Archive for the ‘About Dallas’ Category

Looking for someplace cool to hang out and get some work done on you laptop? Well this list provides you an overview of just some of the locations offering free WiFi — and we all like FREE!

Dallas
Abundance Cafe and Catering Co. - 18900 Dallas Pkwy, Suite 104 - 469 737 8770
Angry Dog - 2726 Commerce St - 214-741-4406
Atlanta Bread Co. - 14060 N. Dallas Parkway
Backus Shell - 10141 E.N.W. Hwy - 214-348-7280
Bank of America Plaza - Retail Seating Area - 901 Main Street
Banana Leaf, Thai restaurant - 17370 Preston Road Ste 500 - 972-713-0123
Buli’s - 3908 Cedar Springs Rd
Buzz Brews - 4154 N Central Expwy - 214 826 7100 and 4334 Lemmon Ave - 214 521 4334
Cafe Brazil - 3847 Cedar Springs Rd. - 214-461-8762 and 2900 Greenville Ave - 214-841-0900 and 6420 N. Central Expressway - 214-691-7791 and 2815 Elm St. - 214-747-2730
Cafe San Miguel - 1907 NHenderson Ave - 214 370 9815
Chick-fil-A - 6423 Hillcrest Ave - 214 599 9944
Chill Bubble Tea - 13465 Inwood Rd, Ste 115 - 972 233 2888
Cici’s Pizza - 12101 Greenville Ave. - 972-235-0888
Corner Bakery Cafe - 7615 Campbell Rd
Corner Bakery Cafe - 12700 Park Central Dr, Ste 1300 - 800 309 4642
Crossroads Market - Bookstore and Cafe - 3930 Cedar Springs Road
Dallas Dodge Chrysler Jeep - 11550 Lyndon B Johnson Fwy - 214-319-1200
Dallas First Church - 5606 W Illinois Ave - 214.339.5209
Dallas parks - Kidd Springs, 711 W. Canty; Exall, 1355 Adair Street; Tietze, 2700 Skillman Ave.; Ridgewood-Belcher, 6818 Fisher Road; Lake Highlands, 9940 White Rock Trail; Campbell-Green, 16600 Parkhill Drive; and Timberglen, 3810 Timberglen Road
Dallas Public Library Branches
Deep Wireless - Elm Street in deep ellum from Good-Latimer to Malcom X - 214-682-1545
DFWFreeNet - 11550 Lyndon B Johnson Fwy
Drip Coffee - 4343 Lovers Lane - 214-599-7800
Dunn Bros Coffee - 4895 LBJ Freeway - 972 991 3866
Fallout - 835 Exposition
Fat Daddy’s Burger House - N Buckner Blvs
Flying J Travel Plaza - I20 Exit 472 - 972 225 3566
Fox & Hound Dallas (Plano) - 18918 Midway Road - 972.732.0804
Frankie’s Bar - 3227 McKinney Avenue - 214.999.8932
Green Spot Market & Fuels - 702 N Buckner Blvd - 214 319 SPOT
Grill 400 - 400 W Davis - 214 941 2727
Hakan International Hair & Body Contour - 5601 W Lovers Lane - 214 352 7555
Honey Molasses Organic Cafe - 8204 Elmbrook Dr - 214-905-6100
Hooters - 2201 N Lamar St - 214 979 9464
Humperdink’s - 6050 Greenville Ave. - (214) 368-1203
Humperdink’s - 2208 W Northwest Highway - (214)358-4159
IHOP - many locations in Dallas area offer Free Wi-Fi
J. Erik Jonsson Central Library - 1515 Young St. - (214) 670-1400
Java Lato - 6125 Berkshire Ln - (214) 361-1145
Kaffa coffee roasting company - 10455 North Central Expressway #114 - 214-691-6933
Kels Restaurant - 5337 Forest Lane - (972) 458-7221
KK Designer Nails - ask for password - 337 E Leddbetter Dr - 214-371-3374
Kwik Kar Lube & Tune on Greenville - 6424 Greenville Ave. - 214.696.5454
Lakewood Landing - 5818 Live Oak St - 214-823-2410
Luxury Cars of Texas - 4230 Lyndon B Johnson Fwy - 817-274-1244
McKinney Avenue Tavern - 2822 McKinney Avenue
