Bottomless mimosa brunch is a time-honored gay tradition.
You pull yourself out of bed, slap on some sunglasses, and sashay to the local bar-restaurant for day drinking.
Over the years, I’ve learned that there are 5 cardinal rules for surviving a mimosa brunch.
Brunch at British Beverage Company in Dallas, Texas. They have a mimosa bar that allows you to choose your own garnishes and juices.
We had a little bit of everything this spring – Real Housewives, dog parades, cocktail competitions, Irish parades, celebrity drag queens, puppy drama, bingo, wine, hockey, cocktails, manure stench, more cocktails, a male pageant, and much, much more.
Here are some of my favorite shots of the spring:
The dogs by Trinity River Bridge
A man blasting music from a segway on the Katy Trail
Gunter the chihuahua chowing down in front of Starbucks (we always get them whip creme)
My mom came to town this weekend for a business meeting, so we showed her how Dallas does Easter.
We had Easter brunch at Quesa MX, which is a Mexican restaurant on Cedar Springs.
I recently became re-interested in Quesa after they hosted a happy hour at iLume – the new manager said that he overhauled the menu and promised that the food was better.
The way we could tell is because there was a guy on the patio laying in his own vomit.
His friend looked so upset…
Quesa was considerably calmer on Sunday, and the food was surprisingly good. I think Quesa will be a nice alternative to Mattito’s and Cedar Springs Tap House, which both get incredibly packed.
After brunch, we grabbed the dogs and went to the Easter dog parade near Turtle Creek.
It was quite the production.
The crowd at Easter in Lee Park / Dallas Pooch Parade.
Guys with matching outfits and bunny ears at Easter in Lee Park
A guy with a matching dog at the 2016 Easter Pooch Parade in Dallas.
A pink poodle at the Dallas Easter Pooch Parade.
Spectators taking a selfie during the Easter Parade – is that Dustin in the background?!
Picnics at Lee Park near Arlington Hall
DFW is only second to Houston as the fastest growing city in the United States.
The hoard of people moving to Dallas spurred a huge construction boom, and cranes are all over the city.
A new apartment project near the American Airlines Arena.
A new apartment building project in the Dallas design district built in the “One Plus Five” style.
Construction in the Victory Park / Harwood neighborhood of Dallas
Apartment buildings are growing like weeds around the gayborhood and many of my neighbors think anything past 3-years is an “old building.”
But there is something strange about the style of the new apartment buildings in Dallas – they look like something straight out of soviet Russia. (We were beginning to see these in Minnesota as well.)
Gay bingo at Station 4 is a fabulous event. It is basically a Texas-sized version of Minneapolis bar bingo.
Gay bingo events in Minneapolis and Dallas both support local HIV/AIDS resource centers, but the experience is dramatically different. In Minneapolis, bingo is informal, occasionally violent, and very frequent – you can play up to 4 times per week.
However in Dallas, bingo is a once-per-month extravaganza.
The Dallas St. Patrick’s Day parade is by Southern Methodist University, which is about 3 miles away from the gayborhood. We were going to Uber there, but that idea was quashed once we saw that Uber surge pricing was five times the normal rate.
The National Showman Pageant is a competitive stage performance competition for men and drag kings.
There was a lot of live singing and some pretty epic dance numbers.
The level of preparation was impressive. Although not all of the performances were equally as entertaining, this pageant was far more polished than many of the female drag pageants I’ve seen in the past.
I look forward to the next one!
Well my article is finally out! Although I look haggard a little tired in my picture, I am glad that the interview has finally been published!
Dallas-Fort Worth Relocation Magazine is a publication of the Dallas Regional Chamber and D Magazine. The goal of this publication is to help introduce Dallas to new residents and show everyone what a fabulous place this is to live.
I arrived at the Dallas airport pretty early this morning, and went up to check my bag.
And then shade ensued:
Delta check-in lady: “Ticket and I.D. please.”
Me: “Here you go.”
Check-in lady: “Hah!”
Me: “Pardon?”
Check-in lady: “If you saw someone that looked like you, would you think that they are your age?”
Me: “Are you saying that I look old?”
Check-in lady: “Yep. Just like that.”
Well dandy.
The temperature is perfect – about 60 to 70 degrees every day.
iLume Park’s large dog park in Dallas, Texas.
Gunter at Ilume Park’s small dog park.
Perry Heights neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, in February.
The Harwood District of downtown Dallas, Texas
Thomson Reuters is flying me back to Minnesota for an awards dinner and training.
