It makes you wonder that after all the extraction has taken place, we might end up with a landscape akin to Mars
Scientists wonder how Mars lost all its water. Maybe mankind was there before now and having discovered how to extract hydrogen efficiency from water, set a chain reaction in motion that fried the planet dry
It'd make for a good Tom Cruise movie, perhaps call it; 'The time before present. Planetary armageddon
I lived just a few miles from Denton about 5 years ago. Way better club scene than in Dallas and 20 miles closer. Dan's Silverleaf would be one of the best clubs in the country were it not for the sound system. Still, they are able to attract grade A talent to play the club, so they must pay the acts what they want whether the final product is always intelligible to the audience or not.
I've had the huge pleasure of visiting denton several times in the early/mid 90s. I adore it there. It really was a place like no other I'd been to before. The thing is denton always seemed to be, well, like denton. I've nothing more to add other than it's great.
"slacker" can be a light and loose term it doesn't have to be so stiff and linear. Richard Linklaters film "slacker" from early 90s conjures a loose feel and aesthetic that I believe the author was or is getting at not so much their work activity but their oddness and bohemianism or themes of disconnectedness and cultural drift. It was also filmed in Austin and embodies the early 90s or late 80s Austin feel.
wow what is your deal? You just vomited all over the comment section. You're taking a positive article about Denton and using it to spew a negative diatribe? Write your own article about Denton and get it published. Don't get so caught up in labels that you can't appreciate the beauty of a town and what it has to offer and someone else's positive take on it albeit one person's take. Take a breather. Just because someone or something did you wrong in Denton doesn't mean you have to be mean to the positives of a town. Bitterness clouds things.
Please. The prose found in the Guardian -- even in the comments section of the football articles - is well and away better than anything found in any periodical in Texas. Better even, than the Austin Chronicle.
World class is a term deserved by the bands and artists that DO live in Denton and have SUCCESSFULLY made it. Whether it is winning a Grammy, being nationally recognized, or celebrated to celebratory , or throwing on a successful venue that caters to national artists, THOSE PEOPLE are World class musicians. They may have friends, but you can't ride the wave all of the way. You need to let these people have a voice of their own for writing unprofessional articles like this just makes you look stupid. Put the power back into the venues, the people that go back and forth to plays shows in Dallas, the people who network with the Dallas Observer, D Magazine, and have a better view of the entire DFW all-together. I live outside of Denton now, and my life has been 100 times better just because the people who live where I live tend to have more of an idea of what is going on around them, hence why there's no fracking here.
"Bet you won't find a public school in Houston or San Antonio that is 90% any race. But you will in Atlanta."
You have a very odd understanding of Texas and its history and contemporary place in American society. Even a cursory Wikipedia check will dispel your strange claims that Texas was not and is not part of The South. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States#Symbolism
Also, talking about how prevalent slavery is or w/e makes you look fucking stupid. It reflects on your entire city being a "southern" town. If you want to end fracking, don't come off like a hipster racist. The only reason Denton is targeted by corporations is elitism. Put your hipster personality aside for once and think that the issue may be more threatening then your charm. It may sound like a strike at your personality, or a rebuttal of my lack of attempting to be 100% literate... but you're not "so cool" that you're going to solve these problems with your ego. Use your brain.
There's more issues than just fracking in Denton that need to be addressed. For example, the entire government has an extra-specific surveillance plan there being that Obama has an underground hideout there. Don't believe me? Ask the white drummer from Curvette for an answer good enough for you... Renewable solar energy, solar panels, and extremely visual differentials in the wind, trees, air, etc. are more (italicized)... POWERFULLY SOURCED in Denton as opposed to maybe any other city in America.
How easy is it to turn a blind eye? Just as quick as it is to HEAR THE TRUTH. I'm not speaking from a source of humiliation, but when it comes to statistics, your own ego, or your own opinion about issues is EXACTLY all it takes for you to be in the global social hour, and for you to ignorantly side with unpopular ideas. These things may be normal to a country town, but you live in DALLAS - FORT WORTH. You live in a metroplex with the rich, extremely wealthy business people, global market marketers, and ETC. You set an example for yourself that makes it easy for corporations to look at your city and take advantage of you, without you knowing it (or while you're looking elsewhere to blame the problem on.) I know a little bit more about this then some of you would like to admit (I used to WORK at Hailey's, I used to WORK at 35 Denton, your "gossip" has done nothing but hurt this city, and keep it from reaching a more PRIMARY understanding of what's going on).
