My Honest Thoughts on Dallas // + my experience as a black woman

so in two weeks it will mark one year of me being in dallas which is honestly insane but i figured since i'm coming up on a year living in dallas i would give you my honest opinion of how the last 12 months have been pros cons to it because i definitely have some thoughts about it and not all negative not all positive and i figured i would just make a helpful video because texas in general is becoming a very popular place for people to move it's like very hot spot right now if you didn't know it is and if you're considering moving to dallas then i wanted to put together like a small list of topics that i can cover or honestly just really any questions that you want to be asking yourself before you move to a new city granted i have been here only 12 months which means that a lot of this is going to be very subjective honestly to my specific experience but i feel like some things i can just say in a more objective way so i figured that today i would cover things like the cost of living which of course is super important whenever you're moving then things like culture and people as well as things like neighborhoods safety general feel of areas jobs and opportunities which i probably should listen a little bit sooner but whatever and then also things like more lifestyle related and activities i don't use this word but like the vibe of dallas in a way i've talked about this briefly on my channel before but i i will try to mention as much as i can about the dating scene here because i'm sure people are curious about that as well um but i just will give you a heads up that i don't have that much to say about it but i will give you my two cents don't worry to start off with the cost of living dallas in general and texas in general is a very affordable place to be just to give you a little bit of perspective i live in a 670 square foot apartment and i paid 1300 a month it's a little less than i was paying in philadelphia and i have a lot more space everything is bigger in texas and that is very much true there is so much land there's so much space i'm not really at a point in my life where i'm looking to buy a house or anything or buy property but just by doing a really quick search you can find basically a mcmansion in texas for a fraction of the price that you would find it in a state that costs a lot more to live in so there's like small things where you're going to be paying the same price as anywhere in the city really but places like restaurants and bars or whatever clubs and things like that are a lot cheaper for example i got i went to new york to visit my friend and i we went to a rooftop bar which i get it's a rooftop in new york with a beautiful view understandable i paid 22 for a cup of rose a cup and i'm talking a cup which is like it was literally this big it was like the size of like the urine samples you have the doctors that of not even that good rose that's something you could get like for five dollars in texas yeah there's just some things that i can't justify spending that much money on anymore which is why i appreciate how inexpensive it is in texas nationwide gas prices have been like insane lately but when my friend first moved here a couple months right before the pandemic and she was paying i'm pretty sure she said two dollars and fifty cents per gallon which is nothing last point that i want to make in terms of cost of living is that texas is becoming a hot spot for people especially cities like austin plano's getting really big dallas fort worth area like metropolitan area is very big as well which of course as you can imagine the more people come in the higher prices rise so i'm making this video in 2022 if by the time you're watching this and it's i don't know when just keep in mind that prices might start to be competing with places in like the east coast so but in terms of culture and people and the general like vibe of dallas one thing i just want to say off the bat is that i know that people think about like ranches and tumbleweed and hillbillies with no teeth that's not what texas is like not all of it at least a lot of texas is and generally speaking when you're not in a city that's probably what you're gonna find and i i've been avoiding going to any of those places i feel like it's one of those experiences where i could live the rest of my life without having a hillbilly texas experience so the way that dallas is set up is completely different than a lot of cities that i'm used to and i think this goes for most texas cities picture if you've been to philadelphia or new york or even like la chicago when you go downtown or center city if you're in philly you can kind of find like everything there downtown area or the center city area is where you can like go to do stuff right dallas is not like that downtown is primarily business oriented and it's like primarily like a business district so you go downtown to work but outside of working hours it is ghost town like ghost ghost town that was a lot for me to get used to because i keep mentioning philadelphia just because that's the city i can compare it the best to and philly you can just kind of walk into center city and you have everything there you can grocery shop there you can go to a restaurant you can go to a museum you can go to a bar there's parks there there's ice cream shops and there's also work there so it's all kind of a jumble together and that was ideal for me because i'm like i can just go to work and then after work i can stay there and go to happy hour and all that dallas does not work that way like dallas downtown is where i work and then there are specific neighborhoods outside of downtown where that's primarily where like the things happen so that was a really