Arts & Entertainment

The Trinity River in Dallas is a much more interesting float than you might guess, but it's also a little less user-friendly than you might expect. The currents are more massive than they may look from the freeway bridges, and at certain times of the year, the river can present sudden obstacles and serious perils. Nobody knows the river more intimately than Charles Allen — where to find its hidden secrets, how to avoid problems and when the most opportune times may be for an expedition by canoe. He can set you up and put you in, or he can go with you, which is the better deal because he really does know and love this deeply misunderstood old river.

Every Thursday night, the rooftop deck of two-floor Red Light Lounge comes alive with music from The Guild, a group of DJs who have played at Burning Man. The real show, however, is the crowd of regulars who show up in wild-ass wigs, feathers, leather, sequins, tutus, body paint and other outrageous disco costumery. How much time should you put into your couture for this club? They enforce a "no effort, no entry" door policy. Adorn yourself accordingly.

If you're going to give yourself a name like Velvet Elvis, you better be tacky in your execution. And if there's anything that Velvet Elvis does well, it's bad taste. It's everything that a hole-in-the-wall dive located in a strip mall should be: dark, grungy and full of bad art, with no beers on tap (bottles and cans only) and drinks that will knock you off your feet. Like any self-respecting dive, Velvet Elvis is the place to get away from other people, but if you want to hate yourself a little more, there's always karaoke.

Readers' Pick: Lee Harvey's

Here's the short-but-simple online biography of The Naked Lens: "I figured the world already had enough wedding photographers," he writes. "Most of my best friends are hookers, strippers or burners." The Naked Lens is photographer Mark Kaplan, a former naval air crewman and lifeguard who now works as a freelance shooter. Kaplan can be found photographing parties and events far off the beaten path, definitely not the dressy society wingdings the shiny sheets cover. His pix celebrate the tattooed, pierced, pink-haired and scantily clad. Burlesque shows are a favorite. Kaplan likes his subjects to have some skin in the game.

In March, award-winning journalist Janet St. James announced she was leaving her job of 19 years at ABC affiliate WFAA and moving to public relations. The next month came worse news: St. James had been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. The news of her diagnosis and subsequent double mastectomy came from St. James herself in videos posted on Facebook. "I am fierce and strong. But I have breast cancer," she said. She has continued posting updates through chemotherapy treatment (now over). After all those health stories for Channel 8, including exclusives on last year's Ebola patients at Presby, St. James may be doing her best work reporting on her own medical crisis and recovery. (Follow her on FB or on Twitter @janetstjames.)

Dallas Comedy House isn't where you go to see a big-name headliner, but that's what makes it good. Head to the recently relocated Deep Ellum institution if you want to catch Dallas' best up-and-coming stand-up comedians (who might one day become big names) trying out new material and honing their acts. You can take an improv class here, too, and it's the site of the annual Dallas Comedy Festival, which serves as a showcase for hot comics on the way up in the biz.

Club Dada's patio gives it a bit of an unfair advantage in this category. Sure, shows indoors at Dada kick plenty of ass; moshing along to Total Trash just wouldn't be the same in the fresh outdoor air. The dingy, don't-really-give-a-shit decor is a nice touch, and the bathrooms are, shall we say, very rock 'n' roll. But Dada's patio puts it over the top, making it an untouchable Deep Ellum double-threat. There hasn't been a better outdoor show this year than Courtney Barnett's, and shows like that only happen at Dada.

When was the last time hype paid off so gloriously? The return of The Bomb Factory, out of commission as a concert venue for 20 years, had been publicized for over a year when the doors finally opened in March. And boy, did it ever live up to expectations: The chic decor, great sight lines and crisp sound quality are hallmarks of a renovation that spared no detail. After the pomp of Erkyah Badu's opening night performance, shows like Jesus and Mary Chain and D'Angelo built on the buzz. Best of all, those lines around the block have continued, suggesting The Bomb Factory and Deep Ellum are truly back.

As what's left of talk radio on the AM dial rants itself red in the right-wing echo chamber, KERA-FM just keeps quietly, calmly providing news, interviews, panel shows and features from local, regional and national sources. The National Public Radio and Public Radio International affiliate is where you'll find This American Life; Morning Edition; Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; and All Things Considered. The local component is the noontime Think, hosted by the unflappable Krys Boyd. Nearly commercial free, the station switches to BBC news overnight, a reminder that news does happen elsewhere in the world.

The feel-good story of Dallas music in 2015 has undoubtedly been the rise of Leon Bridges, who used a contract with Columbia Records to spring onto late-night TV shows, but still takes the time to go busking in Deep Ellum. Listening to Coming Home, it's easy to understand what all the fuss is about. More than a throwback, the album demonstrates strong songcraft, a painstaking attention to detail and a hell of a lot of talent. Coming Home soars highest on the title track and "Better Man," while "Twistin' and Groovin'" and "River" are its most grounded songs.

With its wide variety of guests — authors, arts leaders, politicians, performers — local host Krys Boyd's noontime talk and call-in show on KERA-FM/90.1 offers a calm, well-informed two-hour break from the angry voices doing talk radio elsewhere. Boyd's good at letting her guests make their points with minimal interruption. Listen and learn.

Big ups to Dallas County Clerk John Warren for changing his mind for the right reasons. In 2013, after saying for years that he opposed same-sex marriage because of his religious beliefs, Warren came out in support of marriage equality. This year he dutifully prepared his office for the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, ensuring that Dallas County would be able to issue marriage licenses to couples as soon as the ruling came down. In June, Warren issued the first same-sex marriage license in Dallas County to Jack Evans and George Harris, who'd had to wait 54 years to attain legal status for their union.