BTW: I re-released my album Timpani La Moda by my old band Arcane Timpani from April 2013. Get it on youtube... XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
I'm equally frustrated. Say a lot of nice (albeit backhanded) things about Denton, name drop some of the local spots and characters, then pan it if they can't win an uphill battle against some of the biggest energy companies around. Poor form.
This article speaks about many of the things that make Denton a great small town, but I strenuously object to the title "slacker capital." All of those great things that are mentioned were not created by a bunch of slackers - they happened because Denton is a vibrant community full of hard-working, talented people. A "world-class music scene" cannot be created by a bunch of slackers.
Denton needs all the help it can get, but it's also writing stupid articles like this that won't get the message out as clearly as you should. When you're talking about politics, i would steer away from using words to try to make people empathetic towards your point of view. This is a poorly written article, and you should focus on the issues for they are far more important than the personality of your town.
I can exponentially help in this category if people would get off of their high horse and be honest about all of the shit that went down last year.
Which I'm doing so with some of Denton's more mature "local natives."
If you want a problem solved about this hit me up at nasirmazboudi@gmail.com
Excuse me, but "slacker capital"?! What the hell? Dentonites are hard and passionate workers. We bring together some of the best coffees in the world, and bring together the best beers around. Our musicians are dedicated and hard-working, practicing long hours while keeping "day jobs" to fund a grossly underpaid musical career. We fight to keep our streets and neighborhoods clean of litter, our water the best around, and our air healthy to breathe. We go to work every day, driving creativity and innovation in spirit at our jobs and in practice at our play. Denton has worked extremely hard to build a vibrant and thriving culture, full of musicians, gourmet restaurateurs, top beer houses. Not to mention the industries and businesses we support—even the ones trying to poison us, in some cases.
The South doesn't even really give a shit a bout slavery, because they know every locale did it at one point. It doesn't register the way northerners--who are profoundly segregated if you've ever seen Boston for instance--would think. The South is much more about country ways vs. city ways.
It's not easy to be comprehensive in an online comment, as you know. I was just trying to name a few important things, not everything. I don't think I've spelled it out, but I actually don't see being southern as an entirely bad thing, though I do think Texans are squeamish about their connection to the South because of all the negative associations with it.
Growth isn't "progress", it's just growth. Growth always comes at a price. Something people refuse to understand or plan for. The American ideal of endless "growth" for growth's sake, leading to some imaginary prosperity or "good jobs", is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Thank you for being thorough. I've read many of Campbell's works. It was remiss of me to not acknowledge the grey area that exists on the subject and that historically Texas has been caught in between those two worlds. I also didn't mean to dismiss the Civil War, slavery, or Jim Crow as arbitrary considerations, that would be unreasonable. I simply believed you were defining "the South" selectively.
Denton also has a thriving third wave coffee scene, with some of the best coffee shops in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex area. And a giant art and farmer's market. And a lot of other cool stuff.
It is a very cosmopolitan city and there's a great deal of culture and sophistication. Both my son's have lived there for years. I'd love to live there if it weren't for the traffic. Nouveaux Riche assholes are numerous and obnoxious. It's a very ,very fun city. Party town for sure.
See Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press); Robert Wuthnow, Rough Country: How Texas Became America's Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton University Press); and Walter l. Buenger, The Path to a Modern South: Northeast Texas between Reconstruction and the Great Depression (University of Texas Press) for starters. If you're such an expert, where are you getting your information from? Also, cosmopolitanism is not antithetical to Southerness. Take a look at Atlanta, the whipping boy from earlier in this thread.
You're absolutely right about that. Part of the migration of southerners into Texas. You're also correct that it's considered South and West simultaneously. That's an important delineation, though.
I'm originally from L.A., so save the demagoguery. The Dallas area is incredibly cosmopolitan. Your impression of people from Texas is proof enough that you don't really know what you're talking about. But you've given yourself an opportunity to back up your claim. Who are these Texas historians who supposedly agree that Texas was/is part of the South? That's the capital "S" South, referring to the historical region which, if you're familiar with ANY scholarship on Texas history, you should already know.
In no way do I see this as progress. I hate it. It's just not the environmental impact but it is fucking ugly. Sorry, there's a weird delay in the updating since Guardian reformatted the site.
They are their own civic entities, but when you are surrounded by the ever encroaching behemoths it's a bitch to have your own identity. I remember my first experience in New Braunfels, I was thinking these people are European. Even inside OKC, we have these silly little hamlets or villages, that provide nothing different from the city at large. Whereas, the different cultures and their districts make OKC far more interesting, it even makes the Packing Town more interesting for more than the " perfume " of the Stockyards.
