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Best Place to Smoke

Mockingbird Station steps

This is now an outdoor event, thanks to the health Nazis down at Dallas City Hall. But a quick date with a Marlboro on the cascading steps outside the Angelika at Mockingbird Station makes you happy you had to step out. If you have to ruin your health, you might as well do it at the most interesting crossroads in the city. Besides the film crowd, which is constantly coming and going, the DART line brings in a diverse enough bunch that there's always someone to watch. The steps themselves have plenty of smokebird perches--various steps and fountains--but you'd better act fast. In the near future, we're fairly certain, it will be illegal to smoke sitting down.

Best Open-Mike Night

Acoustic Chaos in the Liquid Lounge

Acoustic Chaos in the Liquid Lounge can get pretty chaotic. When the doors open at 9 p.m. Wednesdays there's always a line of guitar strummers waiting to sign up to grace the lighted stage. Even if you sign up early, be prepared to play late, because every host has way too many friends, and those friends have friends, too. This lounge is good for crooners of all sounds for two main reasons: The bartenders serve hump-day drink specials, and the players have a walk-in crowd to win over. We've caught the tail end of a conversation about what's the best Slo Ro song to cover. We've even experienced the rare pleasure of hearing the singers of South FM and Jibe wailing two powerful voices as one. It gets more packed as the night progresses, and the stage often gets inundated with a variety of tunes from musicians who won't be heard anywhere else in Deep Ellum. It's the hype Wednesday hangout for musicians to meet, mingle and compare chords.

Best Use of a Dallas Landmark

Sara Ellen & Samuel Weisfeld Center

This glorious old church was long past its prime and in terrible shape just a few years ago. Dallas resident Herschel Weisfeld has carefully restored it to its former glory and named it for his parents. The center's interior is a breathtaking combination of ornate fixtures, arched windows and restored wooden pews. Weisfeld rents the center out for weddings and other events.

Best Movie Theater

Angelika Film Center and Café

First, we have to give props to the Magnolia Theatre for being active in the local film community, hosting the Asian Film Festival of Dallas, Out Takes, Forbidden Media's former weekly screenings and taking its own "best of" collection to the starving art film masses in Fort Worth with the Magnolia at the Modern series. But for the ordinary $10-burning-a-hole-in-our-pocket, wanna-read-some-subtitles kind of day, we're headed to the Angelika. There's better parking (skip the driving circles or garage and head for the DART lot), better seats (feels like home, not public transportation) and a better bar (you can actually squeeze between the comfy seating and the bar to order). And, oh yeah, the movies are good, too.

Best Place to Get Caught in a MILF Storm

Highland Park Village

We were with a buddy recently, walking around Highland Park Village doing some window-shopping, when we realized we weren't looking at the windows. We were staring at the people who were window-shopping. Not to put too fine a point on this, but the Highland Park women who spend their days working out at Larry North Total Fitness, eating Paciugo and shopping for designer apparel need to check themselves before they wreck themselves. How can one concentrate on, say, not falling down when rich women walk by wearing 3-inch pumps and 23 inches of fine fabric? Highland Park Village was declared a National Historical Monument in 2000, and now we think we know why: because the talent there is indeed historic.

Best Alternative Club

Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios

Spend a week at Rubber Gloves, and there's a good chance you'll never get the same kind of show twice. Spend two weeks there, and the odds change only slightly. DJs one night, a singer-songwriter the next, No Depression country rock after that and so on down the line, guitars giving way to turntables giving way to laptops giving way to kazoos without breaking stride. From space-rock symphonies and garage-rock growls to below-the-radar hip-hop and off-the-charts experimentation, Rubber Gloves is a one-stop shop.

Best Place to Get a Blue Ribbon

Double Wide

When a friend told us his band was playing at a new place called the Double Wide (yes, as in trailer) and he began to describe it, his voice trailed off and our imagination took over. We pictured him sitting behind his drum kit, dodging beer bottles as the trailer-park regulars battled over their trucks, their old ladies and who's gonna buy the next round of Pabst Blue Ribbon. We were shaken back to reality when we heard our friend say, "So, are you comin'?" To which we promptly replied, "Hell, yeah!" We realized later the white-trash factor was only a façade, a means of decoration. The macramé wall hangings and velvet artwork were just for looks, and the Franzia box wine in the cooler was meant in fun. But even though the clientele didn't provide the people-watching we hoped for, the Double Wide gets a thumbs up. Where else can you and your buddies sit on plastic-clad furniture, knock back cans of Pabst and Lone Star and put out your smokes in sandbag ashtrays? Well, besides home, we mean.

Best Martini

The Quarter

Nikita Khrushchev once proclaimed the martini "America's lethal weapon." And nowhere in Dallas is this weapon as expertly cocked as it is at the Quarter. They're crystalline, cold and luminous, chilling the tip of the lip just before pricking the back of the throat with heat. Pickling an olive or balancing a twist, splashed clean or murked with pollution, these martinis twist thoughts, curl speech and banish those shabby worries.

Best Place to Squirt Out a Squirt

Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas

We'd recommend Presby if only for the cafeteria in the Margot Perot Center for women and infants--best gyros, like, ever. But, hey, the dining experience isn't exactly what you're worried about 31 hours into labor; it's more like, "When's this sucker coming out?" and, "Hey, doc, tell me you didn't just say 'C-section.'" We worried at first upon checking in and getting shuffled off to the old emergency-room-turned-storage-closet, but things were all uphill from there: We wound up in a lovely room, complete with CD player and VCR (needed something to do for 31 hours besides 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 push) and a shower and rocking chair for those moments when mommy-to-be needed to, ya know, chill. Marathon labor aside, the experience couldn't have been better: The obstetrician was cautious and cheerful (s'up, Dr. Woodbridge), the nurses were attentive and delightful and the facilities were as accommodating as a mother's womb. Just as good were the pre- and post-birthing classes for, among other things, baby care and breast-feeding; we thought we knew everything going in, then realized we knew nothing till checkout. And, damn, those gyros are awesome.

Best Blues Club

Hole in the Wall

Best you can hope for if you're a blues fan: a not-too-hot summer night on Hole in the Wall's patio, with a burger in hand and local legend Brian "Hash Brown" Calway onstage. Just about every other visit to Hole in the Wall (and that's truth in advertising) should scratch your itch--if you can make it inside, at least. This teeny-tiny joint is king of the ever-shrinking hill, and not just because of the unfortunate dearth of blues clubs in Dallas; there could be dozens more and this would still be our pick. If you've forgotten about Blind Lemon Jefferson or Stevie Ray Vaughan or T-Bone Walker, Hole in the Wall is here to remind you.

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