big adjustment for me because i feel like the whole point of a city is to have that kind of hustle bustle a little bit and dallas is not like that now there are things like skyrises there's a lot of really beautiful architecture but generally there's something that feels like it's missing a little bit like it feels a little ghost towny when you go to specific places because you're like expecting there to be a lot of people and then there's nothing or no one there when i had first moved to dallas people who had been living here for some time started to call dallas uppity and i didn't know what that meant but basically uppity means like self-important or arrogant i don't want to be rude but i feel like i just need to spill a little tea but i feel like dallas is kind of getting a lot of those cali la influencers moving here to their sky rises and driving up prices of the entire city and kind of like driving around in their beamers type of thing i think that's what they mean by by uppity but some people love that right like some people are looking exactly for that that kind of like luxury wealth type of thing and i think a lot of dallas is transforming into that believe it or not there's parts of dallas that are super super wealthy which was a very shocking thing to me to find out the point i wanted to make with that is that if you were looking for a type of city that kind of has everything in one place dallas is not it which leads me to my next point of like transportation and mobility you're gonna need a car in dallas like dallas is not a place where you can just like oh i'm just gonna bite to the museum and then after that i'm gonna bike to the grocery store you can but like i'm sending my full prayers to you because there's like hardly any places for people to bike around here so you're probably gonna be biking with like insane texas drivers and i do not recommend you doing that the public transportation here is kind of subpar to be honest i mean there's buses that drive around and there's like kind of a little little train type of system but generally you more than likely are gonna need to have a car a little less about dallas specifically a little bit more about the people so like i mentioned some people feel like it's getting uppity i can't say that dallas is as diverse as somewhere like new york for example i feel like dallas doesn't feel like it's dominated by one type of demographic in a way there's a really really huge hispanic influence here and i think there is also a very strong sense of that like southern um like southern black culture houston had the most like real black and proud type of southern feel to it but dallas has it as well a lot more than austin at least i would say i do want to say this though and this is where kind of it's my specific experience so i don't want to say that if this is a 100 fact it's just something i've noticed that kind of weird not weird meow but it kind of made me think about this a little bit i've noticed that when i go to specific neighborhoods or specific places like i know who i'm gonna see there like there are some neighborhoods that are like specifically you tend to see more white people there and then there's other neighborhoods where you specifically only see like hispanic people there and then same thing for black communities and i'm not saying that it's not integrated but there's places like deep ellum for example which is a really like pop in neighborhood where there is three main streets of a lot of different restaurants a lot of different little shops cafes and mars and bowling alleys and stuff like that there is one of the places where you tend to see a lot more of that integration and there's kind of people from everywhere but at the same time because crime rates are actually increasing which is something i'm going to talk about a little bit later it seems like there's specific types of people that like avoid it now because it's not safe meaning the more wealthy people are like no that's a bad place so you should never frequent it and i think one thing that dallas really taught me that i i realized i was kind of part of the problem a little bit is that when you think about texas as a whole you probably have like really negative perceptions of it right like uneducated again racist hillbillies gun caring bug hunting whatever and a lot of that is very true but one thing i noticed about when i once i moved here is that there are so many hispanic communities and hispanic people who are so proud of the fact that they come from here and they have a very strong tie to texas and the influence that they have on this place and same thing with black communities and i think it's it's getting a little more popularized thanks to artists like megan the stallion or beyonce who are both from houston i'm very proud of it i'm not saying that i'm trying to change the the perspective that people have about texas but i just wanted to say that it's really important to not just over stereotype everyone because there are genuinely deep like black southern roots even when it comes to music and food and you know again the culture i'm like you know beating a dead horse right now but i guess what i'm trying to say is that there's just a lot of non-white communities that are actually generally really proud of being from here i think that's a pretty good segue into talking about like neighborhoods and safety and things like that i have really only been here like a few months but there have been a few neighborhoods that i visited that i feel like i have a general sense of how they feel and i do want to put up a little list of neighborhoods that i know that i feel like are really nice that you may want to consider if you are going to be moving to dallas like deep ellum bishop arts district lower