I don't have the data--and neither do you--but you might be surprised. I don't see a lot of racial variety in River Oaks on one end of the spectrum or the Fourth Ward on the other.
And if things like slavery and the Civil War are arbitrary to the one guy, I don't see how anything in history truly matters, if we're going by that kind of logic.
In Texas, hispanic and german heritage dominate, a Southwestern characteristic.
That may be very true of South Texas (and a good part of Houston is Hispanic, if not Germanic), but do you have any idea how many McThisses and McThats live in North Texas?
When I first started driving here, you could pass 18 miles of pastures, wheat fields, livestock operations, salvage yards on the way to Norman. Down to one mile now. OKC,Moore, Norman one big block of continuous development. Personally, I hate it. Please don't say anything about Norman. I was their Technical Director for NYSA for eight years. I was there 2 weeks ago, I could not recognize the place. It's exploded. Where I used to watch nighthawks and see Buntings is a 7-11 and houses.
I thought Denton was best known in the UK as the fictitious home of Brad Majors & Janet Weiss. I guess keeping us dependent on Saudis is the "hip" thing for some.
Denton, slacker capital of the American southwest, grows up
Comments
Hmmm, out there alright
To frack or not to frack, that is the question
It makes you wonder that after all the extraction has taken place, we might end up with a landscape akin to Mars
Scientists wonder how Mars lost all its water. Maybe mankind was there before now and having discovered how to extract hydrogen efficiency from water, set a chain reaction in motion that fried the planet dry
It'd make for a good Tom Cruise movie, perhaps call it; 'The time before present. Planetary armageddon
I lived just a few miles from Denton about 5 years ago. Way better club scene than in Dallas and 20 miles closer. Dan's Silverleaf would be one of the best clubs in the country were it not for the sound system. Still, they are able to attract grade A talent to play the club, so they must pay the acts what they want whether the final product is always intelligible to the audience or not.
Apologies in advance for pointing out the obvious, but due to its location, Athens, GA has never been the "slacker capital of the Southwest."
I've had the huge pleasure of visiting denton several times in the early/mid 90s. I adore it there. It really was a place like no other I'd been to before. The thing is denton always seemed to be, well, like denton. I've nothing more to add other than it's great.
"slacker" can be a light and loose term it doesn't have to be so stiff and linear. Richard Linklaters film "slacker" from early 90s conjures a loose feel and aesthetic that I believe the author was or is getting at not so much their work activity but their oddness and bohemianism or themes of disconnectedness and cultural drift. It was also filmed in Austin and embodies the early 90s or late 80s Austin feel.
I thought it was Denton Ohio.
After all, who in Texas reads the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Bat guano crazy
I am not sure that the issue is fracking exactly.
it is having oil or gas operations within 200 yards of ones home. The danger and disturbance is not limited to fracking.
That is only one of the dangerous operations involved in drilling.
For most people the sole major asset they own is their home.
If drilling reduces the property value of that home, OR makes the home unlivable people have every right to ban drilling within a cities limits.
wow what is your deal? You just vomited all over the comment section. You're taking a positive article about Denton and using it to spew a negative diatribe? Write your own article about Denton and get it published. Don't get so caught up in labels that you can't appreciate the beauty of a town and what it has to offer and someone else's positive take on it albeit one person's take. Take a breather. Just because someone or something did you wrong in Denton doesn't mean you have to be mean to the positives of a town. Bitterness clouds things.
Nice mention of Audacity Brew House. It's not often you get a brewery right across your back yard fence. I need to get busy installing a gate.
Dog help us, you don't mean throwball?
Atlanta is a cosmopolitan, Western European capital compared to Houston, the world's biggest hick town.
If you lump Austin with DFW and Houston, then you've never been here.
Please. The prose found in the Guardian -- even in the comments section of the football articles - is well and away better than anything found in any periodical in Texas. Better even, than the Austin Chronicle.
World class is a term deserved by the bands and artists that DO live in Denton and have SUCCESSFULLY made it. Whether it is winning a Grammy, being nationally recognized, or celebrated to celebratory , or throwing on a successful venue that caters to national artists, THOSE PEOPLE are World class musicians. They may have friends, but you can't ride the wave all of the way. You need to let these people have a voice of their own for writing unprofessional articles like this just makes you look stupid. Put the power back into the venues, the people that go back and forth to plays shows in Dallas, the people who network with the Dallas Observer, D Magazine, and have a better view of the entire DFW all-together. I live outside of Denton now, and my life has been 100 times better just because the people who live where I live tend to have more of an idea of what is going on around them, hence why there's no fracking here.
