Articles about Drinking
Where to Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2011 in Dallas
photography by Jerry McClure
Some of you will want to do it big. Sequins, jackets, bottle service, the whole nine yards.
Some of you will want to celebrate casually. At your favorite bar. With your favorite beer. Wearing your favorite jeans. (I’ll be in a cabin, far away, enjoying the peace and quiet.)
No matter your disposition, here’s a list of everything we know is happening around town for New Year’s Eve. Feel free to check back for updates to the list.
And for New Year’s Eve meals and New Year’s Day brunches, check out SideDish.
Toast 10 Most Beautiful Winner Aubree-Anna Thursday Night at the Warwick Melrose
photography by Bode Helm
Whether you’re a fan of music or our 10 Most Beautiful Women in Dallas competition, Thursday night is a good night to celebrate at the Warwick Melrose Hotel which is raising a toast to 10 Most Beautiful Winner (and former D cover model) Aubree-Anna Stinson, who graces Library Bar attendees with her smooth vocals every week. Tickets are being sold for $25 a piece which will include “heavy appetizers and a champagne toast,” and, of course, a live performance by Aubree-Anna. For tickets to the “Celebration Party,” call 972-841-5864. Apparently, tickets are going quickly. Thursday, December 15 at 7 pm.
Bash With Bushes Marks a Very Good Year for McKool Smith
George W. Bush and Mike McKool
Dallas’s Belo Mansion may have been a funeral home for 50 years, even hosting the funeral of Clyde Barrow back in the ’30s. But Friday night the old joint was anything but a dead zone, as roughly 1,000 people turned up for a raucous holiday shindig there marking the 20th anniversary of McKool Smith, an IP/commercial litigation law firm.
Think casino games. Exotically clad drink servers (one, pictured after the “jump,” wore a steel “skirt” holding dozens of champagne flutes). Plus multiple live bands — including a group (called Vocal Trash) at the valet entrance that sang and banged out tunes like Footloose using garbage-can lids and drums made out of empty water-cooler bottles.
The Dallas-based firm’s Mike McKool blew out all the stops for this year’s annual holiday party, no doubt. Example: Lawyers from the firm’s other six U.S. offices, including from its newest outpost in L.A., were flown in and put up at a local hotel (presumably not a Super 8). McKool also went above and beyond on the season’s giving side, presenting not one but two $100,000 checks to nonprofit groups during the evening.
Dallas’s Vogel Alcove snagged one of the checks. The other went to Barbara Pierce Bush’s Global Health Corps. The daughter of George W. and Laura Bush was there to accept the dough in person, while her parents sat watching at a table nearby.
The 2011 economy may be continuing to struggle in many ways. If the McKool Smith bash was any indication, though, it’s been a stupendous year for the lawyers. (Photos by Jeanne Prejean)
Rhett Miller on Fatherhood
An alert FrontBurnervian points us to this essay by Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller about what it’s like to be a rockstar and a father. Stop what you’re doing and take four minutes to read it. Good stuff. Sample:
Every freaking day they wake up demanding to be fed again. And then, more likely than not, refusing to eat the meal you’ve prepared. Every day. There is no cycle, much less a break from the cycle. There is only the grind. I feel like I’m tour managing an endless tour with a band comprised of subliterate narcissists.
Sneak Peek: The New Show at Medieval Times
I like Medieval Times. I had a birthday party there a few years back, which you might want to read about here. (Perhaps not. Your call.) I also love puns. So when Tim forwarded a press release entitled “Resistance is Feudal at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament,” I was buying whatever they were selling. In this case, they were touting a new performance—the first since 2007—and an upgraded menu, and they wanted a fair lady or lord of the media to attend. Jump if you care about my adventures.
Best of Big D: Halloween Costume Edition
Cedar Springs' Halloween Block Party's a top spot for costume watching. (photography by Christina Barany)
Photos from this weekend’s Halloween festivities are here. My personal favorites awards go to the Oregon Trail couple with dysentary and measles, the twisted Mad Hatters, a couple of Pop Tarts, the gay pack of flamingos (aka: “The Flamingays”), the troll doll duo (rhinestone bellybuttons included), a box of Franzia, a frightening Joker chick, and the Ninja Turtle girl. Enjoy all of our weekend’s Party Pics and stay tuned for more tomorrow.