greenville uptown white rock lake area and again like i mentioned these are just my specific experiences according to some statistics and like crime reports it looks like the crime is increasing quite a bit in deep ellum so i think that's why some people are getting a little bit paranoid by it but it is a super fun place to be if you're looking to just have a really fun night out because it kind of has everything there uptown is nice because it's somewhere where you actually have like sidewalks and places to walk and do things for example i get my nails done in uptown um all my like cosmetic related things are in uptown and then there's places like bishop arts district which is a little more like artsy and a little more hipster type of vibe to it but i love bishop arts district it's one of my favorite places actually because it's just it's cute and quaint they have really amazing food there it's kind of where people go to do like they take yoga classes there and dance classes there and it kind of has like that feel to it there's like fancy little boutiques and cute little shops there so that's like one of my favorite neighborhoods to go to um lower greenville is also really nice lower greenville is kind of like the strip of again little shops and stores restaurants bars it's where i go my to do grocery shopping and as you go in the lower greenville area a little bit north of that that area of dallas is a little more different in that it looks like there's actually like sidewalks and like places to to walk your kids and things like that it looks like very family-friendly so that's something to put on your radar and then white rock lake is also really nice that's actually where erica badu lives if you didn't know she is from dallas um she's very proud of being from dallas some people still see her around and and you know being her quirky self i have yet to see her unfortunately i have not yet but anyway that's that i'm just gonna be fully honest there was a shooting in my complex like literally in the parking lot when i first moved here there have been honestly a handful of shootings in nearing neighborhoods i haven't really run into issues myself where i feel like i was really unsafe also another thing again when you're in a city this tends to happen but the homelessness problem is it's kind of visible honestly and like depending on on where you're driving or which neighborhoods you're in you're going to see less or more of it but that is something that you see around dallas especially in downtown like i mentioned downtown you're really only working there but it's not really like up kept per se yeah the homelessness rate is honestly kind of high all right so i'll try to speed this up but in terms of like opportunities and jobs i just did a little bit of research i don't want to spend too much time on this because this is more like research oriented and i really like recommend you do your own research in terms of like what industry you're trying to go into but based on doing a little bit of research here's like the main type of industries and the job market that dallas offers it is things like construction and building design food manufacturing i.t services logistics media telecommunications instruments okay and company headquarters and then transportation manufacturing and assembly so if any of those industries are ones that are specific to you what you're looking for then you're probably going to find some luck in dallas also after doing a little bit of research it seems that the job market is actually really really good in dallas it's getting ranked pretty high in terms of new opportunities for people because again a lot of companies are moving here a lot of tech oriented oil companies so okay we're coming to the end i've been yapping for so long thanks for being here if you're still here let's wrap up the video by talking about like just general lifestyle and activities and things like that and this is kind of where i'm gonna spill the tea a little bit just because this is the biggest area that i have like issues with when it comes to dallas i'm going to be honest if you're coming from a place that has like mountains and beaches and lakes and paddle boarding and snowboarding and skiing and jumping in waterfalls and the beauty and the earth and the greenery don't move to dallas do not move here because you are going to hate it dallas is very flat and it is very concretey a really brief overview my original destination in texas was austin last year in early 2021. unfortunately i was applying to a bunch of jobs there and i didn't find one so i decided to stay with my company that i was with in philly and they had an office in dallas i was like perfect i just need to be in texas so i'll just move to dallas stay with my company until i can get on my feet and figure out what i want to do from there the reason i loved austin so much and i really hate to complain to compare this to austin because it's not an awesome video but there's so much more greenery and so much more nature related things in austin the thing is like people are not that way and they don't really care about that stuff and are not super outdoorsy so dallas works for them but it's not working for me i feel like i can't really walk anywhere like i can watch the farmers market and deep ellum for example i can't technically walk to get my groceries like a tom thumbs or something but i feel kind of constricted a little bit it's a little inconvenient [Music] there are maybe you follow influencers in dallas who spent a lot of time outside maybe they're doing outdoor yoga at white rock lake and they spend a lot of time biking around the lake and the trails and all that and that's great but unless you live specifically near those trails you're just gonna find