We've been blessed with a steady stream of Erykah Badu updates this year. Some of the things that have kept her busy: She busked in Manhattan, appeared on the local news when her flight was delayed, performed an epic hip-hop medley with the Roots, headlined opening night at The Bomb Factory, dissed the Black Eyed Peas and released a mixtape to save the world. (We're nearly out of breath.) But best of all, Badu won the prestigious Ella Fitzgerald Award at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. It's an honor shared by Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin, and it perfectly befits our own Queen of Neo-Soul.

Versatile, classically trained Jenny Ledel is half of one of Dallas' most powerful theater-making duos. Husband Alex Organ, our Best Actor pick, is artistic director at Second Thought Theatre. Ledel is a company member at Kitchen Dog, where she was a comic delight in Lee Trull's zany Wilde/Earnest. She played a neurotic wife in creepy Belleville at Second Thought. Opposite her hubby's Iago, she was riveting as Emilia in Othello. Why does she act? "Every day I read something in the news that ignites my sense of outrage," Ledel says. "Acting allows me to proclaim it on high more eloquently than I could ever do on my own." Offstage, Ledel voices anime and is a certified notary public. We certify that she's a notable actor.

A jukebox — a real, honest-to-goodness one with CDs or records and pages that flip — is most at home in a dive bar. And if any bar in Dallas gets it right, it's Lakewood Landing. Put in $1 and you'll get three songs, but why would you do that when $2 gets you seven? Cue up some Ernest Tubbs to go with ELO, Fleetwood Mac, the Pixies or Big Star, grab a Lone Star and celebrate your impeccable taste in music from the comfort of the patio, because hell yes the music plays outside too.

Sure, Alex Organ is great in the big classic roles: Coriolanus at Shakespeare Dallas, Iago in Othello at Second Thought Theatre (where he's artistic director now). But it was in Undermain Theatre's weird and wonderful production of Annie Baker's The Flick this season that this Yale-trained actor really showed the depth of his talent. As a 35-year-old movie usher who barely spoke and spent most of the three-hour play sweeping and mopping, he was as heartbroken and heartbreaking as Hamlet (and in way fewer words). It takes a great actor to make long silences into a bravura performance.

In your face, Jerry Jones. The Cowboys owner may have built the biggest indoor concert venue in the state of Texas, but when Garth Brooks decided to make his big North Texas comeback, he took his business elsewhere. And boy did it pay off: Brooks, who hadn't played Dallas since 1998, made the sensational decision to play seven — yes, seven — shows across five nights at American Airlines Center, and the country legend sold over 100,000 tickets in the span of a few hours. It wasn't just Brooks' ego that benefited either; with floor seats costing less than $70, the fans were the real winners.

Sometimes it's best to let the music do the talking. When Sleater-Kinney visited Dallas in the spring, they answered questions about whether their reunion tour could capture the old fire in the simplest way possible: by kicking ass. The trio barely spoke throughout the show, preferring instead to ratchet up the energy with every song, as though Corinne Tucker, Janet Weiss and Carrie Brownstein wanted to see who would break first. In the end, they just about burned the Granada down with the apocryphal "Modern Girl." This wasn't the best feminist show in Dallas this year, or even the best punk or rock show. It was the best show, period.

For several decades, the 90-seat basement space in Deep Ellum has staged avant-garde plays by emerging writers. This season, however, something clicked on a higher level with the world premiere of Gordon Dahlquist's sci-fi drama Tomorrow Come Today, the tightly focused work of actor Shannon Kearns Simmons as the title character in The Testament of Mary and the impeccably acted and directed (by Blake Hackler) The Flick, Annie Baker's Pulitzer winner about three nobodies working in an old cinema. Undermain's married founders Katherine Owens and Bruce DuBose have lined up another challenging season, including Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, which regional theaters rarely touch (it opens early next year), and the current premiere (through October 17) of Meg Moroshnik's The Droll (Or, a Stage Play about the END of Theatre), about a time when all theater is banned and one troupe puts on a secret Hamlet. End of theater? Not at Undermain.

When you think of an all-ages venue you might think punk music and kids waving middle fingers at their parents and the establishment. But cultivating a great all-ages audience is really about respect for elders. The Kessler Theater, an always-all-ages venue, is nothing if not reverent toward music's past, and it's the perfect place for young music fans to gain an appreciation for history. To say The Kessler books "legacy acts" would be to give it short shrift; catching the Mavis Staples or Zombies of the world in a 400-person theater is once-in-a-lifetime stuff and a chance for those under-18 music-heads to experience music the way it should be.

Founder and director Sue Birch's small professional company in Plano keeps the accent on all things English in seasons packed with murder mysteries, farces and traditional holiday "pantos." Production quality is consistently tickety-boo (as Brits would say), with fairy-tale panto shows designed like storybooks come to life (and scripts designed to make adults giggle, too). You'll find authentic English snackies at intermission (try the prawn crisps). Shows frequently sell out. "I see a great deal of affection for all things British," says Birch. Alan Ayckbourn's saucy comedy How the Other Half Loves is playing through October 4. The next panto is King Arthur, opening November 28.

He often starts with a title: A School Bus Named Desire. Then writer-director Jeff Swearingen creates an ingenious homage to the original play, but with the twist of using children and teens as characters. As the co-founder and director of all-youth Fun House Theatre and Film, Swearingen has wowed critics and audiences with his smart Mamet spoof, Daffodil Girls (a Glengarry satire about the cutthroat world of Scout cookie sales); his holiday-themed take on Albee called Yes, Virginia Woolf, There Is a Santa Claus; and the pie-throwing Game of Thrones, Jr. His best might be Stiff, a showbiz farce that had a Sweet Smell of Success in its plot about a theater critic whose untimely death threatens an opening night. If one of Swearingen's brilliant little comedies-with-kids is opening, we're there.

What's more do-it-yourself than not having a fixed address? Local artist Arthur Peña flipped the script on the DIY venue model by doing away with the actual venue (and the overhead) to set up a roving DIY space, Vice Palace. Peña has always liked things weird (witness a George Quartz show or Dezi 5's crucifixion), but his best and battiest trick yet may be the new, city of Dallas-funded Vice Palace cassette label, for which he recorded live shows at Aqua Lab Studios to release as one-off tapes. Peña proves you can do anything with enough imagination.

