Mid Century Dry Cleaner on Davis

Mr. Sushi

Local Designer

This is apparently the atelier of a local designer. I love his sign, as it can be seen from a quite a distance away, and it gives this whole area of the street a lovely pinky glow.

Former Brinks Restaurant on Gaston

This was the most groovy old restaurant back in the day. It was called Brinks, and it had exactly the same look and feel of that diner in Pulp Fiction. At least it's still got the great rock features on the front, still. Now it's a laundromat.

Will trade Ammo for Sex

Classy!

American Airlines Center sign testing update

These rainbow strips are little rows of numbers. Cute!

piggie

Here's the smoking pig from the Baby Back Shak on Akard street - home of some of Dallas' best Barbecue.

The night and the neon.

Neon on a Friday night on Dallas North Tollway

Fantastic sign at Uncle Julio's

Good Tex-Mex food. I've eaten Cabrito here - they used to have cabrito (baby goat) on Tuesday nights. I don't know if they still do. Goat is a once-in-a-blue-moon food, to me. It's too funky to eat very often.

Buck N Ruck

OK, nongirlfriend, happy now?

Buck N Ruck is a liquor store owned by the Red Coleman's chain of Dallas liquor stores. This one is on Industrial boulevard facing downtown beyond. Nongirlfriend's dad said this store has been there forever, and you can see the same mid-century corrugated roof style that was over on Mama's Daughters' Diner farther west on Industrial which I posted a couple weeks ago.
This place has fantastic signs. Not pretty, but interesting. Some of the more down-market (pun intended) strip joints in town are over in this area. Jail, booze, bail bonds and strippers: everything a body needs.

The taller brown buildings in the background are the Crowley (criminal) Courts building and the collective of structures that make up the Lew Sterrett Justice Center (or JAIL, if you want to get technical).

Driving up Commerce street toward Oak Cliff from downtown can be rather depressing, as they release the drunks into the blazing heat of the afternoon. You can always tell the ones that just got sprung. It's sad, but interesting.

Downtown From Stemmons Expressway Northbound

Held out the camera while driving and shot. Happily, I captured the drive-by view of the West end of Downtown Dallas, including the 100+ year old Old Red Courthouse at the fore of downtown. If you can see the bridge with the cars driving under it toward the viewer, the bridge says "Elm" on the left. Where the cars at the back are is almost precisely the spot where JFK was shot.

This is going to be the last downtown shot for a bit - I think you need to see something else. Buck N Ruck, for example, which is what I'll post tomorrow.

Belo Headquarters

This is headquarters for the Belo corporation which owns the major daily newspaper, the Dallas Morning News. We used two have 2 major dailies in town, DMN and Dallas Times Herald, but DTH crapped out about a decade ago. That was a pity, because news is more and more homogenized these days. There used to be a US law that a person or corporation who owned a newspaper couldn't own a radio station, or a certain number of stations. Something to regulate who owned various media so that only one view wasn't represented. Thank goodness for the internet, and the few independent weeklies out there.

I'm not making a statement on Belo or DMN in particular, but on a state of news distribution in general.

Soul's Harbor

Originally an art deco theater on the North side of Davis near Westmoreland, This building was apparently turned into Soul's Harbor Church by the early 60s, and the black and white photo is from 1963. This building is still a church, but I think sermons here are conducted in Spanish now.

Some of the original external detail is kept intact on this structure, such as the curved corners. This is another of the gracious ladies of the Deco period which was spared an interim as a porno theater. The structure and property are kept in good repair, and it's so nice to see an old structure that has continually been adapted for positive uses in the community, rather than falling into disrepair and disrepute. Long may she wave.

This site is west/southwest of downtown.

Downtown Rocket

Here are two photos from the opposite sides of downtown. That rocket thingie in the broad daylight photo is from some late-50s early 60s structure, and it's lit up by different colors at night. The evening photo shows it in Blue that fades into the sky. You can also see this feature in the night skyline shots of Dallas in the fabulous 1960s B-Movie "Mars Needs Women," even though they repeatedly refer to the city as Houston. The skyline is Dallas, all the way.

