Finding good jazz spots in Dallas is a slippery proposition, but hardly impossible. Often, impromptu performances and roaming venues deliver the highest quality jazz to our city, but like any great one-off exhibition, these come few and far between. If what you're after is a settled locale, the Dallas Museum of Art is the best place in town. The DMA's weekly "Jazz in the Atrium" series is the most consistently rewarding live jazz offering in Dallas. From 6 to 8 p.m. every Thursday just outside the DMA café, the museum plays host to a different jazz group, typically local but always high-caliber. The kicker is that, aside from cocktails and food, the evening is completely free of charge, including a stroll through the museum's exhibits if the mood should strike you.

If you want to see a rap show, just like a metal or punk or anything show in Dallas, it would behoove you to hang around Deep Ellum. Trees is a great place to catch rising mainstream stars before they make the jump from clubs to venues with names sponsored by corporations. Thanks to The Door's setup as a dark and dank space, it exudes the do-it-yourself culture of rap. Those places are great, but Dada, where niche acts and kings of the local scene drop by at steady and alarming pace, is the crown jewel of places to see rap in Dallas. The bills at Dada are wonderful, yes, but there's nothing like going 0 to 100 real quick in that small and intimate space. There's something that's just so charming about the energy.

This authentic sit-down Mexican restaurant offers hearty staples like $1.30 tacos, free salsa and chips and a full bar. It's open until 2 a.m. on weeknights and all night over the weekend. But this restaurant has something that other late-night establishments in Dallas don't have: children. The kids come with their parents. They're even there on Tuesday nights, when drag performers such as Extasis Show put on sparkly dresses for a full night of singing and jokes. The drag performance is in Spanish, but gringos can enjoy the lively scene and music while scarfing down barbacoa. There's something particularly awesome about watching kids and parents laugh together at a confident performer who may or may not be making jokes about the size of his penis.

There are always at least two doormen waiting by the entrance of the Joule hotel lobby, and they will not let anyone else touch the door. It can feel awkward. All guests who approach will immediately have the door held open for them whether they want it or not. After being ushered in with such aggressive politeness, visitors can relax with a pile of free copies of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times or The Dallas Morning News. The restrooms are beautifully decorated, offering full-length doors in front of each stall for maximum privacy. Instead of paper towels, guests dry their hands with cloths and then throw the towels in a basket. A lobby cafe called Weekend sells excellent coffee and pastries. Surrounding the cafe is ample seating, Wi-Fi and a wide selection of arty coffee table books that people read without even buying. The best part is that no one seems to care whether visitors are actually guests at the hotel, though that may change if anybody buys too many drinks from the lobby bar and passes out on one of the comfy couches.

It's a question as old as hangovers: What exactly constitutes a dive bar? To some, true dive bars are not social places so much as dark, dank watering holes where customers can get away from the rest of the world. But to hell with that. Our checklist for dive bars includes such quaint features as wood paneling, hubcaps on the wall, curtains on the windows and, what the hell, a velvet painting or two. Most important, it's a place to have fun and meet people. In those regards, Single Wide — the younger sibling to Kim Finch's flagship bar, Double Wide — covers the bases. There isn't a better bar along Lower Greenville to slam your Lone Stars and Jamesons while listening to a DJ spin post-punk or, on Sundays, some real stand-up karaoke performances. The tight quarters and smoking patio only encourage socializing.

Whether it's in a one-day workshop or semester-long series of classes, this Bishop Arts District shop offers something for anyone who wants to learn or improve at an art and/or craft. Past classes have included opportunities to learn the art of horror writing, creating pinhole cameras, printmaking, glass-cutting, calligraphy and much more. Of particular interest to parents of budding young artists who hope to devote their high school years to learning more is the shop's extremely helpful course on putting a portfolio together — crucial to anyone trying to get into Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

One Observer staffer loves to tell the story of when he realized that BTW is the exception to the rule for DISD schools. Early in his daughter's freshman year, she saw a crowd of kids rush over to surround some commotion in the courtyard. She assumed what any other kid fresh from a DISD middle school would and asked an onlooker, "Ooh, who's fighting?" but got a quizzical look in response. The girl made her way forward in the crowd and saw what was the source of the hubbub: a breakdancing competition. Those are the kind of kids who get accepted into the prestigious, national award-winning arts magnet. It's like Glee or High School Musical come to life. Too bad the vast majority of DISD high schoolers' experience is more like Stand and Deliver except without the savior teacher.

If someone pitched you the idea for a bookstore, wine bar and coffee shop, would you buy in? What if it was the first to the neighborhood? Better yet, to the city? We could assign The Wild Detectives countless awards this year, but instead we're just going to give this thriving Oak Cliff business the expansive superlative: Best New Thing in Town. Because, if we're being honest, there's nothing greater that's opened in the past 12 months, if not long before that as well. It satisfies both our gastronomy and literary cravings, which is saying quite a lot. Thus far, there have been book readings inside, concerts outside and a great deal of wine and local beer split between the two.

The news anchors you grew up with are gone. The McGarrys and the Rowletts and the Camposes, they've been replaced by children who, while bright-eyed and eager, have smooth, unfurrowed brows incapable of properly conveying the gravity of the day's news. John McCaa's brow, by contrast, is perpetually furrowed, the legacy of three decades delivering news at WFAA Channel 8. No one on local TV outside of Fox 4's Clarice Tinsley is as experienced as McCaa, and even she can't match the avuncular, Murrow-like presence that assures viewers that, no matter how horrific that fatal car crash, everything's going to be all right.

Any show anchored by John McCaa has an almost insurmountable advantage over its competitors. Throw in the two best cop reporters in the city, Tanya Eiserer and Rebecca Lopez, a theatrically hyperventilating weatherman/demigod Pete Delkus, the unexpectedly progressive social commentary of Dale Hansen and big-game hunters Brett Shipp and David Schechter, and it's not even a competition.