If Lower Greenville has increasingly come to resemble Uptown with its rooftop bars and valet parking, then at least one bar, and in particular one weekly music showcase, has been keeping the neighborhood's creative spirit intact. That bar is The Crown & Harp, and thanks to Stefan González, who curates the Outward Bound Mixtape Sessions each Monday, it's one of Dallas' most vital hubs for experimental and noise music. From free jazz to noise rock to one-man bands, Outward Bound's guiding principle is to toss rules out the window. Local music doesn't get more wild or inspired than this.

With this season's world premiere of Dallas playwright Jonathan Norton's moving drama Mississippi Goddamn, vickie washington (she likes it lower case) reminded us that she's one of the finest stage directors in North Texas. Expert at bringing new works like Norton's to stages at South Dallas Cultural Center, Jubilee Theatre and in her day job at Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts, washington says the future of Dallas theater is secure because there's so much talent here. Her group Reading the Writers is focused on "finding pieces that aren't on the beaten path and bringing them to life," she says. Sounds like a move in the right direction.

Hip-hop is booming right now in Dallas (just ask Noisey), but if you really want to know what makes the scene tick you have to go underground. No one in North Texas has a finger on the pulse of hip-hop, both local and touring, like the folks behind 16Bars.xxx, who specialize in late-night, DIY after-parties. They set up camp at places like Ash Studios or random Airbnbs, and it's not uncommon to catch rappers such as Vic Mensa and Travi$ Scott mingling with the Outfit, TX or Blue, the Misfit at these packed parties. You might even catch a world premiere, such as when Scott debuted "Antidote" this summer.

Theatrical set designer Rodney Dobbs regularly makes something out of nothing. Starting with a bare stage, with some plywood, paint and lots of imagination, he can re-create 1960s Southern suburbia, as he did for the play Mississippi Goddamn, or go multilevel with fancy staircases and video screens for Uptown Players' glossy musical Catch Me If You Can. As a founder of low-budget Pocket Sandwich Theatre, Dobbs learned how to stretch a dollar while making visual magic. And he's used to backstage hazards. "It's not a finished set," he says, "until I've bled on it."

This should be a two-horse race. Where else in Dallas would you want to BYOB (or technically speaking, BYOL) other than Ships Lounge or R.L.'s Blues Palace? The answer is, "Nowhere, you idiot." Sadly, Ships' recent (though, God willing, temporary) closure means there can only be one, Highlander-style. R.L.'s is an utterly unique experience in Dallas. The club is only open for a few hours a week, and it's a slice of life that hearkens back to the juke joints and blues clubs of yore. So bring along some liquor, grab a bucket of ice and sit back and enjoy the Hen Dance.

The four-week summer round-up of one-hour shows by small local companies bounced back in a big way this year. Producing presenter David Meglino chose eight diverse productions filled with energetic talent eager to introduce audiences to fresh pieces of live theater. Top draws were The In-Laws' dreamlike new mini-musical Decline of Ballooning, DGDG's all-male dances-with-text Show about Men and WingSpan's lovely Shoe Confessions. Sold-out houses and big crowds at the after-show cabarets mean FIT has a following that'll keep it flying for years to come.

Dallas the cable reboot got the boot this year after just two seasons, but dang, it had some dandy moments, even if the scripts about Alaskan fracking contracts and Mexican drug cartels were dumb. The addition of Emmy and Tony-winning actress Judith Light gave the TNT series a temporary boost of high drama. Playing evil brothel owner Judith Ryland, Light found the creamy nougat center of every scene she chewed up. The best single moment of the new Dallas had her sidling up to a handsome cowboy, sniffing a fat line of coke off his meaty hand and pausing to let it burn down her throat before she growled, "Mama like." Oh, Judith, you were the new J.R. and we liked you, Mama.

Say this much for Mark Cuban: He has a sense of humor. Or maybe he just doesn't give a damn. When the Free Loaders perform each week at the Standard Pour, band leader John Jay Myers makes the same joke: "If you like what you heard, put $100 in the tip jar," he says. "Unless you're Mark Cuban. Then put in $1,000." Lo and behold, one night last winter, Cuban — of Dancing With the Stars fame — was there, swing dancing his ass off for all the world to see. It may not have been a cash contribution, but it sure was priceless.

Three Links is punk to the core. Having an owner who's a world-class tattoo artist is a good start, as are the one-of-a-kind, hand-drawn show posters. But everything about this club smacks of a no-bullshit approach that places the emphasis on the music, man. More important, Three Links is a venue that consistently punches above its weight, bringing in punk icons such as Sham 69 and Cheetah Chrome on such a regular basis you'd think they have a non-compete clause with the rest of North Texas. Maybe they do, because even though everyone is welcome, there's no one who can hang.

Every once in awhile, a concert winds up being more notable as an event than as a pure live-music experience. Case in point: J. Cole's secret concert at House of Blues. The North Carolina rapper announced the latest round of his ongoing Dollar and a Dream tour would kick off in Dallas at a location to be disclosed the day of the show. Sure enough, on Sunday, June 21, about 4,000 people converged on downtown in hopes of getting in. Police showed up, unaware of what was happening, and social media was flooded with photos and videos. How's that for inspired promotion?

Dallas Medianale is the experimental film festival you didn't know you wanted to go to until you did. In February, the Video Association of Dallas took over The McKinney Avenue Contemporary to curate a month of film screenings, video art installations and intermedia performances, which included internationally renowned video artists such as Bruce Nauman. Chicago-based duo Cracked Ray Tube gave a performance in which they manipulated video and audio on stacks of old TVs and computer monitors. We're all so accustomed to screens these days that video art seems more accessible than ever, and the diversity and enthusiasm of attendees throughout the festival confirmed it. Dallas Medianale will return biennially, so put it on your calendar for Spring 2017.

