Speaking of Christmas shopping, and who isn't, when the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth came in to view I stopped to snap the picture you see below.

Last year, on the day after Thanksgiving, I drove to downtown Fort Worth to document the least busy big city downtown in America on the busiest shopping day of the year. I doubt there were any more shoppers in downtown Fort Worth today, since there still are no big stores in downtown Fort Worth. Let alone any vertical malls.

Yesterday Google caused me to happen to look at the Green With Envy webpage I long ago made, documenting numerous instances of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram claiming some totally ordinary thing about Fort Worth was making the rest of the world green with envy, or the envy of other towns far and wide.

It had been so long since I'd looked at the Green With Envy webpage that I'd forgotten how many instances of that bizarre propaganda I'd seen. And I'd totally forgotten about all the amusing comments from people equally perplexed.

Near as I can tell the Star-Telegram never fesses up to any of its tom foolery of the propaganda sort. Whether it's a big headline announcing the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, with the headline saying this would turn Fort Worth into the Vancouver of the South.

No, you reading this who have actually been to Vancouver, I am not making this up.

Or the Star-Telegram's bizarre claim that a lame little development called the Santa Fe Rail Market was the first public market in Texas, and that it was modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market and public markets in Europe. I knew when I read it that this lame development was not the first public market in Texas, having been to the Dallas Farmers Market, but then I was appalled to learn that this lame development was not even the first public market in Fort Worth.

Any mea culpa apology from the Star-Telegram?

Nope.

And then there was the Cabela's Boondoggle. The Star-Telegram trumpeted over and over again that this sporting goods store would be the #1 tourist attraction in Texas. A short time later another Cabela's opened, in Buda, by Austin. And now the Fort Worth Cabela's is not even the only Cabela's in the D/FW Metroplex.

Any mea culpa apology from the Star-Telegram?

Nope.

Lately the Star-Telegram has been going along with the local propagandists' touting that due to some totally bogus "award" that Fort Worth has the TOP Downtown in America. It did not take much digging to find the award submission that was submitted by the Fort Worth propagandists was full of absurd claims, ridiculous lies, such as claiming that downtown Fort Worth's new little plaza attracts millions of visitors a year. Sort of like the imaginary millions attracted to that #1 sporting goods store tourist attraction.

Today is the day which renders this TOP Downtown in America nonsense totally absurd. Like I have already said, on the busiest shopping day of the year downtown Fort Worth is a ghost town. How can the Top Downtown in America have zero department stores, few places to shop?

The town I lived in before moving to Texas, Mount Vernon, has a downtown about the same size as Fort Worth's. With a much bigger river. Mount Vernon's population is around 30,000. Fort Worth's is around 800,000.

When I was growing up, in Burlington, across the river, north of Mount Vernon, Mount Vernon was the Big City in the valley. Downtown Mount Vernon had a Penney's, a Sears, a Woolworth's and a Montgomery Wards, along with multiple other stores. And a couple grocery stores.

In the 1990s all of downtown Mount Vernon's department stores headed north, to Burlington. My old hometown became the retail hub of the Skagit Valley, with a mall, outlet center, Costco, K-mart,  Fred Meyer, Target, new grocery stores. Even a Krispy Kreme.

Is this what happened to downtown Fort Worth? I know there used to be a department store in downtown Fort Worth called Leonard's.

Would it not be a more appropriate behavior if the Star-Telegram, rather than touting absurd claims that just are not true, instead editorialized reality based ideas about Fort Worth? Such as what could Fort Worth do to actually turn its downtown into one of the Top Downtown's in America?

Things like fix the Heritage Park Eyesore. Things like making it appealing to live in downtown Fort Worth. Things like figuring out why downtown Fort Worth has no department stores. Or grocery stores. Things like figuring out why downtown Fort Worth is a ghost town on the busiest shopping day of the year....