Deuce Deuce,
I'm done here.
again, nasirmazboudi@gmail.com
"The below comment is correct that Texas is not, has not been, and will probably never be considered part of the South."
Errr, you are sorely mistaken.
"Bet you won't find a public school in Houston or San Antonio that is 90% any race. But you will in Atlanta."
You have a very odd understanding of Texas and its history and contemporary place in American society. Even a cursory Wikipedia check will dispel your strange claims that Texas was not and is not part of The South.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States#Symbolism
Also, talking about how prevalent slavery is or w/e makes you look fucking stupid. It reflects on your entire city being a "southern" town. If you want to end fracking, don't come off like a hipster racist. The only reason Denton is targeted by corporations is elitism. Put your hipster personality aside for once and think that the issue may be more threatening then your charm. It may sound like a strike at your personality, or a rebuttal of my lack of attempting to be 100% literate... but you're not "so cool" that you're going to solve these problems with your ego. Use your brain.
There's more issues than just fracking in Denton that need to be addressed. For example, the entire government has an extra-specific surveillance plan there being that Obama has an underground hideout there. Don't believe me? Ask the white drummer from Curvette for an answer good enough for you... Renewable solar energy, solar panels, and extremely visual differentials in the wind, trees, air, etc. are more (italicized)... POWERFULLY SOURCED in Denton as opposed to maybe any other city in America.
How easy is it to turn a blind eye? Just as quick as it is to HEAR THE TRUTH. I'm not speaking from a source of humiliation, but when it comes to statistics, your own ego, or your own opinion about issues is EXACTLY all it takes for you to be in the global social hour, and for you to ignorantly side with unpopular ideas. These things may be normal to a country town, but you live in DALLAS - FORT WORTH. You live in a metroplex with the rich, extremely wealthy business people, global market marketers, and ETC. You set an example for yourself that makes it easy for corporations to look at your city and take advantage of you, without you knowing it (or while you're looking elsewhere to blame the problem on.) I know a little bit more about this then some of you would like to admit (I used to WORK at Hailey's, I used to WORK at 35 Denton, your "gossip" has done nothing but hurt this city, and keep it from reaching a more PRIMARY understanding of what's going on).
BTW: I re-released my album Timpani La Moda by my old band Arcane Timpani from April 2013. Get it on youtube... XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm3UoJ_SyoA
Actually...capitol is the building. Capital is correct for the town/city.
I'm equally frustrated. Say a lot of nice (albeit backhanded) things about Denton, name drop some of the local spots and characters, then pan it if they can't win an uphill battle against some of the biggest energy companies around. Poor form.
This article speaks about many of the things that make Denton a great small town, but I strenuously object to the title "slacker capital." All of those great things that are mentioned were not created by a bunch of slackers - they happened because Denton is a vibrant community full of hard-working, talented people. A "world-class music scene" cannot be created by a bunch of slackers.
Denton needs all the help it can get, but it's also writing stupid articles like this that won't get the message out as clearly as you should. When you're talking about politics, i would steer away from using words to try to make people empathetic towards your point of view. This is a poorly written article, and you should focus on the issues for they are far more important than the personality of your town.
I can exponentially help in this category if people would get off of their high horse and be honest about all of the shit that went down last year.
Which I'm doing so with some of Denton's more mature "local natives."
If you want a problem solved about this hit me up at nasirmazboudi@gmail.com
Excuse me, but "slacker capital"?! What the hell? Dentonites are hard and passionate workers. We bring together some of the best coffees in the world, and bring together the best beers around. Our musicians are dedicated and hard-working, practicing long hours while keeping "day jobs" to fund a grossly underpaid musical career. We fight to keep our streets and neighborhoods clean of litter, our water the best around, and our air healthy to breathe. We go to work every day, driving creativity and innovation in spirit at our jobs and in practice at our play. Denton has worked extremely hard to build a vibrant and thriving culture, full of musicians, gourmet restaurateurs, top beer houses. Not to mention the industries and businesses we support—even the ones trying to poison us, in some cases.
Slackers, my ass. Bugger off, Guardian.
The South doesn't even really give a shit a bout slavery, because they know every locale did it at one point. It doesn't register the way northerners--who are profoundly segregated if you've ever seen Boston for instance--would think. The South is much more about country ways vs. city ways.
They're not squeamish at all. The South is very much a part of Texas identity, proudly so. The west doesn't do home cooking or fly their freak flags.
