Saw this little bit in the FrontBurner…

Whether you’re for it or against it (and I’m firmly on the fence), the closing of the Houston Hyatt does not bode well for a Dallas convention hotel, especially since convention hotel room nights in Dallas already fell 52 percent from 1999 to 2003. There’s been a nationwide drop of 16 percent in convention business for the entire country during the same period. Conventions are now a declining industry.

I don’t know the first freaking thing about the Houston Hyatt (thereby revealing why I’m not sure it’s important to the D Magazine dudes, but you knew that), but — 52% is 36% from 16%. By my math, that’s more than TRIPLE the national average. Did you get that? TRIPLE!

Why would Dallas be TRIPLE the national average? Call me a fool, but I suspect it might have to do with a frustrated Mommy in the Mayor’s Office, who has banned late-night dancing, public smoking, and lap dances at strip clubs and who, if the grapevine is right (and it usually is), is now coming after “vice”, for which you can read whores and poker, for her strong-mayor push in the next city election. Once upon a time, this used to be a really fun, wide-open town where adults (particularly out-of-town adults) could have a rocking good time. Now it’s an uptight bunch of pricks who think another Italian purse store or French dress store or Noo Yawk god-knows-what store will keep bringing the dentists and insurance guys to town. Face it, Laura — you’ve made the town safe for your hausfrau friends from Oak Cliff and Uptown and HP at the expense of the wahoo out-of-towners. Good trade? I dunno — but in the meantime, can you ask the ladies who lunch to pick up the slack on the freaking handbags?

And — trust me on this one — storm-window professionals from Montana don’t give two shits about bridges over Ol’ Stinky designed by a Spaniard’s interns. Only Highland Parkers with their fortunes already banked care about that kind of foofaraw. Because those stupid bridges are the only thing an average Dallasite will ever see from the Trinity River Boondoggle.

One more note: Conventions are a declining industry, Wick, becuase good convention cities are hard to come by these days. There’s Las Vegas, and there’s New Orleans, and there’s…what? Nothing, that’s what. Every other place in America is a bunch of guilt-ridden boomers trying to get rid of reminders of their wastrel younger years. Idiots.