Downtown perspective from S Ervay at Cadiz

This is an area of town where there are a lot of homeless services. Once husband and I were driving through, and the light turned green and there were literally hundreds of pigeons in the street, eating the food that a local soup kitchen had provided for the homeless (the homeless were throwing the food in the street for the birds - our tax dollars at work, folks). We must have killed a dozen pigeons right there. The homeless people became quite agitated and vocal just then, but we drove off into the sunset.

former mbank building

I don't know what this building is called now, but it used to be the M Bank building. It's between St Paul(East), Commerce(South), Ervay(West) and Main(N) streets. My friend Dianne [ http://thecooksblog.blogspot.com ] used to work in this building for the Hughes and Luce law firm. Tom Luce once ran for governor of Texas, and I think he ran against Ann Richards, who died yesterday. Ann Richards was a Texas original and her wit and energy will be sorely missed. I'm glad we had the chance to get to know her.

...but do they have hourly rates?

Here's a Motel sign by the highway running through Oak Cliff. Couples $19.00. I wonder if their prices have gone up since they built that sign? I'll bet they have. In any case, yuck.

Ghost Garage

Here's a spectre from the past of K Woodard's Garage in Red Oak, a southern suburb of Dallas that lies within the county line. I love the ghostly image of the letters, barely there, but hanging on by a fingernail...

Bank Of America

The 70-something story tall Bank of America tower is the tallest building downtown. It is adorned with more than 3 miles of green neon. This building is more attractive at night than in the day, in my opinion. This perspective was taken from Main street facing East just after sundown.

I-30 over Sylvan heading East through Oak Cliff

Earle Cabell Federal Building

Early evening, downtown at the west end of Commerce, which is a one-way street. That's ironic, isn't it?

Anyway, I looked up Earle Cabell on wikipedia and found he had sort of a double tie-in with JFK. Earle was mayor of Dallas from 1961 until 1964, and during his tenure something famous happened here. Oddly, Earle was the brother of deputy CIA director Charles Cabell who was forced to resign from that post after the atrocious Bay of Pigs debacle. Big coincidence, isn't it? It's easy to see how conspiracy theorists must have obsessed over these little nuggets...

Transmission tower downtown

Mama's Daughters' Diner

This is Barbara, and she is a rock-star watiress at Mama's Daughters' Diner on Industrial avenue. They have fantastic food, and you have to love any place where there are multiple waitresses who remind you of Flo from the tv show Alice. They all call you "honey," "sweetie" and/or "sugar," and here you'll find some pure-dee home cookin' royale. Delicious. Barbara has great style and always wears big jewelry, long dangling sparkly earrings, and enormous smoky sunglasses.

Barbara and I laughed our heads off - she is the coolest woman, and one of my heroines.

Paul's Taxidermy & Deer Processing

Last stop of the deer hunt. Funny to see one of these within city limits. Ever had venison jerky? It's delicious.

Neon Wiener Dog

It makes me giggle just to type "neon wiener dog." This great neon is from a little doghouse shaped drive-thru hot dog stand. The neon is on the roof. Super cute!

Rock and Roll Tow Truck = Tow Jam

Spiral Thing Downtown

This spiral structure has been downtown for at least 20 years or so, and I think this may be Thanksgiving square, because Thanksgiving tower is nearby. I took this photo on long exposure at about 8:30 pm after dark.

Baby Back Shak

Some of the best barbecue to be found in Dallas is here at the Baby Back Shak on Akard Street at Beaumont Street in South Dallas. Good stuff.

The pink pig on the side is super-cool. I need to get a close-up of the pig on the other side, because he's smoking a cigarette - it's pretty funny.

Levee over the Trinity River

This photo was taken while driving Westbound from downtown on I-30 (toward Fort Worth). I took this snap without looking - just held up the camera and pushed the button while keeping my eyes on the road and the wacky traffic. Downtown is to the right, and to the left is Oak Cliff/West Dallas.

The bridge you see out in the levee is the Continental Avenue bridge, which will be replaced in the next few years by an extraordinarily expensive suspension bridge by boutique bridge designer Calatrava. I actually think the old bridge is lovely, and that it's a shame to replace a perfectly serviceable bridge, particularly on a thoroughfare that doesn't see a tremendous amount of traffic, anyway. This is stirring up a wee bit of controversy and polarizing Dallas voters, actually.

The Trinity River is a muddy and not-very-pretty waterway that travels through Fort Worth (although it's LOVELY over there, for some reason). When we get an extraordinary amount of rain, this levee area can tend to flood, and I've seen the water almost reach the top of the earthen dam on either side of the river. THAT is something to see.