Category: Life Around Dallas

By Liz Blumberg

While Dallas is famous for many things, one thing stands out in particular: sports. Whether your favorite team rules the field, the court or the ice, there are plenty of opportunities to catch the action – some are just minutes away from campus!

 NFL: Dallas Cowboys

“The House That Jerry Built” is just 30 minutes away from SMU and the home of the Dallas Cowboys. If football is your passion, then you will love catching a game at the brand new stadium that opened in 2009. The biggest attraction? The jumbotron, measuring 160 feet across.

NBA: Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks, the 2011 NBA Champions, play at the American Airlines Center in the heart of downtown. Watching your favorite NBA team is a short cab ride – or DART journey – away. The Mavericks are the pride of Dallas, and owner Mark Cuban is often sighted at restaurants around the city.

MLB: Texas Rangers

The Ballpark at Arlington is considered one of the nation’s prettiest and premier ballparks and you’ll see why once you visit. In the Spring and Summer, SMU students can be always found enjoying a hot dog and a cold drink while cheering on the Rangers.  Out-of-staters: enjoy singing “Deep in the Heart of Texas” during the 7^th inning stretch!

NHL: Dallas Stars

The Dallas Stars are quickly transforming into one of the city’s most popular teams. Tickets are relatively cheap, so it’s easy to get a group together to go watch the Stars tear up the ice. They also play at the American Airlines Center downtown, making any game a short trip and a worthwhile adventure.

By Kathleen Batman

This past weekend a group of friends and I decided last minute to get tickets and go see Brad Paisley perform at the Gexa Energy Pavilion. It was so much fun! We got in the car a few hours before the concert and drove the quick trip. Before the concert started we tailgated in the parking lot and met lots of new people! It was a lot of fun to listen to country music and sing along with people we didn’t even know! When we finally got to the concert we were sitting on the lawn enjoying Lee Brice and Chris Young perform before Brad Paisley came on and one of the event staff people came over to us and gave us tickets into the section right in front of the stage! We were so lucky! Brad Paisley’s performance was so fun! I had such a great time at Gexa that my friends and I are looking into other concerts there in the coming months! I can’t wait to go to another concert there! There’s always something going on in Dallas so I have no doubt that I will be at another concert in no time!

By Claire Piepenburg

The Big D is always full of fun things to do, and even though the temperature outside is heating up, Dallasites aren’t slowing down. Here are a few cool things happening this summer:

Bruno Mars/Ellie Goulding at the American Airlines Center

This pop powerhouse duo will be performing this summer at the AAC. In addition, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, and Selena Gomez are coming to American Airlines in the coming weeks,  John Mayer and Mac Miller will both be performing at Gexa Energy Pavillion this summer and Emile Sande will be bringing down the house at the House of Blues. Not to mention countless other live music venues that host a variety of musical talent each night like Trees, the Prophet Bar and Club Dada.

Social Science- ‘Relationships’ at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science

This event is one in a four part series that invites young adults to the new Perot Museum after hours to explore different scientific topics, enjoy performances and shows, and check out new inventions and research.  For the ‘Relationships’ event, guests are invited to discover the relationships behind various scientific topics, like robots and humans or stars and culture. Performances by the Dallas Opera Young Artists, a guest speaker from the Dallas Opera, a Glow Dance show by Orizon Performance Team, and interactive demonstrations and challenges are followed up by an outdoor screening of the original Tron film in 35mm. (Did somebody say ‘date night’?!)

Taste of Dallas at Fair Park

With over 200,000 guests expected at this three-day event, the Taste of Dallas is the largest tasting event in DFW. Celebrating their 26^th year, TOD will bring out Dallas’ top chefs from the most popular restaurants. The event will feature shopping, live music, kid-friendly attractions and of course – lots of food!

Rangers vs. Yankees at the Ballpark in Arlington

The Rangers will be playing all summer, but this series will be a ‘can’t miss’! Taking place in late July, the Yankees head south to battle it out in the Lone Star State. Check out a Wednesday game, when the Ballpark hosts their famous $1 hot dog night or a FANtastic Friday Fireworks show, when general admission tickets are just $10 and the Ballpark lights up the sky with tons of fireworks after the game!

This post barely scratches the surface of all the things there are to do in Dallas in the next few weeks. There are entire websites dedicated to cataloging and calendaring all the events, festivals, performances, shows, games and tastings happening in the Big D. Check out the ‘entertainment’ section of www.dallasnews.com or www.dallasobserver.com for even more info about stuff scheduled for this summer. There’s never time to be bored in Dallas!

By Philip Kilgore

One of my favorite SMU traditions comes every Sunday; my friends and I go to this restaurant called Gui and enjoy their “all you can eat sushi” special. So every Sunday, we take the trip a few miles down the road to McKinney Avenue, otherwise known as Uptown. Uptown is an area centered on the historic McKinney avenue trolley line that visitors can use to enjoy quick transit throughout the area. The area is known for the many different types of original restaurants and shops, as well as some of the most popular apartments in Dallas. Uptown is only one of the many districts located within the Dallas area. From the Arts District to Highland Park, there is so much culture and excitement to keep anyone entertained. My personal favorite is the Knox-Henderson area. Best known for the Katy trail, a 5.5 mile running trail spanning from Highland Park to the American Airlines Center, this area combines the traditional neighborhood feel with a modern metropolitan area. This area has so many great restaurants, shops, and patio bars that make for an excellent spot to hang out on a great day. Luckily for SMU students, all of these districts are only a short drive or even a short walk away. Being in a city as great as Dallas can have so many benefits, taking advantage of the many districts within Dallas is only one of them!

By Lauren Lyngstad

This past Monday, a group of three friends and myself decided to buy tickets for the Justin Bieber concert about four hours before it started. Being that tickets had been sold out for a while, we decided to visit a ticket resale site in an attempt to get some good tickets for lower than face value. Once we located four tickets in a relatively good position we contacted the seller and transferred the money.

LEFT: One of my best friends, Olivia, and I after getting our tickets!

Just like that, we were off to the American Airlines center to see one of the biggest names in the business! Once we arrived, we dashed from the parking lot all the way to the box office. But, unfortunately, we quickly realized that the tickets we had bought were in fact fraudulent. Dismayed and discouraged, we sulked outside of the building while my best friend was on the phone with her bank trying to figure everything out. We decided that we might as well make the best of it and headed over to Bieber’s tour bus to take a picture.

After we snapped our photo, a man approached us and asked us to step away from the tour bus. We told him that we were on our way out, and he asked us why. Upon hearing our sad story, he asked us if four front row tickets would make up for it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we were just like the girls in the movie. We screamed and jumped up and down and dashed all the way through the front doors, the ticket check, and then all the way to the front row. It was truly an out of body experience, and definitely one of the coolest things I have done while I have been a student at SMU.

This instance just demonstrates the fantastic opportunities that Dallas has to offer SMU students. We are so blessed with such an amazing and beautiful campus that is only ten minutes away from one of the most bustling downtowns in the nation. SMU not only offers students amazing opportunities on our campus directly, but Dallas has a great breadth and depth of opportunities for students to take advantage of. So while you may not necessarily have “Bieber Fever”, Dallas has the Mavericks, the Cowboys, the Stars, the Rangers, the most restaurants per capita, and phenomenal opportunities in concerts and performances. I am truly never bored in this city, and I couldn’t be more blessed to call Dallas my home.