That’s according to GQ. And “scent critic” Chandler Burr means “smelliest” in the best possible way:
Cities, like people, have their own smell, their own body odors and perfumes that take on personalities. Dallas is one of the strangest scents I have ever encountered. Highways of strip malls and gas stations and exit signs. Insanely wide streets. It’s very New World-smelling. It almost has a non-scent scent. Like many cities, you get concrete, car exhaust, and dust. If you really focus, you can pick up on the nearly undetectable Texas live oak. It’s best during thunderstorms, though. The crisp smell of lightning and rain and vast flat space pervades and takes on a three-dimensional quality.
God, I love the smell of the air before a thunderstorm. He’s got that right, but I never thought it peculiar to Dallas.
We’re No. 10 on the list. The best smelling place? Los Angeles.
It’s a strange list. Mumbai ranks above us too. Paris is singled out as the worst-smelling.
Believe it or not, I have some ideas.
Hotel Manager, Omni Hotel Dallas. He basically willed the joint into existence, so I’m fairly sure he could land this gig. Unless he blows the interview by talking too much with his hands. This also has reality show potential, so I’d bet Bravo or TruTV or whomever could convince Omni to give him the job without actually giving him the job, you know? (Possible titles: Land of TOMorrow, Leppert on the Prowl, Fawlty Premise Towers, Mayor of Handtown.)
FOX News Talking Head. Easy job for him. Just take the current set of generic right-right talking points and regurgitate on command. In other words: his Twitter feed, with fewer exclamation points, less desperate pleas to retweet him, and more emphasis on saying “Washington,” “Obama,” and “politicians” like he just walked into a gas station bathroom.
Mayor of Dallas. Basically no one cares who has this job anymore, so he could get it back pretty easily. He puts on the pinstripe gangster suit and shows up, and he’s halfway there. Then it’s just him, a council member who doesn’t feel like working anymore, and Edward Okpa. It dismays me that this might happen.
Private Eye. Based on his campaign so far, I feel like not a ton of people know he exists, so he could blend seamlessly into the background and break some cases. Needs to maybe loosen up a bit, but I think he could pull it off. This is my dark horse choice.
Because Dallas Morning News writer Scott Cantrell went on a tour, and he doesn’t, so much. The article is behind a paywall, so those of you who haven’t a) paid to scale it , or b) figured out a way to scale it for free, here are the highlights:
There you go. Our city’s hotel is the architectural equivalent of a boob job or something. And you can watch TV in the bathroom. I read the news so you don’t have to.
If you have fewer followers on Twitter than, say, Tim Rogers, who only ever tweets about Cane Rosso pizza and his reaction to week-old New York Times stories, you’re probably not exactly getting your message out. So, even though he’ll probably let this thing play out, it’s best to come up with some jobs he can do when it all falls apart.
Since there has been a fair amount of controversy on the lines you can and cannot cross with a source, here is a partial list of things I have probably done with sources.