Motopia - 4123 N Central Expwy. - 214 443 8389
Mozart Bakery - 11420 Emerald St - 972 406 8885
Murray Street Coffee Shop - 103 Murray Street - 214 655 2808
Obzeet Restaurant, Coffee Shop and Tropical Bar - until 7PM - 19020 Preston Road - 972-867-6126
OK Paper - 2420 Butler St - 214 637 7175
Opening Bell Coffee - 1409 S. Lamar - (Basement of Historic Sears Building) - 214.565.0383
Paciugo Gelato - 5509 West Lovers Lane - 214-956-7979
Paciugo Gelato - 3699 McKinney Avenue (West Village) - 214-219-2665
PCI Health Training Center Dallas - 8101 John Carpenter Freeway
Pizza Hut - 3439 Oaklaw - 214 522 1414
Plaza Latina - 11200 Harry Hines Blvd
Presbyterian Hospital - 8100 Walnut Hill Ln - 214-345-6789
Press Box Grill - Elm & Ervay - 214.747.8224
Primo Brothers Pizza - 9310 Forrest Ln.
South Dallas Cafe - 3126 Grand Ave - 214 428 8856
St. Paul Cafe - 1707 E. San Jacinto - 214.969.0111
Stratos Greek Taverna - 2907 West Northwest Highway - 214-352-3321
Stromboli Cafe - 6309 Hillcrest Ave - 214-521-4020
Tae Kook Dang Bakery - 2560 Royal Ln - 972 243 4478
Taqueria Arandas - 3647 W Northwest Hwy - 214-350-3052
Tempest Tea - 5600 West Lovers Lane Suite 111 - (214) 351-4TEA
Ten Food & Beverage - 3414 Milton Ave. - (214) 692-8955
The Kozy Kitchen - 4433 McKinney Avenue - 214-354-9000
The Gingerman - 2718 Boll Street
The Nodding Dog - 500 North Bishop Ave.
The Wine Therapist Wine Bar - 810 Skillman
Tietze Park - 2700 Skillman Ave. at Vanderbilt
TNT SportsPage - 14902 Preston Rd # 716 - (972) 661-1130
Tom Thumb - 7700 W Northwest Hwy - 214 346 1020 and 316 S Hampton St - 214 331 0160 and 6333 E Mockingbird Lane - 214 824 1265 and 3757 Forest Ln - 972 241 4426
Urban Dog Coffee - 2720 Oak Lawn Avenue - 214-219-5511
Victory Plaza - Olive & N Houston - 214-303-5572
VIP Realty - 3010 LBJ Fwy - 214 675 6292
Waffle Iron Cafe & Coffe House - 5181 Keller Springs Rd (at N. Dallas Tollway) - 972-250-1166
Watermark Community Church - 7540 LBJ Freeway - 214-361-2275
West End Pub - 1801 N Lamar, #100 - 214 758 5711
Whataburger - 8501 S Lancaster Rd - 972 224 3511
White Rock Coffee - 10105 E. Northwest Hwy. - 214.341.4774
Whole Foods - 11700 Prerston Rd - 214 361 8887
Amelia’s Place Downtown B&B - 1108 S. Akard Street # 13 - 214-421-7427
Tipperary Inn - 5815 Live Oak
Holiday Inn Select - Dallas Love Field - 3300 W. Mockingbird Ln - (214) 357-8500
Omni Dallas Hotel at Park West - 1590 LBJ Freeway - 972-869-4300
Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas(Irving) - 221 East Las Colinas Boulevard - 972-556-0800
Magnolia Hotel - 1401 Commerce St - (214) 915-6500
Best Western Market Center - free to guests - Also free in the Las Palmas Tex Mex restaurant - 2023 Market Center Blvd.
Quality Inn Dallas Market Center - 1955 Market Center Blvd
Embassy Suites Dallas Galleria - 14021 Noel Road - (972) 364-3640
Radisson Hotel at I-75 and Campbell Road
Super 8 Motel - 4150 Beltway Dr
Wyndham Garden Hotel - Dallas Park Central - 8051 LBJ Freeway - 972-680-3000
Hilton Garden Inn ? Dallas Market Center, 2325 North Stemmons Freeway - 214-634-8200
Residence Inn Dallas Market Center - 6950 N Stemmons Fwy - (214) 631-2472