Local rappers have gotten their fair share of shine in 2015, thanks to collaborations with Dr. Dre and shout-outs in Noisey. But the most unexpected success story was that of unknown Grapevine ex-pat Post Malone, whose clever song "White Iverson" had Complex and XXL singing his praises. An ode to Allen Iverson's notoriously careless spending habits ($40,000 at a strip club was no big deal), the track was a left-field hit and an inadvertently perfect anthem for Dallas, the city of $30,000 millionaires.

"I'll take 'Rhett Miller's White Jeans' for $100, Alex.'" OK, that wasn't the category that got everybody's favorite cow punk — uh, alt-country — band from Dallas onto Jeopardy!, but we can dream, can't we? The real $64,000 question (or, in this case, $800 question) asked, "The Old 97's are a part of the musical genre known as this-country." It was a fun 15 minutes of fame (well, 10 seconds) for Miller and the boys, who found out about it thanks to "book-smart fans." No word on whether Trebek rocks out to Old 97's, but Jeopardy! is Jeopardy! — even your grandparents can tell you that's a big deal.

To some, the Texas Theatre is best remembered as the place where Lee Harvey Oswald tried to hide out after assassinating President Kennedy. But since its revitalization a few years ago, and thanks to creative and thoughtful programming, the landmark with a dark history is enjoying a second life as a key player in Oak Cliff's cultural renaissance. Occasionally it shows a big hit, but more often it's the place to catch a documentary or cult classic that's not showing on the big screen anywhere else. The theater frequently pairs its movie screenings with burlesque shows, stand-up comedy and performances from Dallas' coolest local bands behind the screen. The retro vibe of the building and its orange velvet couches add to the air of swank. It's the only movie theater bar that people visit even when there's nothing playing. There's also a gallery space upstairs, The Safe Room, where emerging artists show work.

Texas country is somewhat different from red dirt country, quite different from alt-country and a whole hell of a lot different from bro-country. Texas country is real; it's not full of glitz and glitter, and it's not about trucks or bass fishing or taking shots or dancing. It's about living in this nation's greatest state and all that entails. That's why Love and War in Texas is Dallas' best country bar. It ignores everything else and just gives you the best in Texas country on as many nights of the week as possible.

Write a book about experiences you don't remember. It's a riddle of a premise, but Dallas native Sarah Hepola wasn't afraid of a challenge. Her relationship with alcohol, which continued despite crippling blackouts, is the subject of her memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. It's a tale of recovery that will move anyone who's struggled with substances or knows someone who has, but it's relatable on other levels. It's a beautifully and often humorously written exploration of memory and the pain of reconciling big dreams with bigger doubts. Hepola dedicates the book to "anyone who needs it." If you ask us, that's everyone.

Because secondhand embarrassment is real, we sometimes get nervous before seeing stand-up comics. Good jokes take risks, which means any comedian with hope of being good is just as likely to get crickets as big laughs. When Clint Werth takes the stage, however, you forget to be nervous for him. Werth is not just funny "for a little-known stand-up" or "better than you expected of a local comic." His stage presence and dark, self-deprecating perspective — on topics such as his neighbors, who treat him like he's a pedophile or a shut-in, never suspecting that he might actually just be stealing their cigarettes — may remind you of other depressive yet outrageous comics like Louis CK, but Werth's material doesn't feel derivative. He's his own hilarious animal.

This is the best bar to watch soccer in Dallas. This is also the best bar to watch the Cowboys play, which you might find hard to believe because it's not located in some posh neighborhood or in an old rundown building. The clientele is 99 percent Latino, but gringos, don't be shy. When a local team is playing, Ojos Locos is always packed out and it's an amazingly good time. Really, there's no better place to watch any game in Dallas.

This cowboy-themed bar is a Cedar Springs legend, and for good reason. In addition to the frequently cheap drink specials, cute boys (and girls) dressed in western wear and RuPaul's Drag Race watch-parties, Round-Up is the place every celebrity in the world heads to when he or she visits Dallas. Lady Gaga is known to frequent the spot, and you can see plenty of Drag Race faves just enjoying cocktails and dancing to country tunes. Their karaoke night is also widely considered one of the best in the city, so don't be afraid to bust out your best rendition of "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" after a few Long Island iced teas. Maybe Gaga will discover you and you can ride her coattails all the way to stardom.

At some of the nation's top shopping malls, the "Santa experience" is being retooled. A Santa show produced by DreamWorks, for example, promises a "fully immersive story hosted by characters," including "a thrilling four-minute flight on Santa's sleigh." The shows Dallas puppet maestro John Hardman has produced with his Le Theatre de Marionette for 40 years are a flight in the opposite direction, back to a pre-pixel Punch and Judy time. His free Scrooge Puppet Theatre at NorthPark Center every holiday season — witty ad-libbed insults from Dickens' old miser — is borne of an ancient art form that entrances even today's over-entertained children and adults.

If you're really trying to shake your groove thing, Station 4 is the only place to go in Dallas. This massive club on Cedar Springs is always playing pulsing techno, and the dense crowd means you won't have to be self-conscious about your moves. In addition to the five-plus dance floors, you can also get tips on dancing from the drag queens performing in The Rose Room. If you're the type who has to be really, really drunk to dance, you can a) accomplish that, or b) just stand in the corner and observe as people of all walks of life dance the night away. Don't be surprised to see a few in full-on furry costumes grinding on the stage or a Lady Gaga impersonator getting it on with a guy who looks like an Abercrombie model. Anything can happen at Station 4.

No matter what you've heard about the Dallas school board over the last year, picking the best member isn't easy. Miguel Solis, for example, did a yeoman's job as board president, stitching together consensus in a body ripped by controversy. But Mike Morath is the one who has suffered the worst slings and arrows, usually for his devotion to research and logical thinking. Through it all he has displayed a remarkable ability to grin and bear it. Asked recently if he thought the end could be near for public education, he said, "If we give up on public schools, we give up on America."

