An exhausted Faye Dunaway savors the sweetness of breakfast and flashy newspapers, celebrating her triumphant Oscar win for Network the evening before. The iconic 1977 image, taken at the Beverly Hills Hotel, would become a testament to the industry’s transformation from its Golden age to the gritty aesthetic that defined a new generation. Dunaway’s own journey mirrored the very evolution of the film industry itself, a progression beginning with Arthur Penn’s "Bonnie and Clyde," filmed in Dallas, Texas, just a decade earlier.

Dunaway, with her raw energy and unconventional beauty, became the embodiment of this new wave. She was the anti-movie star. Her lean, pre-heroin chic figure, big eyes, mesmerizing face, and unsettling demeanor was Hollywood without the glam, stripped down to its bare bones; Monroe and Dietrich and Hepburn and Crawford be damned.

It's ironic, then, that the City that inspired the film, home to the notorious criminal couple, would be the one to kill Old Hollywood for good. To this day, Dallas still typifies, as I’ve said before, an amalgam of the gun-slinging Wild West and high-fashion glamor. It would be an understatement to say it was an unlikely source of revolution. Dallas was, in fact, an epicenter of anti-Hippie sentiment. And yet a re-telling of one of its most notorious tales would bring Hippie culture to the masses.

In the mid-60s, Hollywood was battling for survival. The studio system that had once been a well-oiled machine was breaking down — televisions in every home threatened to upend the system that protected a pantheon of stars that occupied a higher order, accessed only by trips to the Theater on larger-than-life screens and myths of glitzy stars from Garbo to Taylor.

Movies had become impossibly big—and impossibly expensive—in order to compete with television. Paramount's Cleopatra, despite its opulence and star power, nearly brought the studio to financial ruin. European art film, lightyears ahead of Big Studio pictures that had become machine-made products rather than singular artistic visions, offered alternative fare back home and inspiration for American filmmakers ready to buck the status quo in a rigidly conservative nation. Enter the 1967 hit, “Bonnie and Clyde.”

"They're young, they're in love, and they kill people," the film’s promotional materials read. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the notorious criminal couple on whose story the film was based, were products of Depression-era squalor. Dallas' own Robert Benton, co-writer of the film, was acutely aware of the societal backdrop against which Bonnie and Clyde's escapades had unfolded, but also the unraveling social order of the sixties which the film mirrored. Like the real-life outlaws it mythologized, the film threatened to upend the established order.

The film represented a departure from sanitized depictions of violence—its audacious portrayal of blood and death was as much a response to changing times as it was an artistic act of rebellion. It was also a reflection of the perceived tenacity and danger of Dallas, and by extension, Texas itself. The city of Dallas, like the criminals it housed, has always been an enchanting contradiction, marrying the allure of a bygone era with the unmistakable energy of the modern age. The same paradox was playing behind the scenes in Hollywood.

Released to a storm of criticism and derision by New York’s yuppie elite, the film would soon find an unlikely champion in Pauline Kael, a relatively unknown writer at the time for The New Republic. Frustrated by her editor’s refusal to publish her spirited defense of the film, Kael found an ally in the legendary William Shawn of The New Yorker. She felt "Bonnie and Clyde," which the New York establishment dismissed as lacking taste, was a mirror held up to the American public.

"When an American movie is contemporary in feeling, like this one, it makes a different kind of contact with an American audience from the kind that is made by European films, however contemporary," she said. “Our best movies have always made entertainment out of the anti-heroism of American life; they bring to the surface what, in its newest forms and fashions, is always just below the surface.”

Kael wasn’t shy about confronting those worried about violence on screen. She advocated for the freedom of artists to portray stories as they see fit, recognizing it as a tool for expressing deep, primal truths. The use of violence in "Bonnie and Clyde," as Kael suggested, was far from gratuitous; it was integral to the narrative, stirring the audience from complacency and challenging them to confront the realities of life.