Oh and we’ve got more happy Rangers fans photos (pre-loss, of course) from Ten Sports Grill. So there’s that.
Red River Shootout Photos: Get ‘Em While They’re Hot
Texas fans at Sfuzzi. (photography by Desiree Espada)
If you listened to our advice, you probably ended up at some sweet spot to watch the Sooners dominate the Longhorns on the football field. If so, check out our Party Pics to see if you’re famous. If you didn’t, shame on you. Click to see what you missed.
DJs, Dancing, Live Theater, Art, Movies, Food, and More: FrontRow Live Kicks Off on November 3
Do you like great music? Great art? Short films? Live theater? Break dancing? Live screen printing? Tattoos? Great food? Wait. Free beer? Everyone likes free beer, right?
Well then, you won’t want to miss what is sure to be one of the most exciting, entertaining, and unique events to hit Dallas this year: FrontRow Live at the Dallas Contempoary on November 3 from 8 p.m. to midnight, brought to you by Chevy.
Headlined by Grammy Award-winning producers and DJ duo Play-N-Skillz, the event we’re calling the “one night high-brow, low-brow blowout” will feature three DJs, a live theater performance to kick off the evening, screen-printing by The Public Trust’s Brian Gibb, a pop-up screening room featuring short films, a pop-up coffee shop provided by The Pearl Cup, food trucks, free beer provided by Michelob Ultra, and more. And here’s the best part: it is all FREE!
You want details? You want free tickets right now? Then get over to our FrontRow Live page.
Mariano Martinez on the Margarita Machine
As we all know, Mariano Martinez invented the margarita machine. Also, as we all know, Sunday is National Tequila Day. Therefore, I bring you this clip from ABC News Nightline, which features Martinez. One fun fact from the clip: Martinez prefers his margaritas on the rocks, because, as he says, “his tastes have evolved.”
Dallas is the Most Honest City in America. (The Honest Tea Experiment Proves It.)
We mentioned the Honest Tea experiment/publicity stunt that was running in cities across America yesterday. According to the “official” results, Chicago is the most honest city in America, since 99 percent of people there who took tea paid for it even though they may have thought that no one was monitoring. Dallas did OK, but only showed a 96 percent honesty rate.
But those raw numbers don’t tell the whole story. As Freakonomics notes, there were substantial differences in the weather of the cities involved. So I did a little number crunching and devised a new stat: TAH (temperature-adjusted honesty.) It’s a simple formula. ((Temperature in degrees Fahrenheit/100) * (Honest Tea raw honesty percentage * 100)).
And I so present the true ranking of the honesty of America’s cities:
| City | Temperature (F) | Raw Honesty | TAH | |||
| Dallas | 101 | 96% | 97% | |||
| Cincinnati | 100 | 96% | 96% | |||
| Atlanta | 96 | 96% | 91% | |||
| Philadelphia | 92 | 96% | 88% | |||
| Washington, DC | 94 | 91% | 86% | |||
| Miami | 92 | 92% | 85% | |||
| Chicago | 85 | 99% | 84% | |||
| Boston | 86 | 97% | 83% | |||
| New York | 95 | 86% | 82% | |||
| Los Angeles | 92 | 80% | 87% | |||
| San Francisco | 74 | 93% | 69% | |||
| Seattle | 67 | 97% | 65% | |||
Leading Off (7/18/11)
Hundreds Rally In Support of John Wiley Price: Some of the 800 supporters who turned out at St. Luke Community United Methodist Church to rally for County Commissioner John Wiley Price, currently being investigated by the FBI, waved signs calling for justice. Can’t argue with that.
Third Earthquake Hits Ellis Country Since June: Economic pundits say Texas is the new California, but I don’t think this is what they have in mind.