It’s going to be cold as hell, but I get to see some of my friends and my company is putting me up in the Mall of America hotel, so things could be worse.
That doesn’t mean that I won’t miss the warmth…
I always thought my mother was dramatic about hating the cold (she still lives in Miami) but now I fully understand.
Brr.
It is a reoccurring mistake – I see a German restaurant and get nostalgic for my grandmother’s cooking. So I waltz into the restaurant, get offended by the prices and cheesy decorations, and inevitably leave bitterly disappointed.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of German restaurants in America are Bavarian, (and I am from Rheinland.) It is like going to an “American Restaurant” in another country and finding out that it is Toby Keith’s or Hard Rock Café.
My mother and I recently went to Biergarten in Downtown Dallas.
It was a mess.
My mother and I visited the Aquarium when she as in town because the weather was crappy and it was an indoor thing to do. The biggest surprise about the Dallas World Aquarium is that it’s not just fish – it’s actually a zoo, and very tropical.
Jungle waterfall at the Dallas World Aquarium.
A Panther at the Dallas World Aquarium
Pink Flamingos at the Dallas World Aquarium
Owls at the Dallas World Aquarium.
Fish at the Dallas World Aquarium
I celebrated last New Year’s Eve in Minnesota and now I am ending the year as an official Texan.
2015 was wonderful, but exhausting.
James Sanna and Aaron Kraemer getting married in Boston.
A bloody Mary and the New Yorker Magazine at the Washington DC airport.
Alyssa Edwards at the Dallas Gay Pride iLume block party.
Dancers at the iLume block party.
A dramatically lit mansion in Highland Park.
There are leaves on the ground, but the temperature still hits the low 70s almost every day.
Although it is not quite tropical Christmas experience that I had in Miami, it is still way more pleasant than Minnesota. At least I can still trot around in shorts!
Life has been very full lately with work, sprawling dog walks, dates, holiday parties, and marathons of The Good Wife.
My cup runneth over again.
Elaborate Christmas decorations in Highland Park, Dallas.
Gunter’s leather doggy jacket.
The dogs and I are walking in Perry Heights, which is a tiny historical neighborhood immediately behind my apartment building.
Perry Heights has some pretty single-family homes and it is a great place to walk dogs because the area is removed from all of the gay bars on Cedar Springs road. This cute residential area is also very poorly lit at night – the few street lights that exist are dim and often covered by huge trees.
The darkness of Perry Heights makes it really hard to pick up after my dogs without using the flashlight application my phone. However, the darkness it made it really easy to notice a car slowly creeping towards us with its lights dimmed.
Fall hasn’t quite arrived in Dallas yet – everything is still green and the temperature is way too hot to wear anything but shorts.
However, it is not as if I’m really spending a significant amount of time enjoying the weather – I’m inside working for most of the weekdays, and my weekends are spent freelancing inside neighborhood cafes because it is too hot to sit outside.
Freelancing at OakLawn Coffee
A random I.T. problem knocked out my company’s web applications and email systems for most of the morning, but instead of enjoying the weather at the pool, I took some time to page through this blog.
I kept getting told by my neighbors that I have only been to the outskirts of downtown, so I decided to finally make the trek on Saturday morning’s dog walk.
It’s a cool place.
A building just off of Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas
A fountain near Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.
New condos, townhouses, and apartment buildings are springing up throughout my neighborhood. The vast majority of these are insanely expensive luxury developments.
Rents are also jumping, despite the glut of cookie-cutter buildings.
Cookie-cutter town homes in the Oak Lawn neighborhood of Dallas. They start in the “low 400s”
Perhaps new arrivals like myself are out-pacing the building crews.
I have been in Dallas for almost two months now.
I love this place.
A statue near the entrance of the Dallas Museum of Art in downtown Dallas.
A newly constructed skyscraper in downtown Dallas, near the American Airlines Arena.
Mom in the lobby of my building – iLume in Oak Lawn, Dallas. The chairs are oversized.
Dallas is hard to compare to other cities – it’s huge, but not walkable or historic like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Dallas is also not as touristy as Miami, and scale of everything prevents it from being quaint like Minnesota.
Perhaps Dallas is just special.
We spent the weekend touring various neighborhoods, including Uptown, Oak Lawn, Highland Park, and downtown.
Food trucks by Klyde Warren Park in downtown Dallas, Texas. The Hunt Oil Building is in the background.
Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, with the Museum Tower luxury highrise building in the background.
Exploring the Dallas Museum of Art in downtown. I love this painting.