In her iconic review, she recalled one audience member’s shock and dismay at what unfolded: “During the first part of the picture, a woman in my row was gleefully assuring her companions, ‘It’s a comedy. It’s a comedy.’ After a while, she didn’t say anything. Instead of the movie spoof, which tells the audience that it doesn’t need to feel or care, that it’s all just in fun, that ‘we were only kidding,’ Bonnie and Clyde disrupts us with ‘And you thought we were only kidding.’”

The real Bonnie and Clyde grew up in poverty in Depression-era Texas. Their paths crossed in January 1930 at a mutual friend's house. Bonnie was married but separated, and Clyde was a small-time thief with several run-ins with the law. Their immediate attraction set the stage for one of the most infamous partnerships in American criminal history.

For the next four years, Bonnie and Clyde, alongside their ever-changing roster of gang members, embarked on a violent spree of robberies and killings that spanned multiple states. From small-town gas stations and grocery stores to banks, no establishment seemed safe. Their brazen disregard for law and order made them figures of mythic proportion that echo to this day. (A few months ago, on a trip to London, I walked by a theater near Trafalgar Square advertising a Bonnie and Clyde musical.)

Their escapades fueled sensational newspaper fodder when the nation was in dire need of distraction. Framed with a perverse sense of glamor, public sentiment began associating their recklessness with a rebellion against a failed American system. Bonnie's role in the gang was particularly a marked deviation from the typical female stereotype, one that was captured brilliantly by Dunaway’s portrayal some thirty years later.

Bonnie Parker, who herself had dreams of stardom, saw her posthumous fame explode once again with the release of the film. Thousands attended her real-life funeral, and thousands more experienced her rebirth on screen. Even today, the impact of the crime spree resonate throughout Dallas, from a small historical plaque in Oak Cliff to a bank-turned-roadhouse—the ‘Gar Hole’—that the pair once robbed, to the still-standing burger joint in East Texas where they once dined. I grew up mere minutes from their grave sites.

One can argue that the mythology of Bonnie and Clyde was shaped more by the press and public imagination than by their actual deeds. The infamous picture of Bonnie with a cigar and a gun, a picture she reportedly posed for as a joke, would become one of the most enduring images of the pair, cementing their image as the wild, reckless outlaws of Texas.

The mythology of Bonnie and Clyde encapsulates the paradox of Texas, a state that values order and conservatism yet celebrates the outlaws who defied those values. Their story intertwines with the narrative of Texas as a land of risk-takers, rebels, and pioneers who chose their own paths, even if it led them outside the bounds of the law. The memory of thier grotesque criminal escapade is now an indelible part of Texas history and American popular culture.

The iconic story would become a perfect metaphor for the social milieu of the mid-sixties in America. The astounding success of the film proved Kael right — and served not only as a testament to the American public's enduring fascination with the notorious couple but as a rallying cry for the brewing counterculture.

The film was not without its creative liberties. For instance, Frank Hamer, the respected Texas Ranger who tracked down Bonnie and Clyde, was controversially portrayed as the movie's spiteful, revenge-seeking villain, a stark contrast to his revered real-life persona, which was portrayed respectably by Kevin Costner in John Lee Hancock’s 2019 film, The Highwaymen.

Just as the real Bonnie and Clyde inspired a series of subsequent emulations, so too did the film. American films that went on to redefine the industry were made possible by the film’s success, including The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Klute, Play Misty for Me, Dog Day Afternoon, Medium Cool, and Mean Streets — as well as some other Texas-based flicks, from The Last Picture Show to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Pauline Kael summed up the reason for the influence of the film well: “Maybe it’s because “Bonnie and Clyde,” by making us care about the robber lovers, has put the sting back into death.” Near the end of the film, Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie reads a real-life poem written by the gunslinger:

“Someday they’ll go down together;

They’ll bury them side by side;

To few it’ll be grief—

To the law a relief—

But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.”

And so it went. In the hot summer of 1934, it was death for Bonnie and Clyde. But in the summer of ‘67, it was death for Old Hollywood.

Neiman Marcus is synonymous with Dallas. Born and raised here, it’s always loomed large in my imagination. But this summer, something changed.

