Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Yellow Pages Got Me Thinking About Fort Worth's Sundance Square & The Defunct Soviet Union

On the left you are looking at a screencap of the Sundance Square website.

I did not know til this morning that Sundance Square had a website.

I learned Sundance Square had a website when I was thumbing through the Attractions sections of the Yellow Pages phonebook which showed up at my front door yesterday.

The Yellow Pages entry....

Sundance Square
Sundance Square is a vibrant, award winning entertainment district spanning 35 blocks of downtown Fort Worth. The multiuse development attracts more than 10 million visitors each year. Sundance Square offers a shopping, dining and an entertainment district all in walking distance with free valet parking.

Way back when the old Soviet Union was mostly closed off from the West, with the communists in charge of the information propagandaized to the comrades, the Soviets had a tendency to boast about how wonderful living conditions were for the Soviets, how advanced the Soviets were, how superior the communist system was to the capitalist system.

Eventually the communists were unable to keep up the charade when way too many Soviets started getting a good idea of how much better living conditions were in the West.

Claiming Fort Worth's downtown has more than 10 million visitors a year seems such a ridiculous thing to be claiming. How is this count made? Who is counted? Am I counted the one or two times a year I visit downtown Fort Worth?

The implication is that more than 10 million visitors are attracted to visit the attraction known as Sundance Square.

But, there is no Sundance Square. Is there any other town in America which  refers to 35 blocks of its downtown as a square?  Up til a plaza was finally added to downtown Fort Worth most visitors thought Sundance Square was the parking lots where the new plaza is now located.

Who is this Sundance Square propaganda aimed at? The locals? To make them feel that their downtown is something special? When that local finds him or herself in another downtown do they react like a Leningrad Soviet visiting New York City?

Paraphrasing Mr. Galtex, downtown Fort Worth is a perfectly fine downtown, but why its promoters persist in pretending it is more than it is is a mystery to me.

I agree with the well traveled Mr. Galtex.

The Sundance Square website touts "Shopping".

But Fort Worth is the biggest town in America with no department store in its downtown.

No Macy's, no Nordstrom, no Neiman Marcus, not even a Sears or a Penneys.

There also is no grocery store, but I don't know if Fort Worth is the biggest town in America with no grocery store  in its downtown.

Somewhat related, Betsy So Pricey made an amusing comment to a blogging from a couple days ago...

Betsy So Pricey has left a new comment on your post "FW Weekly Has Me Doing Some More Fort Worth Multipurpose Arena Questioning": 

That ain't no ordinary list of "co-chairs." With that many " chairs" and so many impo-tant folks, it seems more like the first class section of the Titanic. Ah, Fort Worth, the small town that wants to act like a big city but doesn't seem to know how to go about it other than talk big and waste taxpayer dollars. 

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