If you build it dump $82 million into it, they will come.

Mayor Mike Rawlings sends word today that it's a lock: The annual, traffic-snarling blood feud between the University of Texas and Oklahoma University known as the Red River Shootout will be played in the Cotton Bowl at least through 2020.

Says Mayor Mike:

I am very delighted to announce that Pete Schenkel has informed me that the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma have signed an agreement to extend the "Red River Classic" through 2020 in the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park.More >>

The backdrop, the pageantry, the Fried Everything: There are plenty of reasons the folks at Texas and Oklahoma wouldn't mind keeping the schools' annual rivalry at the Cotton Bowl.

But these are college football guys we're talking about, so you can't underestimate the Big R. The schools split $10 million in revenue with the Red River Rivalry at the Cotton Bowl, Texas AD DeLoss Dodds told the News recently, more than they would if they moved the game back to Austin and Norman. So, yeah: They want to stay here. The sheen on their back-up jets depends on it.

But the sheen on their back-up jets also depends on happy Sooners and Longhorns fans, and that happiness depends on the very swankiest accommodations. Thus the schools' call for $25 million in spruce-ups to the Cotton Bowl, just a few years after the city shelled out $57 mil for the same purpose. Clean it up and the game stays in Dallas through 2020: That's the deal, Pete Schenkel, chairman of the State Fair of Texas' sports committee, told the City Council late yesterday.

"Do we have a signed commitment? No," he said. "We have in Texas what I would call a handshake deal. ... It's ours to lose."

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State Fair of Texas

​Moments ago, a Friend of Unfair Park directed my attention to the State Fair of Texas's Facebook page, where 18 old photos from fairs past were just posted. All are worth a look-see; remember the fun we had browsing Nick DeWolf's stash of pics from the '77 State Fair? But this one in particular sticks out, because Big Tex looks nothing like the kindly Patron Saint of Corny Dogs he's become over the decades. The cache of stills also features something I don't think I've ever seen: the original 49-foot-tall Santa from Kerens out of which Jack Bridges fashioned the original Big Tex 60 years ago.

A (small) look at the proposed Summer Place Park

​Speaking of Fair Park ...

In the wake of its inclusion on the American Planning Association's list of Great Public Places, several Friends of Unfair Park have asked: How's that long-proposed plan to open the fairgrounds year-round(ish) coming? And: What about the pending closure of The Women's Museum?

As far as the so-called Summer Place Park is concerned, Willis Winters, second-in-command at Park and Rec, tells Unfair Park this afternoon that it's still on track to debut in the summer of 2013. But before that, the 500-foot observation tower-slash-ride we've looked at here and there and here again should be done in time for next year's State Fair of Texas. They poured the foundation over the summer, Winters says, and vertical construction will begin in November or December, at the latest. But we'd love to get a look at State Fair President Errol McKoy's master plan for Summer Place Park, which is also said to include a water ride of some kind involving ... flames?

"It looks like a cross between a log flume and drag racing," explains Winters, who says McKoy would be a far better person to talk about about this than he, since the State Fair's the one actually footing the bill and planning the park. But Winters does also mention plans to install WiFi-enabled cabanas on one side of the Midway, which folks will be able to rent out for, ya know, parties or weekend whatevers. Alas, McKoy won't be able to chat till after Big Tex is tucked away. We've tried.

As for The Women's Museum, which, as The News's Christina Rosales noted yesterday, is shuttering due to lack of funds, city officials say some at City Hall knew that was coming two weeks ago. But Park and Rec officials found out about it only yesterday. Which is why Park Department director Paul Dyer tells Unfair Park there are no plans for the 111-year-old building, once Fair Park's coliseum (and opera house): "Fair Park is a wonderful entertainment venue for our city," he says via text, "and we are looking at many options to enhance the year-round attendance and vibrancy in the park."

From the Baltimore Sun photo archives

​Talk about your good timing: Last night, Dallas City Hall sent word that the American Planning Association yesterday released its list of the Great Places in America, which is divvied into three categories -- Great Neighborhoods, Great Streets and Great Public Spaces. It's the latter with which we're concerned today, because in the midst of the State Fair of Texas, Fair Park has been named as a Great Public Space.

