The Oak Lawn Tales – But That’s Where The Strange People Live!

One of the perks of getting my first job at the tail end of the tech boom was that Multi-national corp flew me down for a house hunting trip. For the five and a half years prior I had lived in slummy apartments around Lawrence, KS, and I had very low standards for my new apartment. However when I flew down, Jeff took me around and showed me the town. One look at his swank pad and my standards completely changed; now I wanted an incredible living space and I had a day to find it. When I met my Realtor I gave her my specifications – it had to be an amazing living space yet located in the suburbs minutes from work. She really had her work cut out for her. During the preceding years of the tech boom North Dallas exploded with housing options to handle the new technology class, and all these complexes had amenities like coffee bars, golf pros to help you with your swing, on site car washes, and other useless items. Most of them also looked like the same white stucco apartments I’d been living in during school, which was no longer acceptable to my new found high standards. Hours before I had to return to Kansas the Realtor took me to Vail Village Club in North Dallas.  The faux-hardwood floors and unique layout were nice enough for my new apartment snobbery, and I signed a lease.

My First Apartment.

The first week in Dallas I only owned what I had from college, all of which fit in my parents minivan, about $500 to my name, and no car to buy anything new. I took the bus three miles to work (which somehow took an hour), walked to the grocery store for cans of soup. The day I got my first paycheck and signing bonus, I stared at the checks in awe – I’d never seen a check with that many digits (there were 4) with my name on it. Over the course of the year I furnished: Target furniture my parents bought for me, A TV because I had a bad day at work, a couch because a friend from High School was visiting and I wanted it to look like I was a grown up, etc.

Living in North Dallas introduced me to many things. For example, my apartment complex had a racquetball court on site. Once Jeff and my co-workers discovered my apartment had that, I suddenly achieved the kind of popularity of a kid with the new toy on the playground. The complication was that I’d never played Racquetball before arriving in Dallas, which really didn’t matter to them. Jeff enjoyed pounding me into the ground, but my co-workers were nice enough to come down to my level until I got up to speed. Another thing I discovered were $30K a year millionaires; Dallas residents who made $30K a year but spent it all on nice apartments, nice clothes, and nice cars. Style as incredibly important to all my co-residents, and I struggled to even exist in the same league. Finally, I learned about loneliness. It’s hard to find friends when you move to a new city, and it takes a lot of time to adjust. Living so close to work gave me an easy excuse to not meet people – I could always just spend more time at work instead.

After a year I knew I wanted to move, but was too lazy to look for a new place so I renewed for six months. When that was up I decided it was time for me to look for something new. I now had new requirements

1. I didn’t want to be close to work. It was too easy to spend all my time there otherwise.
2. I wanted to be closer to Cedar Springs, the rainbow center of Dallas.
3. I wanted something cool and trendy

During the late nineties Dallas had been trying to revitalize it’s downtown by converting it’s old warehouses and buildings into loft space. Magnolia Station was the old Shell Oil headquarters. It was adjacent to the parking lot to the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Stars and Mavericks, and was the starting point for the Katy running trail. When I took the tour I just fell in love; this was going to be my new home.

The apartment

My office space

My living room

When I told my co-workers I was moving downtown, farther away from work, they were puzzled. One asked “Why move downtown? That’s where to strange people live?” They eventually accepted it, though the tailgate party at my place before the Mavericks may have helped. Even though it was only 600 sq ft, I still have fond memories. For one year when I was 24 years old, I had a cool loft apartment in downtown Dallas, lived a couple blocks from the gay clubs, and went running on the same trail as the rich and powerful of the city. I was one of the strange people, and I loved it.