Every major city has them. Often they lurk in trendy areas of town with newly constructed lofts, frequent upscale restaurants and bars with avant-garde names like lime or oxygen, and frolic with dolled up ladies in stilettos standing around with parched throats searching for a free drink from any bloke that'll take the bait. They're called the 30K millionaire. A sub-culture of young, metropolitan dwelling, American society that desire the life of the wealthy, but are wealth less, in turn they try to emulate what they don't really have--money.
Although woman do apply, the 30K millionaire is mostly associated with men between the ages of 25-40 years of age—give or take a few years, who work hard to impress everyone around them--especially woman.
The Urbandictionary.com explains it as "a person who earns roughly 30 to 40k a year but acts like a millionaire in front of their peers. Someone who maxes-out their credit cards, leases everything and hangs out at trendy bars in order to impress and ultimately score with the opposite sex. It's not what you make... it's what you fake. "
As for Dallas, I'd place the 30K Millionaire's income around 50-60K a year. Because let's face it you can't lease a $30-35,000 BMW 3 series or inifiniti G37 on an income of 30 grand—well unless you living with your mama. That's a whole other subject in the category of pretenders. About ten years ago was the first time I heard the term $30K millionaire as a new transplant to Dallas, Texas, one of the nation’s top 5 metropolitan areas.
Coming from a small town, there wasn't much of a social scene or hot bed of visible wealth looming enough for young up and comers to emulate it. Funny enough this term was shared with me by a person who I would have considered to be among its followers. I worked in the advertising business at the time, which seemed to be a magnet for wannabes of all types.
An afterhours get-to-together was usually at a popular bar hot spot with expensive cars valeted outside, and inside guys displaying worked out physiques, and girls wearing the latest of- the-rack outfits--letting everyone know they were fashionable. Not much has changed in the ten years since I arrived in Dallas--it actually might be worse than before.
Dallas is not the only large city where urban dwellers like these nest. I think this is a phenomenon across the nation. Large cities on either coast have had scenes like this for decades, but is seems out of place in the south, were people are said to be less pretentious and more genuine. This is true, except when it comes to Big-D.
If you drive just 35 miles west of Dallas, you'll find a very different atmosphere in Ft. Worth. How did Dallas get this way? I think the late 90s technology boom, and the influx of outsiders, more than 500,000 in ten years has pushed us to put on airs.
P.S. In searching for photos for this post, I found a great site that caters to the pretentiousness of Dallas. 30 Thousand Dollar Millionaire
Photo Source: [Dallas Observer] [30kdm.com]
