Let Me Sum Up
2013 predictions: Mike Rawlings will decide not to run for mayor again. Plus:Victory Park sex!
For your first charitable act of 2013, I ask that you forgive the mistakes, typos and outright fabrications in this predictions column. I had a wee bit of bubbly last night while celebrating New Year’s Eve at Victory Park with 30,000 of my best friends, and I’m not firing on all cylinders. Also, I’m trying to watch Tottenham vs. Reading while I type. Also, I’m drinking mimosas.
Here then are five fearless predictions for 2013. Remember, I’m not saying these things might happen. I’m saying they have happened, if we’re to believe Brian Greene’s definition of the spacetime loaf, and we see that we are currently only experiencing our “slice” of spacetime, and the future has actually already occurred, and I’m clearly a Looper who has come back to warn you.
So let’s not spend a lot of time trying to “prove” these predictions “could” happen in the traditional sense.
[Downs mimosa, shakes glass at cohabitant.]
To the predictions:
1. Mayor Mike Rawlings will quietly make it known that he won’t be running for re-election in two years.
Gromer Jeffers Jr. notes in a column today that Rawlings won’t be making endorsements in the Dallas City Council races this year (including the very interesting District 13 race for Angela Hunt’s seat). I think one reason is that he won’t be working with the new councilmembers for very long.
I’ve talked to three people in recent months who know Mayor Mike well, and each one is pretty confident he won’t run again. Although he’s been fairly successful lately with his bully pulpit-ing— 2013 is the year of new words — the word is, being mayor isn’t the slam-bang fun time the former Pizza Hut CEO imagined.
He’ll need to give the business community plenty of time to run the rule over its new crop of silver-haired toadies, so he’ll let the real people who run the city aware of his decision by summer.
2. More than 10 people will use Belo Garden at one time.
In a column over the weekend, Steve Blow praised some of the big-ticket wins Dallas had in 2012:
Really? We’re going to compare the downtown smoking lounge that is Belo Garden with the unqualified awesomeness of Klyde Warren Park?
I read this over a late breakfast on Sunday and immediately drove by both parks. At noon on a very cold day, Klyde Warren had about 125 people enjoying its space. When we drove by Belo Garden, we had a spirited argument whether the person walking by on the sidewalk meant we could count one person there. We decided because she was walking her dogs, she counted.
3. The first big-name restaurant to open in Trinity Groves will come from Bishop Arts.
For a lot of restaurants, the promise of Trinity Groves right now carries too much risk: There is just not enough density there to make short-term profit possible. But because of the neighborhood that encases Bishop Arts, its tenants’ growth is effectively capped. So a few of the higher-profile joints in that joint are willing to bet on the promise of Trinity Groves, rather than the current reality.
4. This time next week, we’ll be watching “the most dramatic season” of The Bachelor yet.
I got that prediction from the Bachelor himself, Dallas’ Sean Lowe, displaying a good sense of humor — for these types, anyway.
This time next week I'll be watching "the most dramatic season" of The Bachelor yet!
— Sean Lowe (@SeanLowe09) January 1, 2013By the way, doubt I’ll watch this, but I really won’t have to, because noted Bachelorspoiler Reality Steve lives in Dallas too.
5. Next New Year’s Eve, two people (or more?) will actually copulate in the crowd at Victory Park.
We had a nice vantage point this year, from the fourth floor of the offices overlooking the plaza at Victory Park, and it was a drunken sardine can. We saw people crowd-surfing (then crowd-crashing-to-the-ground), near fights, and people making out and groping each other.
Okay, that making-out-and-groping observation was actually a couple we stumbled onto in a darkened corner of said office. (“Whoa! Happy New Year!”) But next year, we’re totally going to see some full-on lovemaking. Because 2013 is going to be that kind of year.