In August, I enjoyed a screening of Frederick Wisemann’s 1983 documentary about the Dallas institution, simply entitled The Store, shown to a sold-out audience at the Anthology Film Archives in East Village. (Until then, I hadn’t been able to find a good copy online to enjoy it, but I’m glad I waited. The 16mm print was a fun way to experience it.)

The timing was ironic, though, as the idea of the Store had been on my mind all summer long. My fascination with department stores and mall culture has been long-standing, but it felt like it was following me. More on this in a minute. First, a little bit about Wiseman’s film.

Shot in his signature cinéma vérité style, The Store brings you into the all-encompassing universe of the 1980s department store (What better way than through Neiman’s?). Using a handheld camera and natural lighting, audiences enter the controlled chaos necessary to give paying customers a neatly curated experience during a busy Christmas shopping season.

Everything happens in The Store. It is the place to lunch, to lounge, to talk with friends, to dream; it is, or was, the town square. In this way, the department store was the precursor to what would become the American mall. Alexandra Lange, author of ‘Meet Me by the Fountain,’ a study of the mall as a cultural institution, reminded the crowd as much while introducing the showing as part of the Anthology’s SHOPPING WORLDS series.

For the uninitiated, Frederick Wiseman’s pictures might seem a bit odd — even boring. He made his name with long, (many over three hours) documentary films focused on the inner workings of various industries. “Meat” tackled the food industry, “Model” about, well, life as a model. “The Store,” most obviously, could not have been made anywhere but Neiman’s.

Neiman’s, now synonymous with Dallas luxury, was founded in the city by Carrie Neiman and Herbert Marcus at the turn of the 20th century. Out-competing the likes of Sanger-Harris and Titche-Goettinger — other hyphenated heavyweights in Dallas — Neiman-Marcus rose to international fame, favorites of stars from Grace Kelly to Elizabeth Taylor.

Heir to the store’s throne, Stanley Marcus, a prominent member of Dallas’ Jewish community, would turn his namesake into a synonym for luxury and the best of American capitalism. An avid photographer, his book Reflection of a Man: The Photographs of Stanley Marcus, showcased the result of this success: soirées with Christian Dior in Paris and in beautiful Italian villas to chic parties at his house at Nonesuch Road in Dallas and sailboat get-togethers.

Stanley Marcus didn’t just live this luxury for himself — he brought it to his customers and the city he loved. To make this a reality, however, took intense planning and coordination among departments, staff members, models, artisans, and senior-level executives. The Store became a city.

Everyone who grew up in the Land of the Free has their own relationship with “the Store” — and the American mall itself. I suspect mine is no different, but I was lucky to witness a longer tail end of the golden age than many of my Zoomer peers. Dallas is blessed with a flurry of iconic malls, and their continued existence into the mid-2000s (with the Galleria and NorthPark still thriving today), left me positively jaded on the American-Mall-In-Decline question.

Many people have written and discussed the decline and fall of the American mall much more eloquently than I ever could. (Jack of The Perfume Nationalist even produced a four-hour podcast of him and friends enjoying the modern mall in 2019 and discussing its legacy, which I highly recommend.)

I grew up in North Texas where three main malls filled my imagination as a child. Valley View Center I enjoyed for its wonderful food court and iconic Sanger-Harris arches. The Galleria, with its vaulted glass ceilings and indoor ice skating rink, still feels ripped from the eighties — and I appreciate it even more now for its frequent appearances on the 80’s soap, Dallas. Much of my time growing up, though, with spent walking around NorthPark Mall — a luxury art-mall in North Dallas — with friends (literally Fast Times style. I was lucky, and I didn’t even know it!).

With these kinds of options, notwithstanding beautiful, outdoor malls like Highland Park Village (also featured on Dallas), the tearing down of Valley View hit me like a ton of bricks. Closed and shut forever, what was really a slow process of decay seemed like the turning of a switch. Not until then did I realize just how things had changed. Luckily, both NorthPark Mall, and the Galleria to a lesser extent, have been well kept up over the years. NorthPark continues to be a Dallas — and nationwide — institution.

A successful mall is made by its stores. Malls have always been anchored around two or three major department stores. NorthPark had the privilege of Neiman’s to set its fashion-forward tone.

