I realized, while back in Illinois a couple weeks ago, that I haven’t been to many of the cities in Texas. So, we have to rank them. The 20 biggest cities in Texas, per The Internet™, and where they rank. Grouped these in categories. Didn’t go in order by rankings. Trying to revolutionize online ranking blog posts here.
The Cities
Austin: 1st Place
Two of the six Texas cities are, by my impression, actively good. Three others have their strengths.
Houston: 2nd Place
This is the second, I understand. There’s some might to Houston.
Fort Worth: 5th Place
Fort Worth seems pretty comfortable, and like a place which knows what it’s about. The problem is that the thing it’s about just isn’t that great.
Dallas: 12th Place
I hope I’ll appreciate it better when I eventually get there, but I’ve only one time had someone tell me something about Dallas that made me think I’d like it. They were talking about museums. Not, I must emphasize, the top tourist attraction in Dallas, which is the JFK assassination museum. Museums are cool, and it’s cool that Dallas has some cool ones, but compared to other things a city could have? Museums are low on the list. Assassination museums are not on the list.
San Antonio: 7th Place
I really want San Antonio to be better than it is, but the Riverwalk sucks. We all need to acknowledge that the Riverwalk sucks. The Alamo is cool, the Riverwalk sucks, this should be part of the Texas Citizenship class in middle school.
El Paso: 9th Place
There’s that scene in Wedding Crashers where Chazz Reinhold is waiting on the meatloaf and he says, “I never know what she’s doing back there!” That’s how I feel about El Paso.
The Metroplex
Arlington: 16th Place
Arlington is more than Jerry World. It’s also a lot of the filler they put between Dallas and Fort Worth. I would say, “Like the stuff they put in cavities,” but they literally put Arlington in a cavity on the map if we use the definition of cavity that isn’t limited to teeth.
Irving: 19th Place
A weird phenomenon here is that I know what Arlington is, and never think “Irving” when I’m picturing Arlington, and yet whenever I hear “Irving” I think of Arlington.
Plano: 15th Place
Am I remembering correctly that there’s active fracking in Plano, within the city limits? I don’t know whether to love that or be terrified. This is a common experience of mine with Texas things.
Garland: 10th Place
Honestly, besides Austin, Arlington, and San Antonio, this is the only one where I’ve spent much time. It looked like there were a lot of houses.
McKinney: 13th Place
Home of the Division II football National Championship, has a pretty nice McDonald’s off a frontage road. I think we also blogged about their tourism website once. It seems like the difference between Frisco/McKinney and Garland/Grand Prairie is how hard everyone is or isn’t trying.
Frisco: 14th Place
Sports City USA. The only city in Texas to host an NIT. Unfortunately for Frisco, it only managed to host half that NIT, and it was only a half-NIT that season to begin with, so Frisco really only hosted a quarter of an NIT. Still pretty good, but we need to acknowledge all of that.
Grand Prairie: 17th Place
This is a place in Texas.
?????
Pasadena: 18th Place
Where is this? What is this? I’m assuming Metroplex but nothing outside of East Texas or Medium-to-Far West Texas would surprise me.
South Texas
Corpus Christi: 8th Place
A few people have told me Corpus Christi is the greatest place in the world, and that fills me with both curiosity and immense skepticism. The minor league situation does sound pretty great.
Laredo: 6th Place
There was a song in one of those Faber piano books my childhood teacher used about a guy from Laredo. Or something like that. Also, whenever I go to San Antonio I see signs for Laredo and I think about how far south I am and I get excited. It is the Duluth of Texas.
Brownsville: 11th Place
Fun fact: When I was five or six, I had an intricate imaginary baseball league. My team was the Chicago Bullets. At one point, and I’m not sure where I got this idea, I ran a brief campaign in my less-intricate “family newspaper” trying to keep the Bullets from moving to Brownsville, which I chose as a possible destination because it was on our placemat map of the United States and “Brownsville Bullets” was and remains alliterative. The Bullets did not leave Chicago.
Fort Hood
Killeen: 20th Place
It’s possible I’m overindexed on people-who-left-Killeen here in Austin (this might be the problem with every one of these cities, honestly), but I do not have a good impression of Killeen.
The Panhandle
Lubbock: 4th Place
There’s just something hilarious about Lubbock. Possibly that it was once named the worst place in America to spend a summer, and that they considered over 200 cities for that list.
Amarillo: 3rd Place
I’ve been noticing a trend where people taking I-40 out west stop in Amarillo and absolutely love it. That is not a common experience on I-40 once you get past OKC. Western town, sounds like it steers into itself.
Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified McKinney as the host of the FCS National Championship. That is Frisco, also known (mostly to a few people in Frisco) as Sports City USA. McKinney hosts the Division II National Championship in football.