Editor’s Note: There have been many comments left on the closing of the Larry Morgan Music store. Today, however, Janie Arnold-Autry commented on the post and her info is so rich in historical details, that it warrants its own posting.

I would like to add my memories of my dad’s store, which became Arnold & Morgan. It started out in the small building across the street from GHS. Clyde & Betty Box had a record store in half of the building and my dad, Jim Arnold, had the other side—it was full of pianos and a few organs. (James M. Arnold - died 1971 when his airplane crashed). It was just Arnold Piano Co. at that time. I remember it well because I had to walk there everyday after school and answer the phones and of course do my homework. I loved the record store and listening and dancing to the music.

Mr. Morgan and my dad traveled together in ministry BEFORE the music store was birthed. Mr. Morgan was the praise leader and my dad played the Hammond organ for an evangelist named Jack Coe. When Rev. Coe died, my dad had the piano business to fall back on because his dad E.S. Arnold had a small piano store in Kaufman, TX. My grandfather could take a piano apart and put it back together and make it like new. He taught my dad the same trade.

My dad asked V.E. Morgan to come to Texas and partner up with him in the music business. Mr. Morgan and his family lived in Springfield, MO at that time. Mr. Morgan came to Texas for a number of months (lived with us in our house in Garland) before bringing his entire family to join him. He was a wonderful man…like a second dad to me. It was like the Lord had the plan and dad & Morgan followed the map and made the jouney. At one time, our entire family worked at the store.

After Mr. Morgan and dad split the business, my dad opened The Music Mart in Haltom City,TX (Ft. Worth). I worked in the Ft. Worth store as did my brother, Jimmy. When dad was killed in the airplane crash, my mother gave the store to my brother. The McBrayer brothers bought out the piano & organ side and Jimmy had the guitar side of the building.

(Does anyone remember when the flood came?) Duck Creek flooded…it was awful. But the store survived after many hours of sweeping mud and water out of the building.

I had the honor (just kidding) of dusting pianos and sweeping the floors…after school each day. I just happened to like being there to check out all the good looking guys too…I had a crush on several.

I am still very close friends with Mrs. Morgan, Kaye Morgan-McCurdy and Gary Morgan. I was called “little sis” in the Morgan household when we were kids. Kaye is my dearest friend to this day.

Larry will be missed by many of us. May he rest in peace.
God Bless You All, Thanks for reading my thoughts, Janie Arnold-Autry

Take this fun questionnaire at the Dallas Morning News website.

P.S. I didn’t know Brad Pitt was on “Dallas”!

Note: This fantastic article about the legacy of the Dallas TV show is copyrighted and was written by Jake Batsell of The Dallas Morning News.

He hangs his hat almost 5,000 miles from Southfork, but Colin Hunter has rounded up a huge herd of fans still infatuated with Dallas.

Never mind that the iconic television show has been off the air since 1991. Each day, some 23,000 people visit UltimateDallas.com, the fan site Mr. Hunter produces out of his north London home.

“There are people from everywhere — Romania, Japan, the U.S., Indonesia,” Mr. Hunter, 36, said in a telephone interview. “We’ve got this whole new fan base, some people as young as 12 and 13.”

Three decades after J.R., Sue Ellen and company began bickering on prime-time TV, Dallas remains an unstoppable force in popular culture.

The show that epitomized American grandeur and greed during the Reagan years is still syndicated in dozens of countries. Southfork Ranch in Parker draws more than 300,000 visitors a year. Diehards and new fans devour episodes on DVDs and cable soap channels.

