Best dance club 2000 | Lizard Lounge | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best dance club

Lizard Lounge

Red Jacket has made strides in the past few months, bringing in quality DJs and electronics artists (Carl Cox and BT, among others), but Lizard Lounge is still, by far, the best dance club Dallas has to offer, a simmering pit of break-beats and--at times--bare chests. It's seedy, sure, but in a way that's not out of line with what you'd expect from a top-notch discotheque. After all, what more do you want from a dance club than attractive members of the opposite sex, often clad in leather or vinyl (meow!), and the kind of music that makes you get sweaty, which Lizard Lounge has in spades, courtesy of DJs Angry John, Virus, and Merritt, among others. Bottom line: When you come home from a night out dancing, you want a beat in your head and phone numbers on your hand. You'll get all that and more at Lizard Lounge.

Best gay bar

The Crew's Inn

This is a tough category because Dallas establishments that cater to gay men tend to niche-market their clientele. If your taste runs toward pretty boys, then bars that cater to the roughneck crowd won't do for you. On the other hand, if you prefer a real man's man, then guys wearing too much mousse and too much cologne won't hold your interest. Segregation is a problem, so this year, our vote goes to the bar that's the closest to being inclusive to all. The Crew's Inn somehow holds the most popular Tuesday-night gatherings of any bar in town. The guys who show up range from a variety of male archetypes, from boys who look like GQ cover models to those who look like they just posed for mug shots. Somehow this mix works. The atmosphere is congenial, and the drink specials are good by most standards. If you can't please some of the people all of the time, at least you can please yourself on Tuesday nights.

Best place to commune with nature

White Rock Lake

It was a long, hot summer. Those clever souls who wanted to save on air conditioning either: A) drove to the coast, B) found a nice body of water where they could kick it, or C) stripped down to their boxers in one of our many public buildings. (OK, we wanted to do that, but didn't have the nerve.) If you're bashful like us and don't feel like a long drive out of the city, White Rock is Dallas' best substitute for a trip to the country. People fish, boat, jump in, skate, barbecue, socialize, and enjoy trees and grass. At sunset, the park has its own atmosphere, far enough from the city to be considered an escape, yet close enough to watch the sunset reflect off downtown skyscrapers. It's also a good high school make-out spot--just keep those boxers on.

Best place to annoy pedestrians in Deep Ellum

The valet stand at the Green Room

This category could also be called the best place to get hit with Foley's Red Apple Sale-style elbow throws and NHL checks by people trying either to get to or escape from Trees. Other Deep Ellum restaurants have valet stands, yet there's nary a snarl in sidewalk traffic. But the Green Room's valet stand turns the walkway into the pedestrian version of the Tollway at rush hour. Stepping off the curb to avoid the hold-up isn't an option, either: People are just as eager to pull up to the valet area as they are to stand around and jabber for hours.

Best Place to Roller Skate

White Rock Skate

Walk into White Rock Skate on a Sunday afternoon, and you're back in late middle school, circa 1982. The owner is frantically running about, wearing tight designer pants, making sure his teenage workers are smiling properly. The place is disco-esque, and the roller games--limbo, boy-girl races, the freakin' hokey-pokey--still go on. Most of the kids now bring their own in-line skates, but we still prefer to put on the rink's four-wheel wobblers, impress the gals by skating backward, and even maybe get lucky and make out during a slow skate. Of course, since we're well past 30 and married 10 years, that's usually frowned upon.

Best lesbian bar

Buddies II

This bar gets the nod via popular word of mouth from many women in our fair town. Unlike other queer emporiums, Buddies plays a larger variety of music. It also has a bigger selection of patron types, from the butch to the femme to those marvelous individual combinations that mark most of the rest of humanity. Its biggest sell, as one enthusiastic young woman claimed, is that it's the best place in town for a woman-lovin' woman to get picked up by another WLW. And isn't this what makes the world go 'round?

Best frat scene

The Beagle

Acre upon acre of khaki and plaid, plus a regular Greek alphabet soup: Is this heaven or hell? The answer probably depends on the size of Daddy's bank account and your fondness for stupid drinking games. If you're a Greek freak, The Beagle is the place for you on a weekend night. As an added bonus, they play '80s music, which always seems to make the women form circles and sing at the top of their lungs all the words to "Livin' on a Prayer." Like we said, it's either heaven or hell.

Best way to curb your anger

Target Master Indoor Shooting Center and Gun Store

If happiness is a warm gun, then this place is Nirvana--or Charlton Heston's wet dream. It has 18 pistol and six rifle lanes and a 24,000-square-foot store to fulfill all your self-defense needs. (If you live in Kosovo.) These fine folks give private instruction so you can become a marksman, plus they sell a full line of camouflage clothing for all you fashionable wannabe Travis Bickles.

Best place for downtown yuppies to take their kids

America's Ice Garden Ice Rink

Among the thriving herd of young professionals moving downtown or nearby, it's inevitable that there eventually would be children among them. (Even the best birth control is, after all, less than perfect.) This leaves an obvious vacuum regarding what to do with the kids on a weekend afternoon. Driving out of downtown to entertain them seems to defeat the purpose of moving back there in the first place, and while the winos at the central library are often entertaining, they're not exactly rated G. Instead, take the wee urbanites to America's Ice Garden at Plaza of the Americas. This ice center offers public skating and private lessons and can help you set up ice skating parties for the kids' next birthdays. They also have a pro shop to help you with your skating needs. With a little preparation now, your little one could blossom into the next Tara Lipinski or Rudy Galindo.

Best place for a romantic rendezvous

Hotel St. Germain

The sex better be incredible, because the price tag on this place will be. The 11 suites at Hotel St. Germain, located across from the Crescent, range from $290 to $650 a night. It's our very own version of New Orleans in Uptown. While some of the rooms might be mistaken for bordello chic, each suite is decorated with turn-of-the-century antiques, canopied feather beds, a working fireplace, and a large Jacuzzi or tub. Toss in a fabulous seven-course, pre-set--menu dinner at $80 per person, and you've got yourself one hell of an expensive evening. Still, if you think the lovin' is good with a pizza and a six-pack, just imagine what you might get for this kind of dough.

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