District 1 (Oak Cliff) Dallas City Councilman Scott Griggs is known outside his district for leadership in citywide battles against bad stuff like fracking operations near homes and schools and that stupid toll road they want to build along the river. But he's better known inside his district for the unheralded hard work of constituent services, seeing to it the parkways get mowed and business start-ups don't get shut down by red tape. A constituent said she was surprised recently that Griggs had heard about her getting mugged and had spoken to the police department about the incident on her behalf. "I'm just a nobody," she said. But nobody's nobody in Scott Griggs' district.

You know the satisfaction of walking into a bar and realizing you've found exactly what you've been looking for? For Dallas metal heads, that feeling comes as they step through the doors of Reno's Chop Shop. It has been an institution of the Dallas metal scene for years. The bar keeps things simple, which is a large part of its appeal. Not much legwork goes into planning for a night parked at Reno's. The drink? Beer. The attire? Black. The music? Heavy. Plus, the attached venue hosts some of the wildest bands on earth, solidifying Reno's metal credentials.

DJ Red Eye holds down a multitude of roles at It'll Do Club, including promoter, host and, most important, resident DJ. He has over two decades of experience controlling dance-floor vibes, with residencies at some of the most notable dance clubs in Dallas clubland history, from Club One back in the day to It'll Do and Beauty Bar today. Red Eye brings to the table a savant-level knowledge of classic club tracks (many of which he owns on vinyl) and a firm grasp of the latest tracks with underground buzz. Red Eye can read a crowd like few others and uses his deep knowledge and extensive technical skill behind the decks to get any crowd to shake their shoes.

Wait a minute, he's not the mayor. Philip Kingston is just a City Council member from East Dallas. But he's out-mayoring Mike Rawlings by doing all the things a mayor should do. He stands up to the Dallas Citizens Council, for example. (They're the old mossbacks who've been calling the shots in Dallas since before Elvis.) Like the time they told him he couldn't attend their political luncheon, so he went anyway and made them throw him out. That's the kind of cool stuff a mayor should do — stand up for the city and the people who live in it.

The craft cocktail movement has done wonders for booze enthusiasts, but it has also muddled the drinking scene with pretension and overpriced drinks. Benj Pocta could chew your ear off about obscure bitters, but he's much more likely to ask you about your personal tastes and then actually listen to your response. The drinks he serves at Small Brewpub are straightforward and refined, but they also boast enough inventive ingredients (smoked tea, for example) to keep the drinking interesting. Bonus: Each of his creations only costs $8, and he can also pour you one of the city's best local pilsners.

Tucked under the knee of two freeways, with a wild, forested flood plain at its southern edge, the neighborhood around Bonton Farms organic community garden has long been the urban island in a part of southern Dallas that isn't quite paradise. It was a place where kids might not even know there was a big, beautiful world growing just beyond it. But Bonton is turning that around. Habitat for Humanity has built almost 200 homes in this stretch of about 100 small blocks. And the best and happiest thing to happen has been Bonton Farms itself, a faith-based community garden with goats, chickens and a guard dog still working on the idea of guarding the chickens, not eating them. From seedlings of great ideas, bigger, better things sprout. Let the good times roll in an area of Dallas that's just starting to blossom.

If we're being honest, every other karaoke night in town is pointless in light of Good Luck Karaoke. Imagine the Joker seizing control of a bar once a week to make people sing songs for his twisted entertainment and you're pretty much there. Every Thursday night, Twilite Lounge offers a peek into the mixed-up world of Deep Ellum's OG residents — the ones who've been there through the bad times, the good times, the new bad times and now the yuppie times — who don't take too kindly to outsiders coming in and turning their playpen into something it's not. So beware: It's a madhouse, but you'll have a hell of a time.

Peter Johnson was a teenager in Louisiana when he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the mid-1960s, serving first as a gofer and bodyguard to Martin Luther King Jr. and other SCLC leaders, later moving up as an advance man and organizer. He landed in Dallas in 1969 and as the founder and CEO of the Peter Johnson Institute of Non-Violence has been working for social change ever since, going to the City Council to argue that guns and rifles (carried by ROTC) didn't belong in the MLK Day parades, speaking out for peace, living wages and racial equality. Johnson, like Obi-Wan, is a powerful soul in touch with a greater uniting force.

The atmosphere at Lee Harvey's is already a local favorite, but the happy hour there should be a weekly stop for every Dallasite on a budget. In addition to the impossibly cheap drink specials, good company and divey surroundings, Lee Harvey's food specials during happy hour cannot be beat. On Wednesdays, hot wings are half-price, and Monday nights mean half-price burgers. Sometimes there's even free live music or other bizarre entertainment. Bring a few bucks for the jukebox and enough to tip your waitress handsomely and you could still get out of there with a full belly and a pretty good buzz for less than $20. If you're truly hard up for cash, stalk the Lee Harvey's Facebook page: Lucky people with quick typing-fingers can claim a free entrée and a drink.

Just putting yourself out there, standing up in public and saying "Vote for me" is hard enough. Not winning is a bummer. Instead of sulking, however, candidate James White viewed his third-place, 23 percent showing in the May 9 10th District Dallas City Council election as not bad for an unknown, unfunded newcomer. Then he turned it into a solid plus by offering his support to second-place Adam McGough, after McGough came out strong against the Trinity toll road. White's help probably made the difference in McGough's subsequent victory in a run-off. That's the way to lose.

Last year Fodor's Travel Guides named "Autumn at the Dallas Arboretum" as "One of America's Best Pumpkin Festivals." Oh, it's that and more. The Arboretum's fall festival of giant orange squash, running through November 25, offers a lot more than thousands of uncut jack-o'-lanterns. When the searing Dallas heat begins to subside and you can almost consider wearing a jacket, the fest on the landscaped park east of White Rock Lake is the perfect time and place to stroll among 150,000 blooming flowers scattered lavishly across 66 acres of beds and lawn. If Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin existed, he'd come here to celebrate.