During her speech introducing The Store, Lange described how as American suburbs grew in the post-war era, centrally-located department stores felt the pressure to expand with them. Initially, executives at Neiman’s were weary of the idea of expanding outward toward the suburban mall. But NorthPark was a different beast altogether — it put a priority on style. Still, to this day, every shade of paint brushed and tile laid fits stringent specifications set by the institution. Wonderfully preserved, walking in NorthPark today is as close as you’ll get to stepping back into Camelot.

But not all malls — or department stores for that matter — put a premium on style like NorthPark or Neiman’s. More than a meeting place or a community center, malls have always been about consumption and profit. With the rise of Amazon, so went the Store. And that’s why it’s been on my mind.

I’ve been thinking about the rise of “premiumization,” the funny trend that while everyone generally agrees that things are worse now, companies continue charging more for the same or worse products now labeled premium or plus. “They don’t make ’em like they used to,” can be applied to most things in our modern slate-grey American life, but department stores are an especially sad culprit.

Re-watching my favorite show, the classic 1980s soap Dallas, puts this into perspective. In the early seasons, Victoria Principal’s Pamela Barnes Ewing takes a gig at a fictional Dallas department store, filmed at the downtown Sanger-Harris store, but clearly modeled after the much-mythologized Neiman’s. (The name of the store? The Store. It’s everywhere.)

In its new high-definition restoration, details I missed before underscore the complete decline of the department store as a whole. Gone are the days of the Store as a luxury, exciting experience — today we prioritize convenience more than anything. But I’m preaching to the choir.

While I was watching Pam on Dallas this summer, I had an almost cinematic flashback to March of 2021, when I found myself browsing through a stuffy estate sale in Dallas. I found a pristine copy of a forgotten 1974 novel by author Knight Isaacson entitled— you guessed it — “THE STORE.” (I can’t escape it!)

Centered on the bright gold cover is the facade of a Renaissance Revival street-corner store building, near-identical to the iconic Neiman Marcus flagship store in Downtown Dallas. The book flap previews the story:

THE STORE tears away the glittering facade of the nation’s most famous and prestigious department store-Lehson’s and Company of Tulsa City, Oklahoma — to reveal the shocking power struggle and sexual decadence that lie beneath. This powerful and disturbing novel probes the dark underworld of the fashion industry….

Into this universe of glamour and commerce come the famous designers to accept their awards: Heymano, a handsome young man with superb taste and a driving inner madness; Ceil Bordon, high priestess of the cosmetic world, with a miraculous “zinger” that will change the habits of the super-rich; and Alice Short, a tiny juggernaut of a designer whose power can send careers crashing.

Behind the scenes the store executives play the power game: Eugene Boardman, a cold and calculating “gentleman”; Bill Bethel, the suave fox in charge of promo-tion; Walter Culbertson, premier profit-wringer utterly without ethics; and Carl Guest, the display director whose jaded eyes see through the sham…

THE STORE is a big work. It’s funny at times, frightening at others. What happens inside its walls is true. You’ll never again be able to enter a department store without knowing tha some of the wares have been bought by power and intrigue, at the price of human dignity…

While I never picked it up for myself, to my regret, I ordered it online a few months ago. The novel was sadly not as strong in its execution as its intriguing preview. The concept, though, seemed to foreshadow the massive success of airport novels like Scruples by Judith Krantz, released four years later. Krantz told the salacious and glitzy story of Billy Winthrop from her transformation of a chubby girl living in Paris to becoming a millionaire in New York and later the founder of a legendary Beverly Hills boutique.

Today, the various media products entitled The Store and Scruples harken back to a time when stores were a luxury experience rather than a cheap help-yourself buffet.

Back to the film. Some critics of Wiseman’s film felt The Store was off-base from his earlier work, which focused on grittier, more “real-life” issues, with self-explanatory titles like “Juvenile Court,” “Welfare,” and “Hospital.”

But Wiseman put a probing New York Times reporter in his place in a 1980s profile, defending his film’s spotlight on the people who make the glamour of Neiman’s possible. “There’s a certain group of both documentary filmmakers and documentary film critics who feel that you have to make movies about poor people,’’ he told the Paper of Record.

