Museum Tower, Dallas, Texas.
Museum Tower, Dallas, Texas.
We signed a lease for an apartment in downtown Dallas last week. After a year of being back in Texas, it is already time for a change.
Oak Lawn is special as one of the biggest gayborhoods in the country. However, proximity to gay bars and friends is not enough anymore. Living in Oak Lawn and working from home was great when I was 25, living a resort-style building, with a job that was good but not too demanding. But lawyering from a gloomy bedroom office is not the tea.
It was a quiet holiday season. We stayed around Dallas because traveling to visit family was unsafe.
The 70-degree days make it a little strange to celebrate a winter holiday, but the downtown lights help. You’d think I would have gotten used to this after living in Miami, but it never feels normal.
Ingrid the Labradoodle blending in with the skyscrapers of downtown Dallas.
A crew setting up massive Christmas Decorations in downtown Dallas.
This looked like a very cumbersome process and I think they didn’t quite have the logistics worked out that day. I hope to check on the finished product this weekend! 🎄
I recently bought a new lens for my camera and decided to test it out along the Trinity River. These are the first shots.
Shooting along the Trinity River is interesting because you have a gorgeous view of downtown crisscrossed with powerlines. The powerlines don’t necessarily “ruin” the view, but rather complicate it and make for interesting photos.
Winter in Dallas creeps up slowly. There’s usually no dramatic changing of the leaves or snowstorms. You just look up one day and say, “I guess it’s winter now.”
That’s how the holiday season feels this year. It’s somehow Thanksgiving week, but the lack of travel or large Friendsgiving gatherings makes it feel like any other week.
At least we have some occasional dramatic fog to break things up.
The Comerica Bank Tower in fog.
Dallas’ amazing skyline is one of my favorite things about this city. I love that I can always see skyscrapers without ever feeling walled in.
The view approaching downtown on a highway almost makes up for how terrifying the highways are. I-35 near this part of downtown is particularly treacherous, maybe because drivers are more focused on the skyline than the road. We’ve already seen several crashes since August, but fortunately I’ve lucked out so far. 💥
I think we are done with 90 degree days for the rest of the year, but we had a chance to go to Virgin Hotel’s pool club before things got too chilly.
We got free passes to the pool club as part of the Last Virgin Drag Brunch. Like everything else in the hotel, it was a very elegantly designed space.
The cabanas at the pool club in Dallas’ Virgin Hotel.
A drag queen hosting at the Virgin Hotel’s pool club.
The Pool Club at the Virgin Hotel in Dallas.
The cocktails were great, but the best part of the pool club is the people watching. There was the most bizarre mix of people — body builders with crazy tattoos, gay tables, Uptown girls, 25-year-old bros, and a woman who got kicked out about three times but kept materializing somehow.
I think the hotel knows that the pool club attracts riffraff because the security was on point. The presence of so many security guards was a little intimidating at first, but it quickly became apparent why they were necessary. The security guards were very friendly however (even when they were continually kicking out that woman).
The view of downtown Dallas from the Virgin Hotel.
The Pool of the Virgin Hotel in Dallas’ Design District.
Michael and Dennis at the Virgin Hotel in Dallas.
Cocktails at the Virgin hotel (with masks, of course).
It was a great time and made us feel very fancy. The pool club is normally $40/person which is a higher cover than what we’d typically pay, but maybe we’ll be back for a stay-cation soon — Dallasites get a 35% discount at the hotel. 🌴
I love the art work popping up in the Dallas’ Victory Park and Harwood District neighborhoods.
This 8-foot tall sculpture of a hand giving the peace sign is one of my favorite pieces. The piece is called “Heavy Handed” and is by LA-based artist Nathan Mabry.
Apparently, another name of this gesture is the “victory hand,” which is probably why it makes sense for its placement in Victory Park right in front of a sports arena. ✌️
I always remind my friends that Dallas is a major American city and not the rural, oil-rig dotted cow town from TV, but there is randomly a “ranch” of sorts right outside of downtown.
The “Fuel City Ranch” is attached to a gas station with a 24/7 street taco stand on the banks of the Trinity River. The small ranch has longhorn cattle, a donkey, and a zebra.
The zebra and longhorns were thoroughly disinterested in us (probably because it’s 100 degrees), but the donkey came over in hopes of getting some illicit snacks. He was disappointed.
Ingrid the labradoodle was surprisingly not freaked out by Mr. Donkey (unlike the Deep Ellum sculptures). The donkey sniffed Ingrid, double-checked for treats, and then trotted off.
Ingrid the labradoodle at the Fuel City Ranch in Dallas, Texas.
Zebras and Longhorns at the Fuel City Ranch in Dallas Texas.