Since it burst onto the local scene in March during the return of 35 Denton, Harvest House has made a name for itself as the new place for young Dentonites to hang out. That's mostly because of its giant patio and outdoor stage. Add in a relatively mild summer and a wide beer selection, and it's no surprise the 20-somethings who make up North Texas' hippest town have deemed this Denton newbie the place to drink away the week.

Pariah Arts is primarily an art space, but multimedia performance art and music are included under that banner. Musically it tends to lean toward bills with envelope-pushing acts and DJs who are less likely to be featured in the local bar scene. (They threw a whole three-day festival celebrating this kind of artist over the summer.) There has been a shortage of do-it-yourself venues in recent years because of the fly-by-night nature of such spaces. In the past year, Pariah has stepped up to the plate, curating and hosting unique underground events that are spaced out enough to make them a rare treat.

Fun for adults, too, but definitely designed with the little people in mind, the Lacerte Family Children's Zoo has things like "The Underzone," with a crawl-through tunnel that takes curious tykes up close to dwarf mongooses (small ferret-like, snake-killing mammals), hornbills (wild-looking parrot-sorta birds) and naked mole rats (you just have to crawl through the tunnel and see them). The Children's Zoo has an interactive aviary, pony rides, a stream and lots of keen stuff to do. Fifteen bucks for adults, $12 for seniors and kids under 13, kids under 2 free.

Cumbia, tejano, reggaeton — you'll hear it all at New West, aka Dallas' top spot to catch Latin music and dance like you're at your cousin's quince. It also doesn't hurt that no matter the day, you can get a shot of Jameson and a Lone Star tall boy there for just $6. While you may not have the rhythm or the talent to dance to the music that's played at New West, order enough of that drink special and you'll at least think that you do.

On New Year's Eve 2000, Dallas celebrated the unveiling of a brand new, high-tech replica of the city's iconic Pegasus sculpture atop the 29-story near-century-old Magnolia Building. The original weather-beaten Pegasus, installed in 1934 as a temporary advertisement for the first annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, had lasted for two-thirds of a century, long enough for the flying red horse to become the city's unofficial emblem. But where did it go when the new one took its place? Art historian June Mattingly and developer Jack Matthews found it in a Dallas barn. They meticulously restored it and this year installed it in front of the new Omni Hotel, where it is — at least for now — the best public art downtown.

All good things must come to an end, but boy can it hurt like hell. It was with a heavy heart that Denton gathered to watch their beloved Centro-matic bid farewell over a three-night stand at Dan's Silverleaf at the end of 2014. Nary a voice was heard or an eye dry after three nights of singing along and drinking heavily in honor of an almost 18-year career. It was a fitting sendoff for one of the era-defining groups of Dallas' music scene.

When you stand at the peak of the McCommas Bluff Landfill, possibly holding your nose, depending on wind direction and recent deposits, you are about 110 feet above the elevation of downtown Dallas. The skyline is 10 miles to the northwest, and from the trash mountain, it's a very striking view, the more so for what's underneath your feet — a manmade hillock of solid waste. By the way, the landfill is free to residents of the city, and a trip out there offers an other-worldly sort of post-apocalyptic experience well worth having at least once. Just take something to throw out, so you won't look like an idiot.

No one knows who he is (OK, we know who he is, but we're not tellin'), but the scion of the suburbs is frequently found tweeting about local music with wild abandon. He's at every local show, he's buying merch and drinks and he's tweeting about it the whole time. He tweets about local music on a plane, he tweets about local music from the high plains, he tweets about local music from locales that don't fit the rhyme scheme. Anyway, he tweets a lot, and all of it's positive, and he's now having local bands play his birthday party because they know he genuinely cares about them. Really, the rest of us are failing to live up to his standards.

For fans of local music, it doesn't get better than KXT. Tuning in, you'll hear local legends like Calhoun, Sarah Jaffe and Rhett Miller. The independent, listener-supported station also rotates in more widely known acts such as REM, the Rolling Stones and Violent Femmes. In an era when mainstream radio stations struggle to stay relevant, 91.7 keeps current. Instead of goofball DJs' banter about "funny" cat videos on YouTube, KXT's hosts direct you to their Live Sessions page online, featuring stripped-down live performances in their studio. Specialty shows like The Paul Slavens Show make the station a real stand-out. Their Barefoot at the Belmont summer concert series (Hello, Leon Bridges!) is also in its sixth year, and tickets always seem to sell out instantly. Bonus: The spellbinding voice of Music Wrangler/Host Gini Mascorro is a thing of beauty that your iPhone's music shuffle will never be able to compete with.

Readers' Pick: 91.7 KXT-FM

Pay 10 bucks for a glass when you sign in, then join a convivial mob to wander and shop in wine-welcoming Deep Ellum venues. If you haven't been that way in a while, the once-a-month wine walk sponsored by the Deep Ellum Community Organization is a great way to reacquaint yourself with the funky warehouse district. Rich in music and art, at the eastern edge of downtown, Deep Ellum's scary-bad skinhead days of yore are pretty much gone. Instead, you will find amiable company among grown-ups who love music, visual art and vino. Walk. Talk. Stop. Sip. It's a lovely meander.

Come sundown, Beauty Bar throbs with sweaty people and DJ-spun tunes, but you'll find a different scene from 5-9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. That's when those in-the-know take advantage of their $10 "Martini and Manicure" special. Ms. Pattycakes the manicurist will take good care of you while you bask in the retro glory of the glitter-coated digs. See the bartender first and he'll give you a drink/manicure menu. You'll choose a creatively named cocktail, such as the "Shameless Hussy" (a dirty martini), and a nail color. For an extra $10, Ms. P. will even do nail art. It's worth the splurge — if you can dream it, she can do it.

