Photos by Brian Vogel

Location: 170 S. Cesar Chavez Blvd.

Dallas has more shopping centers per capita than any other city in the United States, and perhaps that has something to do with its glam-obsessed culture and its extensive alley system. In fact, the 1,402 miles of alleys nearly puts it in Chicago’s stratosphere. While visiting, I did get the feeling that Dallas was a conservative, less-vapid version of Los Angeles. Seemingly everyone drives cars, there are no bikes or bike lanes in sight, and a pretty cool downtown trolley system remains largely underutilized. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s quite possible that the people here do not give a shitfuckdick about conservation and throw out a lot of trash. Also, two things really surprised me about the city: Though it has the money to build massive highway systems (it has the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the country), 47% of its alleys are rated unsatisfactory due to damage from heavy garbage truck traffic. Also, not many of them are very interesting. One would think that with all these belles constantly throwing out all sorts of trinkety trash, walking down an alley would be like tripping over the half-buried treasure chests on some sort of pirate-hooker island.

When my friend and I finally found an interesting alley, I whipped my fingers out of my invisible gun holsters and basically solidified my rep as just the damn best. Yeeeehaw. I also discovered that finding an alley, setting up a bunch of pricey photo equipment in it, and hanging out while looking uncomfortably white is a lot easier when you’re packing heat. Now, walking around while strapped is illegal in Raf county, but I was visiting a friend who happened to be a Dallas cop. Therefore, buying water bottles from passing homeless men (which I did) and telling pretty ladies that they’re “packing quite the fart bakery back there” (which I wish I did) is pretty much game. I didn’t have to quickly, nervously look around corners once, twice–I just stood around feeling like I was in charge of this dark corner of the world. So besides being baffled at how Dallas women have their hair curled in time for brunch and at how a friend sped down the highway driving the Bentley of a Russian lady he had picked up at the Ritz Carlton, this was definitely the highlight of my trip. Just, yes.