Tacos from the Fuel City gas station outside of downtown Dallas.
At least the tacos were good. 🌮
You can visit Fuel City Ranch at 801 S Riverfront Blvd, Dallas, TX 75207.
Summertime is nigh.
Rising temperatures and tornado outbreaks mean that springtime is almost over in Dallas.
My days are zipping by quickly with extremely early work mornings and a demanding bar prep schedule, but I’m still making time to walk the dogs and hit up the usual gayborhood spots with friends.
Cassie Nova hosting a drag show at S4 nightclub in Dallas.
Gunter and Ingrid on a dog walk in the Perry Heights section of the gayborhood.
Comparing our shoes at an Oak Lawn happy hour.
Gunter, the chiweenie on our balcony one morning.
I’m sitting for the July bar exam here in Dallas, which means that I’m undergoing the bar prep experience that many of my old classmates did years ago.
Back at Thomson Reuters, my positions were J.D.-preferred, so getting licensed was never a priority.
We took a 12-mile walking tour of the city with the dogs. I was exhausted afterward, but had a hilarious time.
The morning started at Starbucks, where we ran into an adorable chocolate lab puppy.
Ingrid the Labradoodle playing with a chocolate lab mix in front of the Oak Lawn Starbucks.
Ingrid the Labradoodle playing with a chocolate lab mix in front of the Oak Lawn Starbucks.
Ingrid is only about a year old now, but the lab puppy made her seem like a gigantic monster.
We then headed to the Design District, where we passed the Playboy Marfa statue and randomly ran into one of our favorite bartenders in at a car rental place.
The entire trip downtown was a comedy of errors – we first went to the office to set up my new monitor stand, but we didn’t have the right tools.
We then tried to explore the scary downtown Dallas tunnel system, but it’s apparently locked down on the weekends. After being semi-trapped in an abandon tunnel/mall for a while, we emerged to street level and walked to a 7-Eleven store.
A black guy was in front of the 7-Eleven screaming at a heavily tattooed white guy. And I really mean “screaming,” in the Kelis-sense of the word.
There was also a very bored-looking black woman with them.
We stood by some Russian tourists and watched the screaming match, but couldn’t make any sense of it. As the screaming got more heated, I became worried that someone might whip out a gun, so Michael and I went into the 7-Eleven.
There was only a single employee in the 7-Eleven, who seemed more interested in fixing a broken cooler than cashing out the customers waiting to pay. I was standing at the register as the outside screaming match moved down the street. I couldn’t see the men anymore, but I could still hear them screaming from inside of the store.
My neighbors tried to make plans when we met at the dog park.
Jack: “You’re not celebrating?!”
Jill: “You have to do something for your 30th!”
Me: “I am not a big holiday person, and a big party feels gauche in light of the Dallas shootings.”
Jack: “I get that, but you should do something.”
Me: “Like what? Pool time? Bars and drag shows? Brunch? That’s every weekend.”
Jill: “Yeah, living in Oak Lawn is kind of a permanent vacation.”
We did get out of the house this weekend, spent some serious time at the pool, and even had a few long walks downtown.
New and old buildings at the edge of downtown Dallas (near the farmers’ market.)
A mannequin with a fabulous hat at Flower Reign in Oak Lawn, Dallas.
Orange is the New Black was ending when Michael saw the first tweets:
Michael: “Someone got shot at the rally downtown.”
Me: “Someone?”
Michael: “I think it was a cop. Or two.”
Me: “Oh god, this is going to be ugly.”
We spent the next few hours on Twitter and eventually started watching Facebook livestreams on the TV.
The Black Lives Matter march in downtown Dallas ended with a sniper firing into the crowd. All of the Dallas media outlets had a presence downtown, and everyone in the march had a smartphone, so we immediately got footage of the chaos.
It was like watching one of those “found footage” disaster movies – There were videos of gunshots, screaming crowds, and fallen policemen. But the live footage prompted more questions: How many people were dead? One sniper or three? Someone mentioned bombs. Are there really bombs? Are my new coworkers from the newspaper okay?
The local TV stations had to scramble to keep up with the pace of social media. At one point, a local news anchor just pulled up Tweetdeck and started reading tweets.
A news anchor pulling up Tweetdeck on live TV. Note that one of the columns says “competition.”
Your access to information depended on the strength of your Twitter lists, and it was apparent that the traditional TV outlets were hopelessly behind.
There were pool parties, new brunch places, drag shows, and even a trip to Fort Worth.
It was fun, yet exhausting. I was relieved when the weekend was over.
Perry Heights lined with American Flags for the 4th of July.
…and what a Memorial Day Weekend we had…
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)
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.