concrete now like i mentioned there are trails so there's the katy trail that's really beautiful and i always go skating there i can go running there you can go for a walk like it's very family friendly it's really beautiful and it has a nice little like um katy trail ice shop i think it's called or something like that where you can get some you know some beers and some food places like white rock lake are really beautiful as well super quiet near you know an actual lake but it's like you can't they can't jump in the lake you're never going to see someone swimming in there basically i hate to mention philly again but i'm just i'm i was just so used to being able to walk places that i don't have to over compensate the fact that i'm like have now a sedentary sedentary life right like that's kind of how my life is in dallas now it's it's very like kind of sit on your ass most of the time unless you're unless you're enrolled in like a gym or yoga bar class whatever unless you're enrolled in one of those things and you also work out most of the time you're going to be driving places and i love driving i generally do and it's really nice having a car but there's also like i like to having the option of like okay i'm going to either drive today or i want to walk but the thing is some people like that like some people prefer to stay more indoors right like they're not super outdoorsy and they prefer to maybe just like get dressed really nicely and go out and that's the thing about dallas though i will say people dress to the tea like people dress to impress here i've noticed that like every demographic here like dresses to the tee if they need to right if they're going out to the bar and stuff like expect women to be in stilettos in their nicest dress same thing with men dressed very fresh and nice sometimes they even got the cowboy hat yeah i mean they're dressed to impress so that's my advice if you're a super outdoorsy person i don't think you would like dallas i've had this conversation with some of my friends and they were like that's not true it's just because you're not going out of your way and i'm like that's the thing i want to be able to walk out of my house and just walk like i don't need to be driving 20 minutes to to go walk like that you know anyways so i really hope this has been helpful so far to wrap up let's talk about dating a little bit i'm sorry i really wish i had the juicy tea i don't my personal dating experience in dallas was not good i was really going out of my way to meet people when i first moved here i was going out a lot i was going to the pool hoping to meet people around my complex and i did but as you can probably imagine the more you get comfortable to in a place and the more you start to get settled down your effort starts to like decrease a little bit which is maybe what happened with me i decided to download dating apps and after two months i realized it wasn't for me but again that's a personal experience because i never liked dating apps to begin with that was the first time i had ever downloaded an app i thought like maybe who knows i could meet someone nice on here maybe even make friends or something did not work out for me there was no experience that was really like horrible horrible that i had although some of the profiles i saw on there were very questionable and a little scary i didn't have a ton ton in common with people with men in dallas to be honest like i went on two dates and they were both nice you know like nothing necessarily wrong with it i just would prefer if i'm looking for something a little more long-term i'm looking to have someone who's like on the same page as me which i just didn't find that i don't i don't i'm not like a dating person i don't it's not like fun for me necessarily okay i feel like i'm restricting and i'm holding back and i'm just gonna be fully honest i just don't wanna waste my time i'm sorry i just i know what i like and i know who i am and i know what i want and until like i attract those type of people that type of person i just don't wanna waste my time you know what let me try to be helpful there was a lot of attractive guys on the apps a lot of them with good jobs nice cars if you're into that um a lot of them moved from different places so now not all of them were from dallas a lot of people were from california you seen a lot of people from the east coast as well but yeah i mean you can you you you might get lucky with dating i didn't but you might so that's what i'm gonna say about that okay the lighting is getting pretty bad in here so let me wrap it up in my eyes any move is always worth it now again there are questions you have to ask yourself like can you afford living there think about safety think about costs think about all the things that i mentioned but at the same time if you have the ability to go somewhere else just go just go experience something new i mean i just feel very privileged to be able to do these things so i i want to take advantage of them the grass is not always greener that's something that i really learned and that everywhere you go is going to have pros and cons and some places are going to be better than others and some are are going to be worse than others and part of life is really just experiencing those things and experimenting and finding what you like and discovering yourself and just living it up living it up that is my update on living in dallas for about a year now thank you for tuning in and i will see you in my next video bye

Channel: Anaïs D’Ottavio

Views: 64,409

Keywords: living in dallas texas, dallas texas, culture of dallas, things to do in dallas, texas, living in texas, leaving texas

Id: dCJG_lFjSD0

Length: 19min 38sec (1178 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 19 2022