Trees should be dead now. That's what everyone believed would happen a few years ago, after some longtime employees defected to the Curtain Club. But it seems as if the joke's on all of them, as Trees is stronger than ever, having recently celebrated 10 years in business. After all this time, Trees is still the best place to see the best bands; Guided By Voices, The Flaming Lips, Stereolab, Cheap Trick, ALL, The Go, Olivia Tremor Control, and The Promise Ring have all played there in the last year or so. Don't call it a comeback--they've been here for years.

Poor smokers. Banned from most airline flights. Shunted off to tiny corners of restaurants, left hacking and wheezing on the streets outside office buildings. Soon, they'll qualify for oppressed-minority status. If you're among the downtrodden, you will want to congregate with your own at this favorite Dallas watering hole and perhaps plan a revolution to take back your rightful, wheezing place in society. Nothing has changed too much since Lakewood Landing won our last "Best of Dallas" honors, but our most recent visit sent our clothes to the dry cleaners to get the smoke out. If nicotine is your thing, then this is where you want to swing.

Main Street's cybercafé is just like college computer labs. That is, if you went to school someplace where high-speed Internet-equipped computers were nestled in a coffeehouse among plump, over-stuffed couches, classical wall murals, and other urban loft-style amenities. Also, you don't need to sneak in the hooch inside a Thermos. There's a full bar, and live music is performed on the street-side stage on weekends. Plus, there's an open-mike affair every Wednesday. Main Street also has two rooms for gaming, with garage doors that can be closed for a little peace and quiet.

From 10 p.m. until 4 a.m. on weekends, DJs from across the world spin here, and the music jams. The clothing ranges from your average all-black club gear to poseurs wearing overly glossy print shirts to young chicks sucking pacifiers. While a true rave is in a warehouse or out in the desert somewhere and you only know about it by word of mouth, we'll stretch the definition a bit. One offers a consistently good scene, and if it's a true rave you're after, the folks here will hook you up. They do have a bathtub shaped like a heart, and, granted, there's no water, but use your imagination.

Doing the laundry is a tedious bore, but why watch the dryer toss around the unmentionables when Pac-Man, pinball, air hockey, golf, and a variety of other quarter-snarfing games lurk just steps away? The bar in the front room is stocked with all the necessities--plenty of quarters, laundry detergent, and dryer sheets, a smorgasbord of booze, and beer both bottled and on-tap. Get the supplies, then save the world from alien invasions or hungry zombies. The towels can rinse and spin on their own without your watchful gaze. Once the world is safe from extraterrestrials or the undead, and Pac-Man's belly is full of pellets and cherries, saddle up to the bar and watch a live band or escape the laundry room humidity on the backyard patio. It beats guarding the washer from apartment complex neighbors coveting your mint-condition '70s KISS T-shirt.

You can have your Dave & Busters, your fine felt tops, your designer cues. Some of us like to play pool, not billiards, and you can only do that at a dive, a place where you might actually get your pink-boy butt whupped if you act a fool. We like a place that is committed to pool, not offering tables as part of its catch-all theme-park approach. A pitcher during happy hour, a few sticks, and a roomful of tables. That's the way we like it, and that's the way Cuckoo's serves it up.

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, we gather defenses, pool resources and try our damnedest to beat the heat. And, though we may win a few battles along the way, the heat always wins the war. You can't beat it, so why not--as the cliché goes--join it. Revel in it. Bake in it. And the best place to do it is Hurricane Harbor, which opens just as the heat kicks into gear and closes as it begins to peter out into fall. The water park offers respite in the form of dozens of slides for the novice and the cowardly to the experienced and the brave, along with a lazy river for floating, pools and a pirate's ship play area for the kids. Though the lines twist up and up for popular rides such as the Black Hole, most of the waiting area is shaded and, with a 500-foot drop into a pool, the payoff is worth the wait.

The large, renovated ballroom upstairs at Sons of Hermann Hall is the perfect venue for swing-dance nights, which it hosts every Wednesday. There's a refinished hardwood floor, smooth enough for twirling without friction but with enough traction that you can stay on your feet. There are tables and chairs for those who need to take a breather, and a bar for those who need some liquid incentive to strut their stuff. With the air conditioner cranked and music blaring from the sound booth or from the bandstand, it's easy to feel as if you've stepped back in time, since Sons was around decades before swing was popular the first time.

On the weekends you can't stir the bicycles with a stick. Mom and Dad are there with their trail bikes, and the kiddies, some still maneuvering with training wheels, tag right along. There's a maze of off-road cycling for all ages and all levels of expertise. The park's most popular trail is a collection of three single-track routes that wind through woods and a tall grass prairie with a nice, cooling view of Joe Pool Lake. If it has rained recently, you might want to call and check on trail conditions before loading up and heading out.