Fort Worth Does Not Love Being Naked Or Being Strange Or Mind Having Billion Dollar Boondoggles

Fairly regularly I'll read something in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and think to myself, well, that is something I would never read in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Such as a story on the front page of yesterday's Seattle P-I.

An article titled "Seattle loves being (mostly) naked."

The article is quite short, and includes a Texas reference and a slide show of examples of Seattle getting naked.

Below is that short article...

Seattle loves being (mostly) naked 

For a city that doesn’t see much sun, Seattle sure likes being naked.

This weekend is no exception — unless you count that this time, there’s underwear involved. The Cupid’s Undie Run event is happening Saturday in Fremont, meaning you shouldn’t be surprised if you folks dashing down the street in their skivvies.

The event raises money for the The Children’s Tumor Foundation, and it’s sold out. (Meaning you shouldn’t be surprised if you see lots of folks dashing down the street in  their skivvies.)

But really, what’s to be surprised about? Seattlites love affair with stripping off their clothes might be bizarre, but well documented at this point. For instance…(this is where the slide show is if you click on the article link above)

Other cities have tried to get on board the naked train, with varied results. (For example, see: “Hey, Houston! It’s only a naked bike ride if you’re naked.” )

The Undie Run is aimed to raise $50,000 for its cause. Thursday evening, it had $40,000 to go.

_______________________________________________

It really is a puzzle why repressive, conservative Seattle is so liberal about doffing clothes in public, while free-spirited, liberal Fort Worth is so conservative about the public doffing of clothes.

At the end of the article about Seattle's naked quirkiness is a link to another article the likes of which I don't think would show up in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

15 (real) reasons why Seattle is a strange city.

Can you imagine the Fort Worth Star-Telegram risking printing an article titled "15 (real) reasons why Fort Worth is a strange city"?

I don't know if the local collective civic inferiority complex could handle such an article.

It would be much more likely that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would have an article titled, "15 (real) reasons why Fort Worth is the Envy of the World."

I don't know if I can come up with 15 reasons Fort Worth is a strange city, but I will try...

1. The downtown park that celebrates Fort Worth's Heritage, and beginnings, is a boarded up, cyclone fence surrounded eyesore.
2. A billion dollars is being spent on a public works project to build a little lake, some canals, an un-needed flood diversion channel and other nonsensical things, in a Boondoggle called the Trinity River Vision that the public has not voted on.
3. The freeway exits to Fort Worth's top tourist attraction, the Fort Worth Stockyards, are un-landscaped, littered, weed infested eyesores.
4. Fort Worth holds its annual county fair type event, the Fort Worth Stock Show, in the dead of winter.
5. Until it was obvious to even the most clueless of fools, many in Fort Worth, with the help of Star-Telegram propaganda, pretended that a sporting goods store, Cabela's, was the top tourist attraction in Texas.
6. The Tandy Hills Natural Area semi-regularly floods with un-natural raw sewage spills.
7. Fort Worth is the biggest town in America with no real grocery store or department store in its downtown.
8. Fort Worth has more miles of roads without sidewalks than any other town in America with a population over 300,000.
9. Fort Worth is the world's experimental test tube for urban natural gas shale drilling, with more holes poked than any other city in the world.
10. Fort Worth is thought, by some in Fort Worth, to be the Envy of the World, which makes the World Green with Envy.
11. Fort Worth regularly gives tax breaks to corporations to build new corporate headquarters in Fort Worth that the corporation then can not afford, such as Radio Shack and Pier One Imports.
12. Fort Worth allows Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats in the Trinity River in which raw sewage is known to flow.
13. Fort Worth is a city that considers it to be perfectly fine to have city parks with picnic facilities with no running water or restrooms, such as Oakland Lake Park, Quanah Parker Park. And others.
14. Fort Worth has the lowest public transit ridership of any city in America with a population over 500,000.
15. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

I am absolutely shocked I was able to come up with 15 reasons Fort Worth is strange.

#15 on my list may be the #1 reason Fort Worth is strange.

Fort Worth is likely the biggest town in America that does not have a legitimate newspaper of record acting as a watchdog for the citizen's of the town it serves.

Instead the Fort Worth Star-Telegram acts like a propaganda organ for the oligarchy that controls Fort Worth.

I think Don Woodard said it well in the award winning documentary Up a Creek, talking about the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Mr. Woodard opined something like "the Star-Telegram could put an end to this project tomorrow, if it wanted to."

Instead the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has not devoted any ink to doing any investigative reporting of the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, the nepotism that gave J.D. Granger the job of running the project, J.D.'s mother Kay's use of earmarks to get federal funds for the project that gave her son a job or any of the other questionable aspects of the TRV Boondoggle that would be questioned by the newspaper in a town with a real newspaper.

If it wanted to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram could likely insist on seeing the financial records of the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.