No politician, no matter how cosseted, would dare rail against transparency. And yet former City Councilwoman Vonciel Jones Hill — her colleagues referred to her as "Judge" because of a long-ago position in the municipal judiciary — did exactly that. Repeatedly. She was wrong about just about everything else, too, in particular transportation, in which key city and regional appointments gave her particular sway. She was outspoken about homosexuality, publicly condemning it. In addition, her swimming pool, as the Observer discovered last summer, was a fetid mosquito swamp. And yet Hill was elected four times. But that's it. Because of term limits, she has left the council.

When musicians in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra donned white jumpsuits for a concert in May at the Winspear Opera House, they probably knew they were in for something exciting. The sold-out audience, on the other hand, could not have predicted how magical it would be to see Dallas-raised singer-songwriter Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, take the stage with the DSO led by assistant conductor Karina Canellakis. With the support of new orchestrations, Clark's music was elevated to heavenly heights. It was part of the inaugural Soluna International Music & Arts Festival, planned by the DSO to blend the performing, musical and visual arts. This auspicious and audacious night successfully united two different musical worlds.

The area north of LBJ Freeway is supposed to be no-man's-land for anyone seeking culture or a good time. North Dallas may technically be part of Dallas, but it may as well be Plano for all we care. Well, that's how we used to feel. But then something odd happened: North Dallas got really cool. Blame it on the affordable housing, but once Josey Records went in, the signs became clear. All of sudden making the trip to Velvet Elvis didn't seem far-fetched, and the compound emerged as one of Dallas' most exciting DIY spaces. It may not be Deep Ellum, but it sure ain't the 'burbs either.

No member of the Dallas City Council was quite as theatrical as Dwaine Caraway. Whether urging young folks to pull up their pants, doling out absurd economic development incentives to a (fantastically delicious) fried-chicken joint or proposing that the Trinity River be rerouted through downtown, Caraway never stopped being awesome. The best part: He really genuinely cared. No one at City Hall fought harder for constituents. Term limits have ended his time on the council, but in what may prove to be his most exciting and entertaining move yet, he is challenging embattled County Commissioner John Wiley Price for the office Price has held with an iron grip for almost three decades. Get your popcorn ready.

For years, Dallas has pushed city-sponsored low-income housing into heavily poor minority areas on the rather flimsy pretext that a shiny new apartment complex might spur revitalization. This was the norm, despite reams of research showing that poor people — kids especially — in mixed-income neighborhoods fare far better than peers in exclusively low-income areas. The Dallas housing nonprofit called Inclusive Communities Project has been trying to change the way Dallas, via the state government, allocates low-income housing tax credits, but to little avail. They had minimal leverage to change things until the Supreme Court's decision this summer in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, in which justices ruled that the way Dallas does affordable housing is discriminatory. Undoing what's been done will take decades, but they now have the nation's highest court on their side.

Dallas benefited from an influx of top-notch record stores at the end of last year, with Off the Record and Spinster throwing out some fresh twists on the tried-and-true brick-and-mortar concept. But it was Josey Records that really raised the bar for North Texas record stores, and they did so by focusing on the fundamentals — namely, a massive inventory hand-picked by some of the most respected crate diggers around. The addition of live music and seal of approval from no less than DJ Shadow helped, but the array of used and $1 vinyl were all any record head needed to fall in love.

Recently departed DISD Superintendent Mike Miles' legacy is complicated and controversial, but he leaves behind a handful of successes, chief among them Mata Montessori in East Dallas. The first in what was intended to be dozens of "schools of choice" — neighborhood-focused campuses with the specialty programs of a magnet but without the competitive admissions — Mata did a remarkable job of fitting the Montessori model of carefully guided self-direction into an often rigid DISD structure. Teachers and administrators there are passionate, energetic and wholly committed to students' success. A-plus.

Pregame: It's the name of the, uh, game when it comes to "pro" concert-going. If you have real-ass adult responsibilities — like a kid you've arranged to be babysat — when you go to a concert you want to make a night of it. And knowing where to get a beer and a buzz before the show is a crucial part of the plan. Good Records has you covered there and then some, bringing in bands like TV on the Radio, Sylvan Esso and Waxahatchee for free in-store performances ahead of their in-town gigs as part of their Live from the Astroturf series. Oh, and they offer free craft beer and sometimes even free food — which (almost) creates a whole new problem: Why go to the show when you can go to Good Records?

UNT-Dallas opened its new law school at a shaky time for legal education. Tuition-hungry law schools had been convincing far too many students to rack up far too much debt in pursuit of jobs that didn't exist. And yet, despite the glut of lawyers, there remained huge segments of the population who were legally underserved, unable to access or afford necessary legal help. UNT-Dallas is focused on correcting that gap by curating public-service-minded students and giving them considerable hands-on training with the help of downtown law firms and the courts. Key to the school's mission is its cost, just north of $14,000 per year, which is less than half of other law schools. Without the crushing burden of six-figure debt for a degree, turning out lawyers willing to work serving underserved populations might actually be a possibility.

When it comes to the Bard, our theater critic Elaine Liner is emphatic: If William Shakespeare were alive today, he'd write for The Daily Show. Too often when contemporary actors are tangling their tongues around iambic pentameter, it's all so classical and reverent. Pish posh, say the players of the much more informal Shakespeare in the Bar troupe. Much Ado about Nothing and Love's Labour's Lost have never been so infectiously amusing as they were when watched with a beer in hand from the porch of The Wild Detectives bookstore in Oak Cliff. The young troupe of actors who romp through Shakespeare in the Bar tackle a new (old) play about once per season, giving us a Will to live for.

