Sometimes, I love being wrong.
OK, not really. I pretty much hate it all the time, but if I have to be wrong about something, I'd like to be wrong about ways in which Dallas sucks. See, in my column a couple weeks back, I mused that the last time I saw people cutting rugs in Dallas, it was all about Wranglers and Toby Keith. Somehow, Thursday nights at The Slip Inn must have, ahem, slipped my mind.
Of course, I've only been twice. My first visit was more than a year ago, when I was dragged to the Off-Knox-Henderson bar by a rowdy group of improv comedy performers I was doggedly attempting to interview. I never got around to my list of questions because, frankly, I was too busy shaking my ass. The Slip Inn is a beacon of hope in the barren landscape of lame Dallas dance halls, and not just because it's a great place to get down.
You've probably been reading a lot lately about all the racial conflicts, tensions and out-and-out fights in North Texas. All that crap in Farmers Branch, the Preston Hollow ordeal and, most recently, some genuinely stupid MLK Day partying by white kids at Tarleton State involving fake gold teeth, gangwear and guns.
Can't we all just get along? Actually, yes, if my second trip to the Inn last week is any indication.
Thursdays are old-school hip-hop night, bringing out everyone from SMU frat folk to breakd ancers to hipsters to a couple of kids who looked like nobody ever told them the 1998 rave scene had come and gone. Hispanic, black, white, Asian -- it didn't matter.
By midnight, everybody was on the floor during "Gin and Juice" and didn't anyone care who they were bumpin' alongside, so long as there was bumpin' being done. The only source of racial tension in the room -- if even -- was the sweet dance-off between a couple of black guys and a white guy who really, really liked to moonwalk.
The party starts tonight around 10:30 pm, so get there early enough to knock back a couple of your favorite cocktails before the dance floor fills up. You won't need to be fully loaded to have a good time, but it always helps. --Andrea Grimes