“There’s more to the society than poor people, and there’s obviously a relationship between poor people and rich people…I don’t think my films particularly confirm or deny — and they’re not meant to — any particular social theory and they don’t offer solutions.”

During the screening of the film, the audience of young people clearly enjoyed this trip to the past. To my generation’s eye, the American Store is a fever dream. It is Another World…

Now, we’re relegated to a dark theater to experience the Store through others’ eyes. Here’s to holding out hope that maybe one day, soon, we can all say again: I’ll meet you at the Store.

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My grandfather, Robert Norman Mercier, was born in Wolfborough, New Hampshire in August of 1939. He worked in high school making church pews, then went off to the Air Force. He wanted to see the world, but was sent to Texas—San Antonio, then Amarillo, then Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth. My grandma used to tease him, “Well, you saw all of Texas—and that's the world." He went in for his interview at Sears while still in service and went to work there the Monday after he left the Air Force. He was a manager at Sears until his death in 1985.

He loved James Bond movies. “Dr. No was the first Bond movie we saw at the drive-in theatre. He was crazy for it,” my grandma told me. “He loved any war movies or those with planes.” One of his favorites was Strategic Air Command, a 1956 film by Anthony Mann starring Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson, as the Strategic Air Command was the Air Force division he served in. The first movie he ever saw with my grandmother was South Pacific (1958). “He hated that they stopped the plot to sing but he thought Mitzi Gaynor was very pretty,” my grandma recalled.

My grandmother met my grandfather in the 1950s at a bowling alley in Fort Worth. She also recalled the Clover Drive-In Restaurant, a popular hangout spot at the time. There, my grandfather and two of his Air Force buddies sat in one car, while my grandmother Lou and her friends Nancy and Beverly sat in another, and they all flirted with each other. They would marry on August 5, 1961.

My grandfather was the youngest of four. His older brother, Fred, served in the Navy in the Pacific Theatre during World War II from 1942 to 1945. His father, Napoleon (‘Nap’), was a barber and first-generation born American, known to be a wonderful and loyal man, which he surely passed down to my grandfather and my dad. Napoleon adored his wife Corinne, who was three years older than him. Napoleon’s father, Augustin, was born in 1861 in Quebec but later immigrated to Massachusetts. The Mercier men were very patriotic Americans.

My Mercier family line can be traced back to the early settlement of the St. Lawrence River, when King Louis XIV of France sponsored the Filles du Roi (‘The King’s Daughter’s) program, where hundreds of young women were sent across the Atlantic to settle and marry French colonists in the New World. Our line directly traces all the way back to Pierre Mercier, a Frenchman living in Canada, who would marry one of these 800 women, Marguerite Lamain—my 8x great-grandmother—on January 8, 1685. I found a genealogical document created by my Great Aunt in the 1970s that confirms this. (Interesting note—Actress Chloë Sevigny and I share ancestry with Marguerite, who had previously been left a widow from a marriage with a man named Michel Rognon; this is where Sevigny’s line splits).

“The Mercier family goes back to the beginning of Canada. We are one of the twenty or so founding families of Canada. One of the Mercier ancestors was actually a Premier of Quebec,” my cousin Joanne told me a while ago. “The town outside of Montreal is named ‘Mercier’ for our family.”

Napoleon moved the family to California and opened his own barber shop in San Diego. His son, my grandfather, attended Helix High School in La Mesa, California at the same time a young Dennis Hopper was a student. His yearbook notes that he participated in football, the bowling club, and cross country. His favorite song, also noted next to his yearbook photo, was “The Fool” by Sanford Clark, and his favorite band was ‘The Four Freshmen.’

Later, of course, my grandfather would land in the heart of North Texas, where he met my grandmother and started his family. Everyone who knew my grandfather describes him as always sweet and kind and easygoing. My dad, who is very much the same, recalled as much and has talked with me about his memories of watching the local news with him and sitting in the garage to enjoy rainstorms as they rolled through town.