Locked-Out Football Players Continue to Find Creative Ways to Kill Time: Tony Romo came in second over the weekend at the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship near Lake Tahoe. Meanwhile, the Colts’ Jerry Hughes and former Cowboy Stephen Hodge, along with fellow TCU alum, Cory Grant, were arrested for public intoxication in downtown Dallas early Sunday morning.
It’s Hot: Which is great for algae growth, if not the taste of tap water. Shorelines are shrinking, and don’t expect anything changing anytime soon. We’re now trapped in a “heat dome.”
Leading Off (6/27/11)
Ciao Mayor Dwaine, Welcome Mr. Rawlings: The new mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, will be sworn in today. Dwaine Caraway will return to just being a regular council representative. But in an exit interview with WFAA, our most entertaining mayor of recent years says he is likely going to run for the city’s top office at some point. He also, characteristically, says some other funny things. For example, one of Caraway’s accomplishments, he says, was keeping the “D” from falling off of “Dallas.” And then I love the logic of this comment on the Arthur and Archie incident:
“Some of things that were in the news shouldn’t have been in the news, and had it not been for me being a newsmaker, it wouldn’t have been reported… probably.”
Exactly. You got it.
Second Death Linked To Dallas “Rave:” Thanks to the Electric Daisy Carnival, that four letter R-word that so scared mothers and politicians in the 1990s is back. Now a second death is “linked” to the dance party that took over Fair Park a week ago. A 22-year-old man took drugs and ran into freeway traffic on his way home. Beware the dance music kids. It makes you crazy.
Ogando Not Rangers’ Ace In the Hole?: After a 7-0 start to the season, which had Rangers fans believing that the young pitching prospect, Alexi Ogando, would step up and be the ace Cliff Lee was for the team last season, Ogando has gone 0-3 with a 9.31 ERA in his last three starts. Is he wearing out already?
Leading Off (6/20/11)
Rawlings Is Your New Mayor: Former Pizza Hut CEO and City of Dallas “homeless czar,” Mike Rawlings, defeated former police chief David Kunkle in a runoff election Saturday, winning 56 percent of the vote. If you want to see how the city voted by area, check out this nifty graphic (sub. req.). Also behind the paywall, a Q&A with Rawlings and an editorial that lists some priorities for the new mayor, including untangling the Trinity River Project. On KERA, B.J. Austin reminds us that Rawlings’ win was achieved with a campaign chest of more than two million dollars. His opponent spent a modest 250 thousand.
Teen Dies, Dozens Injured at Fair Park Rave: The Electric Daisy Carnival turned to chaos after fire alarm was pulled in a sweltering, overcrowded Centennial Building causing panic, mayhem, and multiple injuries. It’s unrelated, but somehow the idea of partying late into the night during 100 degree heat makes the thought of a summer amusement park at the State Fair grounds unappealing.
UPDATE: Here’s video of the EDC shut down.
F.B.I. Agent Who Investigated Lee Harvey Oswald Dies: James P. Hosty was assigned to keeping tabs on a young communist agitator and suspected spy, Lee Harvey Oswald, a job that landed the agent at the center of the assassination investigation.
Former Council Member, Local Civil Rights Leader Al Lipscomb Passes: Al Lipscomb was undoubtedly a character, and his impact on the history and politics of this city cannot be denied. An obituary.
DeShawn Stevenson Arrested for Public Intoxication Last Night
DeShawn, DeShawn, DeShawn. If you’re going to drink too much and not know where you are, travel with a buddy, buddy. One that will tell you where you are. Or pin a note on your shirt before you go out for the night, that says, “I am DeShawn Stevenson, and I live at ….”
And if you do decide to get drunk and wander a neighborhood, pick one in Dallas. I’m pretty sure that anyone over here would’ve been cool enough to invite you in, sober you up, and let you sleep it off.
Mark Cuban Really Does Dig That Larry O’Brien Trophy
A pic from Brian Cuban’s Twitter stream. The brother of Mark writes: “The Larry O’Brien Trophy. Don’t go to the bathroom without it.”
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