Twilite has had legions of devoted patrons almost from the day it opened more than two years ago. How is that, one might wonder? Besides the award-winning jukebox selection, the down-homey patio, the comfy couches and the weekly costume party that is Good Luck Karaoke, we mean. Those things are nice luxuries, but there's something more important happening here. It's the friendly, attentive and oh-so-cool staff, which includes talented singer-songwriter Madison King and lumbersexual dreamboat Andrew Thompson. No matter how many people deep the bar is, they greet customers warmly and with zero pretension. Even if you're not at the bar, the roving servers seem to know when you want another drink before you do yourself. These people have the patience of saints, and they deserve your tips.

An exhibit at the Dallas Contemporary last fall used an intricate web of computer coding to create an immersive, interactive experience. The audio-visual installation called DreamArchitectonics produced dreamlike sequences based on the tone and emphasis of a human voice reading lines of poetic imagery by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. New media artists Frank and Kristin Lee Dufour of the group Agence 5970 created DreamArchitectonics to explore the way the brain responds without the stimuli of sight or sound — unique moments of reverie bestowed by two pioneers of hyper-media art.

With her namesake troupe, Dallas choreographer Danielle Georgiou blurs the lines between theater and dance. Her shows combine original dialogue, live music and vibrant choreography — men partner men, women partner women — and explore topics focused on gender identity. With Georgiou's The Show about Men at the most recent Festival of Independent Theatres, she had her all-male cast singing and dancing about masculine anatomy as they stripped to their skivvies. In NICE, part of the Wyly Theatre's Elevator Project, she presented a moving movement study of female behavior as reflected in old etiquette manuals. Georgiou doesn't dance around controversy; she kicks it up a notch.

We complain about Uptown. It's too popular, too crowded. But it's got a lot going for it: grocery stores, navigable sidewalks, a plethora of restaurants and bars. Yes, and overpriced apartments. It's a real estate goldmine and the developers are moving in and building up. That palpable lack of personality is exactly what they're trying to sell in neighborhoods known for their authenticity. They're looking at you, Deep Ellum. They're coming for you, Lakewood. There are even designs for a West Village-style development in Oak Cliff. You can't avoid it much longer.

Liliana Bloch moved her namesake gallery this year from a modest space in Deep Ellum to the more art-centric Design District. It was a shrewd business decision, but it also signaled a step forward for the gallery, which continues to book some of the most complex, thoughtful shows in the city. For the inaugural show in the new space, Letitia Huckaby presented a series of her large photographs of Sisters of the Holy Family Motherhouse in New Orleans, the first Roman Catholic order of African American nuns. These portraits and landscapes, printed on quilts and linens, gave this exhibition a breathtaking texture. Each of Bloch's exhibitions and her choice of artists, both local and international, are evidence of this gallerist's exquisite taste and sharp eye for curation.

If print is dead, it seems publisher Will Evans didn't get the message. In a little over a year, he's published seven books translated into English from other languages including French, Spanish and Russian. His commitments to both his translation company, Deep Vellum Publishing, and to the city of Dallas have injected new energy into the Dallas literary scene. In year two, Evans says, he plans to publish a dozen new titles, including the translation of a book written in French from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That's how you turn the page into the future of the publishing biz.

Oak Cliff's Erica Felicella describes her art as "endurance performance." She's stayed awake for a week straight to explore the depths of depression. She's sat in a confessional booth listening to visitors share their darkest thoughts and feelings. She's locked herself in a box for two days, writing the same sentence over and over. Her work as a self-taught photographer, new media and installation/performance artist is thoughtful, personal and meaningful — and always challenging to expectations of what art should and can be.

The Dallas arts landscape is crowded with festivals each year, but the Oak Cliff Film Festival has emerged as a do-not-miss event. Founded by the partners behind The Texas Theatre, who are filmmakers themselves, this fest picks a theme each year, exploring a particular era of filmmaking, for example. (This year's fest looked at the No Wave cinema style of the 1970s and '80s.) Like a never-ending party, the OCFF rolls into locations scattered around Oak Cliff, and after a few screenings, audience members get friendly and chatty. For cineastes, it's a gas.

No art gallery in Dallas is more welcoming to artists and art lovers than Kettle Art in Deep Ellum. Owners Paula Harris and Frank Campagna keep a strong rotation of local artists' work on their walls. For first-time buyers, it's where you get that painting you'll be glad you acquired when the painter's work was still affordable. Go ahead and invest early and often. After showing at Kettle Art, a painter's career has been known to pick up steam.

Dallas-based painter Francisco Moreno's most recent piece, WCD (Washington Crossing the Delaware), was a re-interpretation of the famous Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze painting of George Washington. Moreno abstracted the image using a technique known as "dazzle camouflage." He then painted a 1975 Datsun Z in corresponding shapes and had his auto mechanic brother install a motor and drive it in circles as part of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Soluna Festival. Moreno, winner of the Dallas Museum of Art's Anne Kimbrough Artist Award, described the project as a "camouflage interpretation of a symbolic American story executed by a German painter to inspire European revolutionaries that includes a Japanese car ... swapped with an American engine that was completely rebuilt by three Mexicans."

Rashad Dickerson hosts the Street View podcast, an occasional program recorded in the basement of the downtown Dallas Public Library. When Dickerson started the podcast with Jasmine Africawala, DPL's community engagement administrator, he was homeless. He says he wanted to speak directly to his community through storytelling, conversation and discussion of services and companies that help the homeless. There's a lot of public good happening in these episodes, but there's also honest insight into the ups and downs of life on the streets.

"The Man Who Lived to Tell" describes 70-year-old storytelling master Rawlins Gilliland. A former sales director for Neiman Marcus, now a KERA radio commentator, this Dallas native spent the past year regaling audiences with three shows full of stirring, soul-searing stories from his rich and varied life. In a series of standing-room-only nights at Sons of Hermann Hall and the Kessler Theater, Gilliland shared brushes with death, encounters with great minds and adventures from a lifetime of what he describes as "simply showing up." He says his most recent show was his last, but we refuse to believe that. When and where Gilliland shows up next, we'll be there.