by Shawn LIVENGOOD

You may not know this, but there is an elab­o­rate sys­tem of pedes­tri­an tun­nels through­out down­town Dal­las. It was orig­i­nal­ly de­signed as a way to keep busy Dal­l­a­sites out of the heat dur­ing the sum­mer and the thun­der­storms in the spring and fall. There are al­so spaces avail­able for re­tail and ser­vices un­der­ground, cre­at­ing a sort of self-suf­fi­cient city un­der­neath the streets.

It’s a good idea… in the­o­ry. Of course, like many cool things in Dal­las, it all went hor­ri­bly wrong when it ac­tu­al­ly got put in­to prac­tice. Num­ber one, down­town Dal­las is dead. As soon as five o’­clock pass­es and of­fices close, the work­er bees of down­town buzz back to their hives in the sub­urbs as fast as their Hum­mers can car­ry them. Even dur­ing the day it’s a rare oc­cur­rence to see a liv­ing soul out­side of their cu­bi­cle. Num­ber two, any­thing that re­quires the peo­ple of Texas to get out of their SU­Vs and ac­tu­al­ly move their lazy ass­es around by mere foot­pow­er is des­tined to fail. As a re­sult, walk­ing through the tun­nels is like walk­ing in a ghost town. Emp­ty re­tail spaces out­num­ber the oc­cu­pied ones at least two to one. Even the ones that re­main open are host to ab­sent cus­tomers and one or two ex­treme­ly bored-look­ing clerks. The em­ploy­ees un­der­ground seem to spend more time en­gag­ing in idle con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er, paus­ing on­ly to emit a sigh of frus­tra­tion when­ev­er a po­ten­tial cus­tomer saun­ters by.

One day, I set out to ex­plore the mys­te­ri­ous labyrinth I had heard so much about. Equipped with my wits, an iPod, and a blur­ry map culled from the dark cor­ners of the in­ter­net, I be­gan my jour­ney at Foun­tain Place Plaza, rough­ly three blocks east of the Dal­las Mu­se­um of Art. You might know it as “that weird look­ing kind-of-tri­an­gu­lar” build­ing. The neat thing about Foun­tain Place Plaza is that the build­ing changes shape de­pend­ing on which di­rec­tion you view it from. It goes from wide tri­an­gle to thin sliv­er of glass to chopped-up obelisk as you move around its perime­ter. Dal­las must be one of the on­ly cities with a 60-sto­ry op­ti­cal il­lu­sion in its heart.

I walked down a stair­case lead­ing from the street to en­ter a mas­sive gar­den of foun­tains. Un­like most build­ing com­plex names like “For­est Park” or “Riv­er Glen”, Foun­tain Place is ac­tu­al­ly a place with a lot of foun­tains. Dur­ing a sum­mer af­ter­noon you might find busi­ness types en­joy­ing their lunch un­der a shady tree, min­gling with the bored chil­dren of sum­mer en­joy­ing an il­lic­it dip in one of the dozens of fountains.

The un­der­ground en­trance is tucked away be­hind one of the tiered foun­tains. I was in; I had fi­nal­ly gained ac­cess to the elu­sive tun­nel sys­tem. No longer did I have to en­dure the scorch­ing wrath of the Texas sun. I was free from the le­gion of pan­han­dlers shuf­fling about the side­walks. The great labyrinth was mine to ex­plore. Of course, things do get a lit­tle con­fus­ing when your on­ly method of nav­i­ga­tion is a bare­ly-leg­i­ble map and no sense of di­rec­tion; I had fool­ish­ly ne­glect­ed to bring a com­pass. What would my for­mer scout­mas­ter think of me? On­ly a hand­ful of signs of­fered cryp­tic di­rec­tions, and sur­prise junc­tions con­nect­ed un­der­ground tun­nels to sec­ond-sto­ry sky­walks. It’s kind of like fol­low­ing a dusty old pi­rate map, on­ly there’s no trea­sure at the end. Or pi­rates, for that matter.

It’s easy to get lost be­tween build­ings due to lack of signs, but it does add a bit of ad­ven­ture to an oth­er­wise bland at­mos­phere. While oth­er cities have their clear­ly marked sub­ways and help­ful tourist maps post­ed on every cor­ner, Dal­las seems to an­tag­o­nize any­one fool­ish enough to wan­der the strange­ly an­gled streets of down­town. The city is a trap for lost souls who dare to es­cape the clean, or­ga­nized uni­for­mi­ty of the sub­urbs. You al­most ex­pect to find David Bowie and an army of Jim Hen­son pup­pets taunt­ing you at every corner.

The path winds through a num­ber of promi­nent build­ings in the down­town area, but the tun­nel sys­tem it­self re­mains dis­turbing­ly bland. Most of the way, gray or white walls are all that you see. At some points it’s like walk­ing through a park­ing garage with no air con­di­tion­ing. These cor­ri­dors were built in a time where func­tion tri­umphed over form. In some cor­ners, how­ev­er, you can still see the faint ghosts of dec­o­ra­tion: an un­lit fos­sil dis­play, a fad­ed mur­al, signs ad­ver­tis­ing shop­ping ar­eas long derelict. The tun­nels were built with the no­ble pur­pose of cre­at­ing a sub­ter­ranean fu­sion of busi­ness, shop­ping, and leisure. Now, they mere­ly shut­tle sun-weary busi­ness­peo­ple be­tween cu­bi­cle prisons.

Af­ter an hour or two of ex­plo­ration and dis­ap­point­ment, I de­cid­ed to turn back. I had ex­pect­ed some grand en­deav­or of smart ur­ban plan­ning. In­stead, I got a few air-con­di­tioned sky­walks and emp­ty store fa­cades. It’s sad to see no­ble ef­forts fall in­to such dis­use. But it is a good way to waste a lazy afternoon.

Filed under Non-Fiction on September 1st, 2005

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