I only wish I could have met him. ✭

By 1978, the tenor of the city was changing. The Cowboys had just come off their second Super Bowl win the year prior, and the DFW airport — larger than the island of Manhattan — brought the world to Dallas, and Dallas to the world.

That year, the premiere of the creatively-titled mega-soap ‘DALLAS’ pushed the fictional Ewing family into the global spotlight, with fans tuning in to an American family as dysfunctional and hypnotizing as the city it satirized.

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To cap off the year, an event never seen in Dallas, a huge music festival, brought thousands of crazy, young, excited fans to the newly-dynamic city.

But Dallas was a curious choice for a rowdy rock concert. It had always been a conservative city — one awkwardly stuck in its ways but yet still so progressive in its attitude toward building bigger and better than anyone else. It had historically been an almost violently right-wing city (I say almost— the President of the United States had just been murdered there a decade and a half before), with a militant base of conservative suburban women heading up political charges up into the late sixties.

Knowing that, you can understand why it must have been a sight to behold. Imagine: it’s another sweltering July day in Dallas — rumored to be one of the hottest of the 1970s. You’re on a crowded highway full of colorful Oldsmobiles, on your way to the biggest music festival Texas has ever seen. Pulling up to the Cotton Bowl, it’s hard to miss the beer cans that litter the ground or catch a breath of air not thick with the stench of weed.

80,000 other people have come to enjoy the first Texxas World Music Festival, with headliners including Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Eddie Money — and the crowd is massive.

Situated at the heart of Fair Park, the Cotton Bowl — the iconic open-air sports stadium hosting the event — still stands today. It opened in 1930, and the Cowboys called it home for a dozen seasons in the sixties. Not since 1956, when a handsome young Elvis passed through Dallas followed by 30,000 roaring fans (the record at the time) had the stadium been this filled for a concert.

In August of 1979, when my Dad was 15 years old, he found himself at that summer’s Jam, billed as “The Last Concert of the Last Weekend of the Last Summer of the Seventies.” He was not in the front row, however, but rather at a fundraising booth with a youth group. He and the others would switch off to watch performers that included Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Rush, Pat Travers, and Billy Thorpe.

During one of these breaks, he made his way all the way down to the general admission area of the stage. The young boys were surrounded by a sea of topless women.

The Texxas Jam was a huge success, and more events were quickly scheduled into the eighties. The festival would run annually until 1988, expanding into Houston. At the 1979 show that my dad attended, day-pass tickets were only 15 bucks. The Texxas Jam amassed a stunning slate of musical guests from the late seventies into the eighties, including Fleetwood Mac, Blue Öyster Cult, Journey, the Eagles, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bon Jovi. The concerts were hot — many passed out in the Texas heat from exhaustion and dehydration, but the show went on.

News of the Texxas Jam rocketed around the country and was instantly legendary. The Texxas Jam helped to establish Texas as a major hub for live music, paving the way for other large-scale events like South by Southwest (SXSW) and the Austin City Limits Music Festival. These festivals have since become major cultural events, drawing in thousands of fans worldwide and showcasing some of the biggest names in music. ✭

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It’s an odd feeling to look at photos from the past and feel as if they’re from the future. In a world where we seem to innovate less and refine more, it has become a common occurrence.

I am always shocked by the supersonic European Concorde and the American Space Shuttle captured in the same photo. There was something magical about the ingenuity and creativity of the 1970s on the heels of the moon landing.

Have we lost that completely? From pulp novels about fantastical space civilizations to hypnotic musical and fashion inventions, to literally flying from New York to London in three hours, it seems we have.

A great example of this decline in creative thinking is the mysteriously well-hidden Dallas Pedestrian Network, constructed nearly 50 years ago. From newscasts of the time, everyone seemed optimistic (it was even billed as a “subterranean mall,” which, I’m sorry, sounds awesome).

The innovative passageway was built in record time, connected all of the major downtown buildings, and featured shops, restaurants, and even dance studios. It exists today as a series of half-abandoned three-mile-long tunnels and underground passages that almost nobody living in Dallas seems to remember.