Those records, detailing all the money spent on things like junkets, hotel stays, expensive restaurants, liquor, parties, vehicles, electronics, plus the hidden details behind deals, like that which ended up with a Wakeboard Park being part of the Vision, and helping a struggling restaurateur, Tim Love, open a million dollar restaurant, in the form of the Woodshed Smokehouse, would all come out in a town with a real newspaper.

A town with a real newspaper of record would have an entity acting in the public's interest willing to look under the rocks hiding something like the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's shady deals.

At least Fort Worth is blessed to have Fort Worth Weekly, which does a good job covering some of the nefariousness, but there is just too much nefariousness for one weekly, with limited resources, to cover, even with someone formidable at the helm, like Gayle Reaves. She being one of the local Kay Granger antidotes who occasionally gives some hope that all is not lost in this troubled location on the planet and that voices of reason do exist living above the Barnett Shale.

I'm done now. For now.

Fort Worth Being Picked As High Tech Capital Of The Planet Causes World-Wide Green With Envy Epidemic

I think I have mentioned previously being amused by the difference in how some types of news is covered by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and my favorite newspaper when I lived in Washington, that being the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

For instance, no matter what accolade might come Seattle's way you would never read in the P-I that cities and town, big and small, far and wide, were green with envy because of some particular accolade tossed Seattle's way.

Or because a country music singer, few have heard of, has moved to town.

In Fort Worth, on the rare occasions an accolade is tossed at the city, the local newspaper of record will trumpet the alleged epidemic of jealousy that ensues and, at least once, cheered as the city had a city-wide celebration, when a bogus D.C. lobbying group picked Fort Worth for some sort of Most Livable City accolade.

So, today, in the P-I, there was a short article, definitely not trumpeted, titled "Where does Seattle rank among the top cities for tech?"

The first paragraph of the article says "We Seattleites love to be included on lists."

The 3rd paragraph says, "Today we’ve got not one, not two, but three lists that rank the top cities for technology."

No mention made of at what position Seattle ranked on these lists. Or even if Seattle was on any of the lists. You had to click on the gallery of photos to find out.

The first list was from Wired Magazine ranking the Top 10 Cities by tech-friendliness.

I have no clear idea what tech-friendliness is. Wired did not rank the towns in any particular order, but you could go to the Wired Magazine website and see all the criteria that went into putting a town on the list.

The Wired Magazine list was the only one with a Texas town on it. Austin.

The second list was from Forbes, ranking cities on their Internet access via various criteria, like rate of broadband adoption. The list started at #10, which was Baltimore, then worked its way past New York City, Denver, Miami, Washington, D.C., Orlando, Atlanta and others, til I got to Seattle in the #1 spot.

The third list was from Scientific American, which used other lists listing towns by tech criteria and made a hybrid list of America's Top 10 towns in terms of overall technology performance. On this list #10 was Pittsburgh, followed by towns like Minneapolis, New York City, again, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., again. And Seattle, again, in the #1 spot.

Now, I can not help but wonder how the Fort Worth Star Telegram article on this same subject would be different than the P-I article if it were technologically hapless Fort Worth that showed up in the #1 spot on such lists?

I can guess what the banner headline on that shrinking newspaper's front page might be...

Fort Worth Being Picked As High Tech Capital Of The Planet
Causes World-Wide Green With Envy Epidemic

Texan & Canadian Is A State Of Mind That Few Can Understand

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a really good editorial cartoonist named David Horsey. He has been doing his cartooning from Vancouver during the Winter Olympics. This morning's Horsey had a Texas punchline that I felt compelled to share. And some amusing comments that I'll stick below the Texas punchline, including one from WA_REDNCK verbalizing a sentiment I've heard innumerable times since I've been in Texas....





Posted by glaucomis sabrinus

Possibly one of the dumbest cartoons Ive seen, even by Horsey's low standards. pretty sad, Dave... surely you can come up with something that at least makes sense??

Posted by Blarney

Heh! Anyone else ever been to Vancouver on Canada Day? They're a lot WORSE than Texans!

Posted by TobyGadd

Hey glaucomis sabrinus, you might not get this one because you aren't too familiar with your northern neighbours. As a dual citizen (US & Canada), I think that it's a hilarious cartoon. Horsey nailed the Canadian and Texan worldviews pretty well--and succeeded in poking good-natured fun at both at the same time. Nice!

Posted by WA_REDNCK

Being a 7th Generation Texan myself it's clear you have NO CLUE.

Texans need NO special event to be proud.... and ...... YES....ARROGANT!!!!!

TEXAN is a State of mind that few others understand. And just moving there don't make you Texan. TEXAN takes at least 2 generations. It takes that long to GET IT!!!!

And for the record, comments such as this don't belittle us, it just makes it apparent how jealous some people are that THEY aren't the REAL DEAL!!!!