Robert Underwood
Audio By Carbonatix
The Knox-Henderson renaissance continues with a hot new dance destination. Last month, Boogies finally opened its doors in the space previously occupied by The Whippersnapper. Owned by Brandon Hays and Phil Schanbaum of This & That Hospitality, along with DJ Jake Gatewood — founder of the beloved Take a Break dance series — Boogies serves as a sonic dreamland, where visitors can groove into the early hours of the morning. It also brings back the feeling of a space that’s been missing for the past half-decade.
In the 2010s, Beauty Bar, located across from Boogies in what is now a construction site, was one of Dallas’ most popular places to dance. Set inside a small white house designed to look like a beauty salon, visitors would drink, dance their asses off to DJ sets — Blake Ward and DJ Sober being regular fixtures — and form new friendships by way of the power of music. During its time, Beauty Bar saw quite a bit of transformations.
In 2019, after nine years in Knox-Henderson, Beauty Bar relocated to Deep Ellum. The space was bigger, allowing for more room to dance and higher-quality sound equipment. But as was the case for many beloved restaurants, bars, and clubs in Dallas, Beauty Bar fell victim to COVID-19, and ultimately closed its doors in 2020.
In the years to follow, several bars have hosted pop-ups of their own to encourage Dallasites to get out and dance. There was Jessi Perreira’s monthly Paradise series at Tiny Victories, which launched in 2021 — during which DJ Sober spun ‘90s and 2000s hip-hop tunes throughout the night in a house party setting. He launched a similar series — Somethin’ Somethin’ — over at the now-closed Desert Racer.
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We’d be remiss if we didn’t include Bishop Arts’ LadyLove or the Design District’s Double D’s as some of Dallas’ best places to spend a night dancing. But lovers of music have been missing the grungy, house-party vibe that Beauty Bar once offered.
On our first visit to Boogies, a checker-patterned floor set the stage for a hypnotic evening. The mood elevated with a disco ball reflecting a color, a rotating spectrum of flashing lights. Gatewood set the mood with hip-hop and electronic sounds over a high-fidelity sound system with a room full of people not wasting a moment to dance.
At the bar, choose from a multitude of cocktails, but we highly recommend trying Boogies’ canned cocktails, ideal for holding while on the dancefloor and minimizing spillage. A couple of these cocktails include the Boogie Juice, a boozy spin on Sunny D, and the Sweet Thing, a paloma with touches of Mexican candy.
In the weeks since its opening, several of Dallas’ favorite DJs have spun sets at Boogies, including Sober, Ish D and Brandon Blue. The music draws in a diverse crowd, outfits ranging from flashy, to theatrical, to revealing.
It does no one any favors to rank dance venues, as each one offers a different feeling and aesthetic. LadyLove is where you go to dive deep into the lore of the music and its artists. DoubleD’s balances a cozy, nostalgic environment with energetic tunes. Beauty Bar delivered an equal mix of grungy and sexy. Boogie’s is all about the dancing and the music, and the people who love these things.
Surely, Beauty Bar is missed. But Boogies delivers soul and heart to a rapidly evolving neighborhood, and its crowd brings together people of all walks of life, which is what music is all about.
