Best Rock Bar 2007 | Firewater Bar & Grill | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Rock Bar

Firewater Bar & Grill

Oh, sure, with its sprawling, asphalt-surrounded strip-mall kinda thing going on, Firewater may provide an apt analogy for the geography of our fair burg, and it ain't gonna win any architectural awards, but the place is friendly and roomy, the beer cheap and cold. The interior has no special qualities other than that it reminds one of the interior of a ship—long galleys and strange twists amidst a generally open interior—but it's Firewater's outdoor stage that really makes it worth a slightly heavy cover charge. Outside is a wooden deck, flanked on one side with a three-headed mini-Bellagio fountain and on the other by a long bar. The deck is fronted by the stage, which holds your usual cast of characters (everyone from KISS cover bands to DOMA winners Mad Mexicans to hard rockers Max Cady), and we defy any club in town to put together a better sound system. Even outside, amidst the soft, maddening, staticky noise of the fountains, your band is gonna sound good. Damn good.

Best Rock Bottom

Winstar

Feeling down on yourself? Need a night out with the crew to blow off some steam? Kill two birds with one stone with a trip to Winstar, the gambling mecca located just across the border in Oklahoma on I-35. Sure, if you're looking for table games, you'll find Winstar somewhat lacking, but if it's video slots and people-watching you desire, look no further. Holiday nights are especially productive since the casino is packed with big hair and bigger dreams—on our last all-night trip we easily lost $100, but then we spotted a woman cradling a baby in the parking lot, patiently waiting in an F-250 as Daddy tried to win some diaper money inside. After that we didn't feel that bad anymore.

Best Scene Stealer

B.J. Cleveland

Theatergoers who know his work smile when they see B.J. Cleveland's name in the program. Something about his moonfaced mug just glows, and when he's really on, he could light up a five-state area. Now in his 25th season as artistic director at Theatre Arlington, Cleveland has acted in 362 roles (by his count) since he started in showbiz at age 6. He's averaged no fewer than six shows a year since and doesn't plan to slow down. Last season's highlight was his romp as Mad King Ludwig in Uptown Players' Valhalla. This season he'll be directing Studs Terkel's Working at TA and then acting in Moonlight and Magnolias. He's played The Music Man and George M! and giggled like a goose in a white wig as Mozart in Amadeus. Happy to play the sad clown, Cleveland is the area's funniest character actor. All those comparisons to Nathan Lane don't even bother him anymore. "Physically I would covet being synonymous with Brad Pitt," he says. "But there's lots of life left for character actors. Take that, Zac Efron!"

Best Scenic Drive

Wood County

Sure, to get there you have to drive an hour and a half through the corrugated tin and abandoned bass boat architecture of un-beautiful Upper East Texas. But you need to think of a search for pretty country near Dallas sort of the same way you might think of escape from Alacatraz. It's not supposed to be easy. When you get to Mineola, keep going a few miles east out of town and then head north on any halfway decent-looking road. You will find yourself in a land of rolling hills, tall pines and glittering lakes. It could be Wisconsin, if you took away the ticks and water moccasins. Well, and the people. It's very pretty country, and it's way less than a plane ride away from Dallas. Bet you didn't know that was possible, eh?

Best School of Rock

Good Records

You already know that Good Records is the best record store in town. OK, maybe it's the only real record store left in this chain store-dominated burg. But it's also the most kid-friendly record store we've ever been to. A few times a year, Good Records has in-store performances especially geared toward young ears. There is no better example than the Gustafer Yellowgold shows. The creation of singer-songwriter-illustrator Morgan Taylor, Gustafer Yellowgold is a fantasy creature with weird friends who seem to have skipped straight out of a Dr. Seuss book. It's a great way to introduce kids to music that's not only fun, but also rocks. And that's just one way the coolest record store in town makes parents feel at home. Check out the plastic bin of toys the store's owners keep on hand to entertain little rockers while you browse. This sort of attention to future record-buyers is music to our ears.

