Dallas nightlife review - October 31st, 2020 (and a few other weekends) in Downtown Dallas, Texas, United States

this black-lit pizzaria was cool

Okay so I know some of y’all are thinking HOW WERE YOU GOING BAR HOPPING DURING COVID SEASON?/? And I promise that I have a good reason for this. Basically, ya girl was going insane being indoors all the time and needed to have one good turn-up. Okay so this reason sucks but in my defense I wasn’t the only out on this Halloween weekend. Read more to learn about my first time(s) in Dallas.

this day-of-the-dead skeleton gets it

So long story short, I was in texas for a about 1 ½ years for school. Being in texas during the pandemic ended up being an overall blessing – all of my coursework was moved online which meant no more waking up at the butt-crack of dawn for classes and internship rotations. It also meant spending more time at home with nemo. But it alsoo meant being locked down in our apartment in an already small town with already not much to do. Needless to say, we were stir fuckin crazy.

the sunsets from the residence inn downtown hit different

However, being in texas during this time was interesting because overall they were very very LAX about the curfews and lockdown enforcement and social distancing and all that. The pandemic really went south (no pun) in early march 2020 with world-wide lockdown measures, and texas basically started chillin’ out on those measures after like 2 weeks xD. Being in a small town meant it was already easy to social distance when we were out since the population was pretty sparse, but it also meant that the area didn’t really have the funds to have everyone sitting at home so much, at least compared to California who was giving out checks on checks and having super strict curfews. So, as far as I could tell, everything was basically back to pre-pandemic by like, end of summer.

hiii

Sooo, as a celebration for me finishing up school, nemo and I decided to spend a weekend in dallas. After visitng Austin a few times and being irritated by the racism and fake wokeness, visiting Houston and having a hard time navigating the area, and visiting san antoneo and being bored as hell, we really liked dallas! Very diverse place especially towards the black population – people who looked like me in all walks of life, not just homeless (like in Austin). The downtown is very easy to navigate with lots of cool shops, restaurants and night-life within walking distance. I’d forgotten how precious sidewalks were until we visited dallas. The other cities has sidewalks too, but as I said, they were hard to navigate on foot due to weird city layouts or feeling like we were being stared at because we’re black. Long story short, we love dallas and I think its my favorite city in texas.

this bathroom was interesting and selfie-worthy

When we visited for Halloween weekend, I think it was our second time visiting the area. Yo, hotel prices during the pandemic were poppinnn. $99/night to stay at a residence inn right in the heart of downtown on the weekend?? We were in there. This was when I discovered the loveliness of Marriott hotels. I never really had money like that to stay in any hotel so I was always in airbnb or some other cheap spot when I traveled. Now, im addicted to Marriott. Unfortunately I’ve yet to see prices get this low since then :(. But anyways, we loved staying at that hotel and I highly recommend it if you stay in the area.

we each paid $18 for this view lol. dallas is so flat xD

While in Dallas, we did many fun things, including: have cheap dinners at super nice restaurants (thanks pandemic prices!), shop at the mall, visit the Alamo (which was closed to the public for construction -_-, like, your most prized tourist attraction was totally walled off, lol), visit the tall spinning sky thing (prolly the highest viewpoint in all of texas lol, damn that place is so FLAT), walk hella miles and take pictures, the usual vacation stuff. The funnest weekend we had in dallas, of course, was barhopping on Halloween weekend :)

doing in infamous i35 drive to dallas.

So we get to dallas on a Friday (I think) and settle into the hotel. Before leaving, I’d seen a barhopping event on eventbrite and tried to buy tickets, but the whole buying process was janky (a lot of services kinda went to shit during/after the pandemic) so I was just like fuck it, lets just hop the bars on our own. Before we put on our costumes, we head over to our FAVORITE ROOFTOP BAR called waterproof. We love this bar!! Its at the very top of the statler hotel and is super bougie and cool. There was usually never a cover, had a pool, cool lights, good drinks and amazing views of the city (peep the pics!!). this place caused me to fall in love with rooftop bars/restaurants – I always gotta go to one when we’re traveling now.

turned the face mask into a real mask

Any wayss, we get back to the hotel and get our Halloween clothes togerher. By “we” I mean “ME” because I had a whole ass oufit. I’d bought a pink dress from H&M earlier that year and figured it’d go super cute with my pink bunny ears, so of course, I was a bunny for Halloween that year. Nemo wore a glow-in-the-dark facemask (peep the pics, the mask was so relevant for COVID lol), which was perfectly low-key but still eye-catching for him. We called a lyft to a street that was lined with bars and set out.

dallas had some cool artistic sculptures around town

I’ll be honest, I don’t remember super much cause I was gone :D. but I do know we had a pretty good time. The crowd was a bit younger than we were if im remembering correctly, maybe because we were near a university, or maybe i was just insecure about my own age because aren’t I too old to be dressing up for Halloween lol?? Fuck it. The vibes were overall chill. We went to one bar that had some cool activities like a see-saw and corn-hole. Eventually, we ended up at a pizza spot for some late-night drunk food. I don’t remember how it tasted, but they had a cool black-light vibe in there so we got some cool looking pics.

nemo looking cool 8)

You know, I thought I’d have a lot more to write about this Halloween experience but im honestly drawing a blank right now. I know I can say for sure that we really liked dallas and IF (that’s a BIG IF) we ever went back to texas to visit for fun, that would prolly be the first place we would go. Be sure to peep the pics here, because they illustrate our times in dallas better than I can write right now xD