“Dallas is not a phenomenon of 30 years ago, but actually is continuing to bring in new viewers,” said Janet Staiger, curator of Dallas: Power & Passion on Primetime TV, a new exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 14, chronicles how the show’s memorable characters, scandalous storylines and TV firsts — most notably the “Who shot J.R.?” cliffhanger — spawned a global juggernaut that continues to fascinate legions of fans.

Boosters of modern Dallas, meanwhile, often cringe at the show’s over-the-top stereotypes and the lingering perception that the city remains a mecca for big hair, 10-gallon hats and cutthroat capitalism.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” said Phillip Jones, president and chief executive officer of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The show’s persistent popularity makes it more challenging to promote Dallas as a progressive, ethnically diverse city with plentiful options for culture, dining and commerce, Mr. Jones said.

On the plus side, he said, “everywhere you go in the world, people know Dallas.”

“The curse is, everywhere you go in the world, people know Dallas from 30 years ago,” he said. “People think if they come to Dallas, they’re going to see J.R. Ewing walking down the street.”

First of its kind

When the show first aired on CBS in April 1978, Dallas chiefly was known as the site of the Kennedy assassination. The Dallas Cowboys, fresh off their second Super Bowl victory, weren’t even America’s Team yet.

Then came the TV series, which suddenly recast Dallas as a glitzy universe of shimmering skyscrapers, slick oil barons and gorgeous women clad in fur coats and showy jewelry.

“It was, of course, not a totally accurate image,” said Dr. Staiger, a professor of film and television studies at the University of Texas at Austin. “Not all women dress as beautifully as beautifully as Pamela Barnes and Sue Ellen did when they went to lunch. But it gave Dallas an image of richness.”

By the end of the second season in spring 1980, the show gave America its first prime-time cliffhanger when an unknown assailant gunned down J.R. Ewing in his office.

The scheming, sharp-tongued oilman — played by Fort Worth native Larry Hagman — had a long list of enemies. A prolonged actors strike forced fans to wait eight months before finding out the answer to the now-historic marketing slogan: “Who Shot J.R.?”

In November 1980, roughly 360 million viewers worldwide finally discovered who pulled the trigger. At the time, it was the most heavily watched event in television history.

The success of Dallas also elevated the soap-opera plot formula — serial narratives featuring multiple, intertwined story lines — into prime time.

“Now, you can hardly find a drama on prime-time that doesn’t have this format,” Dr. Staiger said.

The show inspired a crush of merchandise, some of which is on display at the Austin exhibit — puzzles, albums, even J.R. beer in pull-top cans.

Hollywood’s efforts to remake Dallas into a movie have sputtered. Janis Burklund, director of the Dallas Film Commission, said studio executives recently told her that the project is still alive but on hold as writers rework the script.

Actors still pleased

Susan Howard-Chrane accepts that her public persona will always be intertwined with her Dallas character, Donna Krebbs.

George W. Bush, then governor, appointed Ms. Howard-Chrane to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission in 1995. During her confirmation hearing, the room went silent when Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, accidentally called her Donna.

“It wasn’t any big deal,” said Ms. Howard-Chrane, a Boerne resident who now serves on the Texas Commission on the Arts and is still constantly recognized by Dallas fans.

“I am never offended by someone calling me Donna — ever,” she said.

Ms. Howard-Chrane said viewers kept tuning in to Dallas because they related to the personal stories of each character — a rare occurrence in today’s prime-time lineup of reality shows and crime dramas.

“It was probably the last of its kind,” she said. “It primarily was a show to entertain, and to showcase actors and pretty clothes and attractive people and relationships. It was entertainment. I think we’ve kind of gotten away from that.”

The show’s success surprised actor Steve Kanaly, who played Ray Krebbs, Donna’s husband and the Ewings’ ranch foreman. Mr. Kanaly, who now grows avocados and citrus crops in Ojai, Calif., said he expected a quick exit after filming the first five episodes.