Best Shows With Strings Attached

Kathy Burks' Theatre of Puppetry Arts

Sara Kerens
For almost 35 years Kathy Burks has designed and produced puppet shows that make high art of non-human figures brought to life with strings, rods and hands. From a collection of puppets and marionettes that goes back to the early 1900s, Burks and her expert puppeteers make the characters so real that children in the audience, given the chance for post-show Q&A, will often address the puppets directly, completely ignoring the black-clad actors holding them. Magical shows such as Frog Prince and Velveteen Rabbit, presented at Dallas Children's Theater, home to Burks and her creations for the past decade, appeal to the kid in all of us. This company makes "wooden acting" a good thing.

Best Sleeper (Car) Attraction

Museum of the American Railroad

History buffs, especially the little ones, would be remiss if they never visited this gem in Fair Park. The Museum of the American Railroad (formerly the Age of Steam Railway Museum) boasts more than 30 pieces of actual railroad equipment. Like, real reach-out-and-touch-'em old-school locomotives. Pullman sleeper cars, dining cars and a complete passenger train from pre-World War II days are just some of the pieces that constitute the impressive collection. And for those less "all aboard," the memorabilia (signs, china and more) in the depot represents stunning history. A visit to the MAR transports you back to the days when people dressed to travel and Cary Grant narrowly escaped the bad guys in a too-short steward's uniform in North by Northwest.

Best Small Theater Company

Bootstraps Comedy Theater

Comedy is their middle name. This 3-year-old theater company, founded by drama grads from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, has built a fine following as the go-to group for a great big laugh. In their mission statement, founders Matt and Kim Lyle vow to use comedy to "break down the walls that exist between people shackled by societal norms." And if that means tripping and falling through a wall onstage, they're happy to do it. Scoring hits at the past two Festivals of Independent Theatres with Matt's plays Sunny & Eddie Sitting in a Tree and The Boxer (being revived for another run at the studio space at Dallas Children's Theater in mid-November), the Bootstrappers are pulling themselves up to stand as Dallas' funniest, most inventive young theater troupe. These Lumberjacks (that's the SFASU mascot) are OK.

Best Sound Guy

Bobcat

When Bobcat transitioned a few months ago from his longtime spot behind the board at Club Dada to the one just down the street at Darkside, he left a trail of legend and, even more important, genius ability behind him. This is a man who reportedly romanced Julie Napol of Concrete Blonde, a man who constantly is courted by touring bands to drop what he's doing and come work for/with them, a man who can make your out-of-tune, two-chord experimental reggae punk jam band sound like the Rolling Fuckin' Stones. Or, you know, Mozart, since he also helmed the knobs at Bass Performance Hall. We actually don't know what makes Bobcat so good. It's one of those things that's mystifying, genius, like why you could play the same three notes the same way Jimi Hendrix played them and never sound like him at all. All we know is Bobcat makes the fair and middling sound like Fair to Midland, and he makes the great sound like a band fronted by God.

Best Sports Idea

Let's get a MLB team for Dallas

Mayoral candidate Sam Coats first threw out this suggestion in the spring as a way to jumpstart Dallas' kinda sorta revitalizing downtown, and he unwittingly started a lot of chatter on local sports talk shows. While there are all sorts of pragmatic concerns involved, including the unlikely approval of Major League Baseball, Coats' idea is at least more feasible than luring the Summer Olympics to Dallas. So if we had enough optimism to consider the latter proposal, we should at least take a look at making a push for a National League team in the Big D. Unlike Jerry Jones' football stadium, which will host only a handful of events a year, a baseball park would draw tens of thousands of people to downtown at least 81 times a year, which is the number of times a team plays at home. Besides, while the Ballpark at Arlington is a beautiful place to catch a game, there's absolutely nothing to do afterward other than visit the line of chain restaurants that litter Interstate 30. But a park in downtown Dallas wouldn't be just a one-stop shop. We imagine MLB Commissioner Bud Selig would balk at putting two baseball teams in North Texas, unless we can convince him that the Rangers don't count. It shouldn't be that hard.

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