It's not easy to be comprehensive in an online comment, as you know. I was just trying to name a few important things, not everything. I don't think I've spelled it out, but I actually don't see being southern as an entirely bad thing, though I do think Texans are squeamish about their connection to the South because of all the negative associations with it.
Capitol*
Someone save English from the English.
Growth isn't "progress", it's just growth. Growth always comes at a price. Something people refuse to understand or plan for. The American ideal of endless "growth" for growth's sake, leading to some imaginary prosperity or "good jobs", is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Thank you for being thorough. I've read many of Campbell's works. It was remiss of me to not acknowledge the grey area that exists on the subject and that historically Texas has been caught in between those two worlds. I also didn't mean to dismiss the Civil War, slavery, or Jim Crow as arbitrary considerations, that would be unreasonable. I simply believed you were defining "the South" selectively.
Denton also has a thriving third wave coffee scene, with some of the best coffee shops in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex area. And a giant art and farmer's market. And a lot of other cool stuff.
Yes, but you'll find it nearly impossible to find something that categorically places Texas outside the South.
It is a very cosmopolitan city and there's a great deal of culture and sophistication. Both my son's have lived there for years. I'd love to live there if it weren't for the traffic. Nouveaux Riche assholes are numerous and obnoxious. It's a very ,very fun city. Party town for sure.
It's important to add that scholarship exists that places Texas between the South and West depending on which factors you take into consideration.
The hillbilly cousins in Oklahoma who migrated through The Ozarks up to Appalachia.
See Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press); Robert Wuthnow, Rough Country: How Texas Became America's Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton University Press); and Walter l. Buenger, The Path to a Modern South: Northeast Texas between Reconstruction and the Great Depression (University of Texas Press) for starters. If you're such an expert, where are you getting your information from? Also, cosmopolitanism is not antithetical to Southerness. Take a look at Atlanta, the whipping boy from earlier in this thread.
You're absolutely right about that. Part of the migration of southerners into Texas. You're also correct that it's considered South and West simultaneously. That's an important delineation, though.
It's not that Denton. It's Denton USA. It's taking the piss at the generic wholesome All-American cultural icon about to be clasted
I'm originally from L.A., so save the demagoguery. The Dallas area is incredibly cosmopolitan. Your impression of people from Texas is proof enough that you don't really know what you're talking about. But you've given yourself an opportunity to back up your claim. Who are these Texas historians who supposedly agree that Texas was/is part of the South? That's the capital "S" South, referring to the historical region which, if you're familiar with ANY scholarship on Texas history, you should already know.
You can take that example to the within 5 miles city v country.
Yes, I try to explain how vast the place is and people who have never experienced it, have no idea and that is at 90-95 mph.
In no way do I see this as progress. I hate it. It's just not the environmental impact but it is fucking ugly. Sorry, there's a weird delay in the updating since Guardian reformatted the site.
They are their own civic entities, but when you are surrounded by the ever encroaching behemoths it's a bitch to have your own identity. I remember my first experience in New Braunfels, I was thinking these people are European. Even inside OKC, we have these silly little hamlets or villages, that provide nothing different from the city at large. Whereas, the different cultures and their districts make OKC far more interesting, it even makes the Packing Town more interesting for more than the " perfume " of the Stockyards.
I don't have the data--and neither do you--but you might be surprised. I don't see a lot of racial variety in River Oaks on one end of the spectrum or the Fourth Ward on the other.
And if things like slavery and the Civil War are arbitrary to the one guy, I don't see how anything in history truly matters, if we're going by that kind of logic.
1. Texas considers itself both South and West simultaneously.
2. DMN ran a piece a few decades ago that quoted someone's older family member as tensing up a little when crossing over the Louisiana border.
3. Germanic is really only South Texas.
That may be very true of South Texas (and a good part of Houston is Hispanic, if not Germanic), but do you have any idea how many McThisses and McThats live in North Texas?
So, your argument is that there is progress. But it's still an individual city. That's my point. Denton will remain its own city, like Norman.
Fracking in Denton is done for natural gas not oil.
When I first started driving here, you could pass 18 miles of pastures, wheat fields, livestock operations, salvage yards on the way to Norman. Down to one mile now. OKC,Moore, Norman one big block of continuous development. Personally, I hate it. Please don't say anything about Norman. I was their Technical Director for NYSA for eight years. I was there 2 weeks ago, I could not recognize the place. It's exploded. Where I used to watch nighthawks and see Buntings is a 7-11 and houses.
I thought Denton was best known in the UK as the fictitious home of Brad Majors & Janet Weiss.
I guess keeping us dependent on Saudis is the "hip" thing for some.