Defining Dallas

Sometimes you find yourself wand'ring the streets of our fair city (in a car, of course) passing strip mall after strip mall (nail salon, retail postal outlet, doughut shop), McMansion after McMansion (second mortgage, whut whut!), panhandler after panhandler (they're always veterans, aren't they?), and you may ask yourself, "How do I define this place?"

Well, the Visual Dictionary has done it for you ... kind of.

A remarkable grassroots undertaking by a lot of folks who like to take pictures of words, the Visual Dictionary aims to get photos of as many words as possible, whether that's a tattoo, advertisement, packaging, etc.

Somebody took a photo of the "DALLAS" lettering by the Galleria. That puts us in league with London, Seattle and Phoenix. It also means we beat Austin, Lansing and a whole lot of other cities who haven't had anyone take pretty pictures of their names just yet. Even Fort Worth gets the shaft, since the software seems to only support one-word places, and nobody's taken a picture of "Fort" yet. Booyah, Cowtown. For once, Dallas wins on simplicity. --Andrea Grimes