Hidden, weird date ideas in Dallas
39 genuinely offbeat spots — like Room 520, Bubastis Oasis, O.T.O. (public Gnostic Mass), The Stache at Renny's — the local secrets even locals miss, hand-vetted and sourced. You didn't hear it from us.
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Room 520
Billed as the smallest cocktail bar in Dallas, this 15-to-25-seat speakeasy hides inside a disguised guest ro…
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Bubastis Oasis, O.T.O. (public Gnostic Mass)
An officially chartered body of Ordo Templi Orientis, active since 1988 and the oldest continually running O.…
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The Stache at Renny's
A 1920s-inspired, 30-seat speakeasy tucked inside Renny's American restaurant in Preston Forest Village, name…
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La Viuda Negra
A tiny Mexico City-style mezcaleria from the brothers behind El Come Taco next door, hidden behind a storefro…
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Terrain Dallas
Artist Iris Bechtol turned her own suburban front lawn into a rotating exhibition space, hosting site-specifi…
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Western Heights Cemetery (Clyde Barrow's grave)
A largely abandoned 1840s-era burial ground on Fort Worth Avenue where outlaw Clyde Barrow lies beneath a sta…
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Cloud 8 Records
James 'Bucks' Burnett — the man behind the world's first 8-track museum — runs what the Dallas Observer calls…
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Coombs Creek Trail Tiny Doors & Gnomes
Along this quiet creekside trail in Kessler Park, someone has been quietly installing tiny arched doors in th…
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Dragon Park
A small, semi-secret privately owned garden at Cedar Springs and Hood, built by the owner of the salon across…
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The Labyrinth
Dallas's oldest witch shop has quietly worked its Lower Greenville storefront for over two decades — green-pa…
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Curiosities Antiques
An indoor flea-market-meets-cabinet-of-wonders out by White Rock Lake, where the inventory runs to taxidermy,…
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The Satanic Temple DFW (Deep Ellum gatherings)
A 'civic-minded,' non-theistic Satanic chapter profiled by the Dallas Observer, whose members have gathered i…
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Chango Botanica
A cash-only Santeria botanica run by folk healer (curandero) Francisco 'Pancho' Diaz, who first opened in 197…
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Pinned Ptera
An ethical insect-taxidermy studio-shop run by Morgan and Micah Loftin, with a neon sign and a goal of buildi…
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Cheerleader
A contemporary art gallery run by Brent Birnbaum inside a corrugated metal shack surrounded by steel manufact…
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2 BED 1 BATH
Ryan Semegran and Kassidy Stines occasionally convert their Oak Cliff apartment into a gallery, showing conte…
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Top Ten Records
Opened by Dub Stark in 1956, Top Ten is the oldest record store in Dallas — and a footnote in the JFK saga: O…
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Dallas Movement Collective — Sunday Ecstatic Dance at Owenwood Farm
A barefoot, sober, consent-based free-form dance held in a converted neighborhood farm-and-church space, with…
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Sound Bath Dallas
A family-owned studio run by two sisters — one a licensed massage therapist, the other a Reiki master and cer…
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Trick Pony (at Harlowe MXM)
Harlowe MXM's unmarked little sibling — no sign, no obvious door. Stand outside Harlowe in Deep Ellum, look l…
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Dallas Psychic & Crystals
A small family-owned metaphysical botanica and healing-crystal shop in Historic Old East Dallas that has occu…
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Curious Garden
A quiet natural-history 'wonder cabinet' that started as a garden-antiques store and drifted toward fossils,…
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Dolly on Bishop
The lesser-known Oak Cliff sibling of vintage emporium Dolly Python, carrying old photos, taxidermy, folk art…
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Nature of Things
A gallery tucked inside a brick-walled loft apartment in Deep Ellum, run by Tessa Granowski, who shows Texas…
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PRP (Permanent Research Project)
A contemporary art project space inside a little 1930s residential house on an unassuming block in Trinity Gr…
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Oakland Cemetery
A 47-acre Victorian 'silent city of the dead' opened in 1892, with over 30,000 burials beneath ancient oaks,…
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Sons of Hermann Hall
Built in 1910 as a German fraternal lodge, this is reputed to be Dallas's oldest free-standing wooden structu…
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Pike Park (last trace of Frogtown red-light district)
By 1910 city ordinance, Dallas penned its prostitution into a vice district nicknamed 'Frogtown' (for the fro…
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Old Fish Hatchery Nature Area
A 50-acre overgrown ghost of a former fish hatchery hidden behind a gate just east of the White Rock spillway…
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Lakeside Park Teddy Bears
Tucked into a pocket just off a picturesque wooden bridge along Turtle Creek sit a family of granite teddy be…
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Dolly Python
A 3,800-sq-ft vintage emporium with dedicated taxidermy, postmortem and specimen sections — skulls, bones and…
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AKAI (at Musume)
A hidden bar reached through a secret passage in the kitchen of Musume, the Asian-fusion sushi restaurant acr…
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Jettison
An intimate cocktail den tucked behind the patio of Houndstooth Coffee in the Sylvan Thirty development, reac…
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Freedman's Cemetery Memorial
An 1860s burial ground for Dallas's formerly enslaved community that was literally paved over by the North Ce…
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Lady of the Lake roadside (East Lawther Drive, White Rock Lake)
Dallas's signature ghost: a young woman in a water-soaked 1930s evening dress said to appear at night along E…
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Riviera Spa Float Tank
Three large Pro Float Cabin sensory-deprivation tanks tucked into the Travis Walk strip off Knox/Henderson, e…
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Truth & Alibi
Walk into the Original Deep Ellum Candy Company, find the right person, and give the password — it changes ev…
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Another Round
A sleek, slightly trippy indoor mini-golf bar on Fort Worth Avenue with two genuinely inventive 9-hole course…
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Cedars Bowler Hat & Stanley's Umbrella
A pair of oddball roadside sculptures a few blocks apart in The Cedars: a steel-and-fiberglass giant bowler h…