Best Artistic Healing 2009 | Art Restorations Inc. | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Artistic Healing

Art Restorations Inc.

For a facility established in 1978, Art Restorations Inc. is as spry as ever. Owner Cher Goodson and her staff of conservators face each new project—whether restoring a painting centuries old, or a Lladro figurine—with energy and excitement that puts the client at ease and makes them feel like their piece is the most important one on the table. With specialists in wood, paintings, clocks, metal, decorative objects and more, there's not much ARI can't help. But these art doctors don't just deal in the expensive; they are happy to tackle the sentimental as well. We turned over a Maori greenstone pendant that had sadly broken in two and without scoffing at our superglue band-aid, one conservator made it right without as much as a visible seam. Granny's broken porcelain isn't a problem either. Poppy's cuckoo clock? It can live on. Making the old new again? ARI can do it.

Best Cheap Hair Cut (for Chicks)

Floyd's 99 Barbershop

If you're cool with using the men's bathroom at your favorite dive bar, then you're probably willing to shear your locks at a local barbershop. Floyd's 99 Barbershop isn't just some hole in the wall but part of a cool chain across the country with more than 40 locations. Magazine cutouts and music posters are standard wall decoration. And barbers and cosmetologists with tattoos and bright-colored Mohawks are the norm. The West Village location sees about three women to every 10 male customers. The stylists are then happy to give those brave females a smart cut for just $27.

Best Distant Vintage With a Grudge

Style Station

Sure, the city of West isn't exactly a suburb, but if you're like us, you pass through at least a few times a year en route to Austin, San Antonio or beyond. A few miles past the world-famous Czech Stop you'll find the Style Station, located on the southbound side in an old building surrounded by rusty old gas pumps and broken-down cars. Owners Art and Rebecca DeVitalis have stocked the joint to the rafters with vintage Western wear and assorted other '60s and '70s attire--all for half the price you'd pay in a high-falutin' big-city vintage store. (Need a cool vintage cowboy hat for less than $20? This is your best bet.) Perhaps the best part of visiting Style Station is listening to Art's breathless retellings of his various run-ins with Texas music royalty, whether it's the story about playing bass in Augie Myers' band or the one about his friend kicking Jerry Jeff Walker's ass. (You know he had it coming, right?)

Best Eyebrows

Salon Pompeo

Lisa Nguyen is a small woman of Native American and Asian descent obsessed with hair removal. She waxes her entire face because peach fuzz "is not cute," she says. Not that she's going to judge you if you decide to keep those tiny hairs that maybe serve a kind of evolutionary purpose. But if you want passion, then you should meet Lisa. She's not a subtle waxer, however. Expect people to notice that your eyebrows look "professionally done." Most women don't have a problem with that. If you do, try someplace else. Also there is a second Salon Pompeo location on McKinney Avenue.

Best Flea Market

Junkadoodle

Discovering something uniquely cool or fun is exactly what the spirit of shopping at flea markets is all about, and the place with the hippest junk in town is easily Junkadoodle. Owners Bettyann Nugent and her brother Jimmy Henley are dedicated to cramming as many funky items under one roof as possible, with the overflow such as patio furniture pouring into the side yard. Everything from restored chairs, offbeat art, curtains, religious items, light fixtures and guitars can be found among the décor highlighted by pink flamingos. And if they don't have it, Nugent and Henley will hunt it down for you. It's a cool and quirky place to save some dough and have a ball.

Best Furniture Store

Again & Again

We don't have to always buy new new things. We don't have to throw out perfectly good furniture just because it has a stain on it or some ugly piping. We can appreciate the good bones of an old sofa; see the potential in a ripped vinyl chair. Together with Leslie Pritchard, proprietor of Again & Again, we can do it. Stop wasting money and perfectly good furniture, people. Visit the little house on Bonita and Henderson Avenues and take a gamble on a vintage gem. Buy it for less than a new piece, take it home as-is and get creative, or pay a bit more and arrange with Pritchard and her crew to have it stripped of past indiscretions, restuffed, recovered and reborn. Pritchard is known among regular patrons and the city's designers for searching out quality pieces from the past...quality pieces that will, no doubt, last much longer than something flat-packed that assembles with an Allen wrench.

Best Grocery Store

Central Market

Central Market is a Texas conceit. It's huge and has a personality all its own. A regular grocery store is organized by aisles (dry pasta in aisle 10, anyone?) But here you have to wind around corners and mosey from the produce section to probably the best beer selection in Dallas. From the bulk sale of granola to coffee beans, this is a store that's all about you. You choose what you want. Central Market also dresses up the usually terrible experience of shopping by highlighting the week's "foodie finds," which are like staff picks at a local bookstore.

Best Hardware Store

Lakewood Hardware

If there were a sliding scale for store clerk helpfulness, big-box stores would be at the bottom, of course. ("What? Me a sales person? Nah. I just wear this uniform because it's cool-looking.") And Lakewood Hardware would be at the top. The owner/proprietor, Khandoo Nagar, and his two top sales people, Scott and Kevin, have a century of hardware experience between them. But that's maybe the least of it. You walk in this place holding a whatchamacallit before you in one hand like a talisman. A salesperson drifts forward wordlessly, takes it from your fingers, studies it closely, then leads you to exactly the thing you need to fix your problem. It's a good place to visit even when you don't need anything, just to remind yourself how the basic retail customer service model was supposed to work.

Best Miniatures

Through the Keyhole

The allure of the dollhouse is apparent: A place where the dollhouse owner can carefully control the environment and actions of each doll, building an entire fantasy world with no outside influences or real-life repercussions. Also, tiny stuff just looks cool. Whether you're staging a complicated sociological drama with your dolls or simply creating your dream house, a visit to Through the Keyhole is a necessity. The shop is crammed full of miniatures in every category: food, bedding, decor, furniture, textiles, lighting and more. If you're starting from scratch, Through the Keyhole can also outfit you with an empty dollhouse or a dollhouse kit. You may feel like a powerful giant as you hold a ceramic plate on your fingertip or squint at a small-scale newspaper, but just be a benevolent dictator to your dolls, OK?

Best New Bike Shop

Fleetwood's Kit Kat

When owner Fleetwood Hicks and operations director Harvey Herr opened Fleetwood's Kit Kat across the street from SMU in February, business was expectedly slow. But as spring came and word-of-mouth spread, the two knew the beginning of something special was afoot. Specializing only in cruiser bikes, which Herr calls "the ultimate urban bike," Fleetwood's made a breakthrough when they started mixing parts, allowing customers to fully customize their bikes. And for those looking to rent a bike for a day on the Katy Trail, they offer rentals at only $15 for the first hour and $5 for each additional hour. Hicks claims he's already one of the largest cruiser dealers in the Southwest, and with a new Web site on the way, he'll be selling bikes nationwide by the end of the year.

  • 5214 E. Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, 75205 Map

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