No need to tell locals why; it's a treasure, after all, and has been since its creation in 1886, and certainly since its George Dahl extreme makeover for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. But here's what the APA has to say about Fair Park:

Fair Park combines City Beautiful Movement planning influences with the country's largest collection of 1930s Art Deco architecture. "A wonderful place to spend a Saturday afternoon exploring ... art and architecture," says Eddie Hueston, former Fair Park executive general manager. For more than a century the park, two miles east of downtown Dallas, has been delighting millions of visitors. Attractions on its 277 acres include eight museums, six performance facilities, and a major sports stadium.

To which Mayor Mike Rawlings, former head of the Park Board, adds this in the city's heads-up: "In less than 10 years Fair Park catapulted from being on the National Trust for Historic Preservation lists as one of the 'Eleven Most Endangered Neighborhoods in America' to receiving their Honor Award for restoration. Fair Park provides an example to our city and others communities of the excellent results that can be realized when we set as a priority the preservation of our history, art and architectural treasures." Hear, hear.

Photos by Danny Fulgencio

​Danny Fulgencio spent this glorious First Day of the Fair where he's always perched this time of the year: on Main Street, along the parade route for the State Fair of Texas's kick-off parade that's a little bit o' this and a whole lotta that. One of Dallas's finer traditions -- just the right shade of Big City with an appropriate dash of Small Town. A slide show's forthcoming for those of you who couldn't make it downtown today; some of us are working, after all, and trying not to watch Rangers-Rays (which isn't hard at this point). A few more photos follow till then.More >>

The fair's no place for you, sister. Have you tried the Lodge, though? They pay better, and the chicken wings are to die for.

Just got off the phone with a lovely young lass from PETA, America's favorite activist group turned performance troupe. They're always really nice to talk to, those PETA folks, right until they start trying to reincarnate your lunch.

Apparently they had applied for a booth at the State Fair of Texas -- their first attempt to take their act inside a state fair, where they hoped to give fair-goers a slightly less homespun (and slightly more vomit-inducing) portrait of the lives of American livestock. Here's what they proposed, in an email to the Fair's exhibition team:

Greetings from PETA. We are writing to request outdoor exhibit space at the state fair for a thought-provoking twist on the traditional 4-H booth--one revealing the damaging side of animal agriculture that the public is increasingly curious about. PETA's display will represent a more realistic side of the meat, dairy, and egg industries, with the four H's standing for "hellish for animals," "hazardous to the environment," "heart attack-inducing," and "hypocritical for teaching kids to care about only certain animals and to disregard others."

We will screen this video narrated by Sir Paul McCartney, which illustrates these points through undercover video footage from factory farms and slaughterhouses, where animals have their throats slit while they are still conscious and are even skinned alive. The video also shares data from the United Nations about the meat trade's devastating impact on lakes and rivers as well as various health studies about how meat contributes to the obesity epidemic, heart disease, and cancer. The display will also include free copies of PETA's vegetarian/vegan starter kit.

The fair, of course, took a pass. As well it should have. Look, PETA: We love your devotion to reminding us of all the hidden heinousness in our bacon-wrapped lives, especially when it involves naked ladies, as it almost always does. But I'm taking a 4-year-old to the Fair tomorrow, and I don't need her watching Paul McCartney curb-stomping baby lambs, or whatever's in that movie. Next year, pitch something a little more understated -- something a little less, you know, PETAish. The fair will still turn you down, but at least you'll have more cause to bitch about it.

Photos by Leslie Minora

The planters were hung by the Midway with care ...

As often as I can, I take a stroll or bike ride through Fair Park -- I'm lucky enough to live across the street from one of my favorite places in Dallas. And while the landscape is usually the same beautiful, quiet ghost town, recently things have been changing. The Fair is rising. Every day, a new tent pops up, a State Fair sign is resurrected, and ticket booths spring forth from wherever they hibernate for most of the year. No sign of the big 'ol cowboy Big Tex just yet.

Yep, it's almost State Fair season -- the countdown clock is down to 35 days and change -- the best time of year to be a Texan begins September 30 and runs through October 23. If you need a visible sign that the heat from the sun is about to give way to steam from fired-up fryers, here it is: a quick stroll through what's happening in Fair Park. For optimal anticipatory joy, walk or bike around in person.

Care for a corn dog?

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