It all started with one of those fantastical 1970s ideas. Famed urban planner from Canada Vincent Ponte, who was also the mind behind Montreal’s (successful!) “underground city,” had the idea to bring Dallas to new heights, figuratively speaking.

Expanding downtown urban life underground, or so they thought, would prove to be the best escape from the heat, offer an attractive entertainment space, and bring a new urbanist flair to a city that needed it. They even had a plan to add a subway system. But 30 years later, at a time when Downtown Dallas really needed saving, the pedestrian network was blamed for Downtown’s downfall.

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Once upon a time, Dallas’ iconic skyline was no façade. Buildings held major worldwide banking and financial institutions, corporate offices for airlines, and other major companies. As hard as it can be to believe, Downtown was bustling with activity.

Until it wasn’t. The truth is, Downtown was already beginning its decline by the mid-70s, during the underground project. (As an aside, a friend mentioned to me how this struck him as odd, as Dallas in the national imagination seems firmly in the camp of being an eighties town more than a seventies one. Something to explore in future newsletters, I’m sure.) The city was expanding outward, with strip malls and local shops so close to home that Downtown entertainment just wasn’t as important. This was true across the country. The proposed solution certainly didn’t help the problem and seemed to seal its fate.

But the justification made all the sense in the world — need to escape the heat during record-setting summers? Just go grab lunch underground! Maybe stop and get a haircut, or walk to a meeting across town. The idea seemed foolproof.

Designs from the era show a really unique and forward-thinking construction. However, the Pedestrian Network never quite lived up to its full potential. While it was initially successful, it reduced additional street traffic by such an amount that downtown Dallas began to feel deserted.

Old photos of Downtown before the network are always shocking to people my age that never knew Downtown Dallas as a place to hang out or shop. SMUJonesFilm preserves and uploads old WFAA film reels, and a few wonderfully preserved old videos of the city show a busy street reminiscent of New York or Chicago.

From shoppers at the Neiman Marcus flagship to smartly-dressed businessmen, the streets were busy with foot traffic. It was another world.

So, instead of turning Dallas into a utopian urbanist story of the future, the network would reduce Downtown to even more of a wasteland than it had become. By the early 2000s, mayor Laura Miller had some choice words for the project, telling The New York Times that it was “the worst urban planning decision that Dallas has ever made” and suggesting she’d have liked to fill the tunnels in with cement.

It was never filled with cement. The network still stands today, and you can even see some of it for yourself. Some sections are privately owned. Certain larger portions of it, including an entrance in a Louvre-like triangular glass structure called Crystal Court, are still open with a few restaurants and a Starbucks. However, to the casual observer, the tunnels themselves are invisible.

It’s more recently been labeled for “de-emphasis” by the city government (i.e., signs pointing to the network have been removed, website pages cut, and it is only open during business hours on the weekdays). Now, there are only a few spots where you can still enter the tunnel, and ownership seems to be divided between buildings.

Some have posted videos exploring the tunnels. It looks reminiscent of the popular “dead mall” trend — long, empty spaces, that can only be described as eerie and liminal.

The fact that the tunnels still exist, though, begs the question — could they be utilized again today? The problem they tried to solve was noble, and if pulled off well, they could have been a success.

Sweltering, hot summers in Dallas can become unbearable, and an underground network that’s better publicized today might actually bring more people Downtown. The Dallas Morning News ran a piece in 2016 advocating the use of the tunnels again for walkability.

It has even attracted a cult following of sorts, with an active Facebook group of 2,500 followers offering unofficial “tours” of the tunnels, and graphic designers using it as a basis for creative map-making. YouTubers often go underground to explore it for themselves.

Above ground, new attractions like the AT&T Discovery District and exciting restaurants, hotels, and bars have made downtown more of a destination than it has been in years. Yet, the streets outside remain cramped with cars, the sidewalks are small, and it can be hard to escape the unpredictable weather.

Whether or not the network ever sees the light of day again, one only hopes that Dallas can still dream big. For now, the city seems keen on hiding one of the more interesting aspects of its history. Let’s just hope it’s not filled up with cement. ✭

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