“I never believed the show had a chance to be successful,” he said. “I did five shows with everybody and thought, ‘Well, this is great; it’s been fun working with you, see you later.’.”

In retrospect, Mr. Kanaly said, the show may have caught on because it provided an escape from real-world issues like inflation, unemployment and the Iran hostage crisis.

“There were a lot of negative things going on,” he said. “And then this show pops up that doesn’t have anything to do with anything except a bunch of rich people in Texas and their crazy, mixed-up lives.”

Worldwide reach

Shady deals, boozy carousing and messy family politics may have been off-putting to some, but the program showed the world that America was a land of big dreams, Cadillacs and swimming pools.

Just ask Tomas Spilacek. During a visit to Southfork last month, Mr. Spilacek remembered watching Dallas in communist Czechoslovakia 20 years ago.

“Every person was watching this movie because Dallas is like all life in the U.S.,” he said. “Over there, communism. Over here, Dallas. Every Saturday night watching this movie is beautiful.”

Sally Peavy, the ranch’s tourism sales manager, hears stories like that all the time. Roughly two-thirds of the visitors who show up to tour Southfork are international.

“I would’ve thought that maybe it would have died down by now,” Ms. Peavy said. “But it’s amazing to me that people are still intrigued about the show, want to come see it, want to come experience it.”

Colin Mallon, a Southfork visitor hailing from Kent in the United Kingdom, said he got hooked on Dallas in the 1980s because “the storyline was brilliant, had a good laugh in it. It’s just something that made you watch every week.”

“Some of the things that happened in the show were just kind of bizarre,” added Angie Green of Wapakoneta, Ohio. “You couldn’t wait until the next week to see what was going to happen with J.R. and Cliff and all the characters.”

Still holds up

On UltimateDallas, the Web site Mr. Hunter started with two friends in 1997, fans interview the show’s stars, debate old plot twists and answer poll questions like: “Which forbidden love would you have liked to see?”

Mr. Hunter runs the site and attached fan forum with help from fellow fans in London, Canada and the United States. He said interest in the show has endured because its human storylines held such universal appeal.

Viewers could relate to Bobby and J.R.’s sibling rivalry, Sue Ellen’s alcoholism, Pam’s insecurity about her inability to have children and the family squabbles between the Ewing and Barnes clans.

“It was a character-driven show in a way we don’t tend to get now,” Mr. Hunter said. “It still kind of holds up, even nowadays.”

If you will check out the right side of this blog, you will now find a Local Search feature to help you quickly find contact information.

Just type in the business name or the type of business you are looking for - this search featured is powered by one of the most up-to-date databases around.

This virtual “yellow pages” helps make this blog just a bit more one-stop shopping for you!

For a city that logistically has no reason to exist as a major metropolitan market, Dallas hasn’t done too bad for itself.

In Forbes Magazine’s recent list of the 400 wealthiest Americans (Forbes does have a fixation with lists!), 14 of that stellar class make their homes here.

They include:

With 6 Dallasites tied at #117 with $1.5 billion each, they include:

Another tie at #380 with $1.3 billion each are:

It was a 100 years ago today that Neiman-Marcus opened it’s doors for the first time and it happened here in downtown Dallas. The flagship store opened in 1914 at it’s current location of Main Street @ Ervay Street.

One of the greatest annual events for shoppers everywhere is the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Catalogue where you can find such necessities as an imperial sacrificial robe worn by a Chinese emperor, sterling silver thermometer case for doctors, and cars galore from Mercedes-Benz to Lexus.

A popular urban legend about the store was the “$250 chocolate chip cookie recepie”. The reason it’s a legend is for the following reasons: The “complaintant” said the charge was on her Visa statement - NM doesn’t accept Visa in the stores; NM didn’t even make a chocolate chip cookie when this legend began and this rumour first began in the 1940’s except then it was the Waldorf-Astoria and their Red Velvet Cake.

So grab yourself a sterling silver bubble wand and start celebrating the 100th of the grand dame of retailing! May you have another 100 successful more!