But they have light rail! That should automatically make them world class! ;)

I remember when Dallas was big on prime time, and at one point TV producers were considering a similar program about the San Jose area, where I lived at the time. I believe the working title was "Midas Valley." I guess the reason it never made it is that they couldn't figure out a way to make nerds sexy for TV.

I've lived in Dallas for 23 years and I love it to death, but... There isn't anything to see or do here.

Wait, I take that back - I just went to the Dallas CVB website, and I see that if you come to Dallas, you can go see Southfork Ranch. I guess that settles that.

I went to the "Sights and Attractions" page on the Dallas CVB website, and got the whole list of attractions - 126 in all, including such highlights as a Dave & Busters (and not the oldest Dave & Busters in the area, either), "The newest addition to the Coyote Ugly chain," and a "90 minute DVD set to music about the City of Dallas."

We went to Dallas for a few days last year and I must admit that I wasn't terribly anxious to go there. I had a better time than I expected. Their mass transit system was surprisingly easy to use and (unlike METRO) I found that it ran on time. The art museum is fabulous. The shopping is good (they have a Crate and Barrel outlet!) and the food was good.

Dallas does sort of strike me as being similar to Houston, in that there's no real tourist area, which makes people think that there's nothing to do in either city. I guess having "stuff to do" being spread out throughout the city decreases its visibility.

I will admit that I expected to see lots of big hair and a few cars with longhorns on the front. With the exception of maybe one or two women at Highland Park Village, I saw neither.

I was born in Dallas and I now live in Sugar Land.

Dallas has a lot to offer--like people hitting and spitting on Adlai Stephenson and of course there is the Kennedy assassination and the Dallas Cowboys and mudhole called the Trinity River...

Houston has violent drivers, and dirty air, and of course the filthy water of Galveston Bay.

What a Chamber of Commerce kinda state, huh?

And then of course there is Waco.

Oh yeah, I love that phrase, "world class." Can you imagine Paris saying it is world class? Or perhaps London or New York.

If a place has to say it is world class, it isn't.

Texas cities all have a very distinct image. To me Dallas has an image of being plastic and artificial. I'm not really sure why they built a ciy there. Fort Worth on the other hand has an "Old-West" authenticity, a little second fiddle gravitas that makes it the more appealing of the pair to me. Without FW, D-FW is a real cipher.

And Houston? Houston is a big, ugly, but ultimately real city. It's like a gangly, dirty, smelly mutt...that's friendly and loyal and despite the smell, you end up loving it anyway. It's real. That why despite all of the traffic and smog, I prefer Houston.

And as far as Dallas' claim to more 4 and 5 star restaurants than New Orleans. The number may be right, but New Orleans is a much smaller city, and has it's high-end restaurants clustered in the French Quarter and Central Business District making it so much easier to go on a culinary vacation than Dallas.

It's hard for me to say this about my hometown, but Dallas does suck. There's zero leadership here...these guys could screw up an anvil. It's been that way since the city council went to single-member districts, and it became necessary for each council member to fight every other council member for their place at the trough. Therefore, absolutely nothing gets done for the city as a whole. Everything that gets done right any where near here is done by the 'burbs.

Trying to be World Class while failing to even try to be Texas Class is a problem, too. God knows I've railed about the psychology that doesn't allow Dallasites to embrace our Texas roots but will gen up a city-wide lickfest for random Italian handbag manufacters and French shoe salesmen and Spanish architects selling bridges that don't go anywhere but across the cesspool of the Trinity. Bah humbug.

I've got to echo the negative comments about Dallas. I was born and raised there, leaving at 17 for UT-Austin in 1989. I've lived in Austin and NYC since my departure.

1. Dallas has no real compelling attraction that can't be found in some other city.

2. As someone already mentioned, Dallas lacks a concentrated area that's easily accessible to tourists. I suppose there's the West End, Lower Greenville and Deep Ellum, but none are particularly compelling and it's not easy to access all three.

3. I had the misfortune of being at that huge mall in Frisco over the holidays. To me, that mall is a perfect snapshot of Dallas. No soul. It's got basically nothing organic or unique. It's all suburbs and chain stores.

I've been in Austin for a total of 12 years and would never live anywhere else in Texas.

That being said, I agree that the Art Museum is nice and that it's good that they've made progress on their mass transit.

It'll be one impressive feat if that ad agency can find anything compelling to drive people to that wasteland.

True story: Several years ago, we went to Ireland for two weeks. Just driving around in a rent car, soaking up the sights and visiting as many pubs as possible.

In some small village in the west, we stopped for lunch. While waiting for the food, I visited the restroom. A local stood at the next urinal. Clearly, I appeared a foreigner.

"French?" he asked.

"Beg your pardon?" I replied.

"Are you from France?" he said. "We get a lot of tourists from France this time of year."

"No," I said. "I'm from Texas."

"Oh," he said. "Who shot J.R.? eh?"

I was in a blue funk the rest of the trip.