I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead.
—-Clarence Clemons
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
I Wanted An Electric Train
Tag Archives: Dallas
Make Someone Smile While They’re Having A Piss
“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.”
― Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
Deep Ellum, Texas
Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters
“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire
Dallas from the Trinity River Bottoms
Bicycle Tour de Taqueria – Tacos of Oak Cliff
There is nothing better in North Texas than the few spring days when the sun is shining and the day is warm – yet the killer summer heat is still a little off into the future.
Saturday was one of those days and I headed down to the Bishop Arts District for a bicycle ride – a tour of Taquerias in Oak Cliff.
Our first stop was Cool & Hot at 930A E. Eighth St. – Streetview
Hot & Cool Tacqueria
Oak Cliff, Texas
Bicycles stacked up in front of Hot & Cool
Cool & Hot is a converted gas station right off the Interstate – it’s mostly a drive-thru. It’s open 24 hrs a day from Thursday through the weekend – something to remember on a late night trip home.
Then is was on to Taqueria Tiquicheo at 110 S. Marsalis Ave. – Streetview.
Taqueria Tiquicheo
This was my favorite stop on the tour – more of a sit-down restaurant. The regulars were there for menudo or other specialties – the sweaty bicyclists descended like a cloud of taco-eating locusts.
Taco Selections at Taqueria Tiquicheo
All the spots offered pretty much the same traditional selection of Mexican style tacos. This is the sign from Taqueria Tiquicheo. If you think of tacos as hamburger stuffed into crunchy corn shells – well, these aren’t what you are thinking about. Served in foil in soft flour or corn tortillas with a little onion, cilantro, and a lime wedge – along with the house special hot sauces.
The fillings:
Fajita – grilled steak
Tripa – Tripe
Nopales – Cactus (a vegetarian option)
Lengua – beef tongue
Chicharron – fried pork rinds
Pollo – chicken – one person said this was “surprisingly good”
Barbacoa – slow cooked meat, the original sorce of barbecue
Chorizo – chopped sausage
Next was on to Jefferson Boulevard – the main commercial drag through the area. The next Tacqueria was a very small, unlabeled spot with a small dining room.
El Padrino #1. – Streetview
El Padrino #1 on Busy Jefferson Blvd. in Oak Cliff
Lengua Tacos from El Padrino
These are the Lengua Tacos from El Padrino – I ate them on top of a newspaper stand on the street.
Then we rode off through the residential streets until we reached Los Torres Taqueria, 1322 W. Clarendon Dr. – Streetview
Los Torres Taqueria
This was the most conventional restaurant that we visited, yet still it had that family feel to it.
And that was about all the tacos I could take for one spring afternoon. I split off and rode home – a little overfull and a bit overheated. But it was still a good time.
The Bicycle Is the Product Of Pure Reason Applied To Motion
“To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man’s welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm?”
― Angela Carter
Bicycle Drag Races, Continental Bridge Park,
Dallas, Texas
Bicycle Drag Races, Continental Bridge Park,
Dallas, Texas
Bicycle Drag Races, Continental Bridge Park,
Dallas, Texas
City Full Of Dreams
“Ant swarming City
City full of dreams
Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve”
― Charles Baudelaire
Dallas, Texas
From the Trinity River Bottoms
(click to enlarge)
Two Vast And Trunkless Legs Of Stone
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
I Can Dream
I can think. I can sleep. I can move. I can ride my bike. I can dream.
—-Bill Walton
The end point of February’s Critical Mass Bicycle Ride was the park on the Continental Bridge. They had bicycle drag races planned, and it was a lot of fun.
Bicycle Drag Races, Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas
Bicycle Drag Races, Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas
Her Heart Were A Green Flame
“Doesn’t it seem as though her heart were a green flame? Perhaps it’s the cold green heart of a small green snake, with a minute flaw in it, the kind of small green snake that slithers from branch to branch in the jungle, passing itself off as a vine. What’s more, perhaps when she gave me the ring with such a gentle, loving expression, she wanted me to draw such a meaning from it some day.”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow
Spring Snow,
Richardson, Texas
They Seemed To Know What She Wanted
“She couldn’t stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn’t.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Design District,
Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 