August 28, 2008 Dallas, TX

I drove up to Buzzbrews at Central Expressway and Fitzhugh for breakfast, and then headed over to CD Source on Greenville Avenue, where I found a lot of Blue Note CDs in the new arrivals, including one by the pianist Elmo Hope. I also found two Odean Pope Trio recordings there, and then I drove a few blocks over to Half Price Books Records & Music, and there I found a number of African LPs which I bought. Wanting a hamburger, I headed over to Jake's Hamburgers on Skillman, but there was literally no place to park, so I stopped by Poor Man's Music & More on the other side of LBJ Freeway, and then drove over to the Galleria. I used my iPhone to find another Jake's Hamburgers on Belt Line Road in Addison, so I drove there, and learned why Jake's has been voted the best hamburger in Dallas. At Valley View Mall, there were two new record stores, an Xperience Music (which is what the Eargazum chain is becoming), and Nu Era Music and More, which wasn't on my store list and which I just happened to see as I walked through the mall. From there, I headed out to Oak Cliff and to a store on Cockrell Hill called Da Shop, and then to Rewind Music in the Wynnewood Village. At Top Ten, the owner Mike asked about Gary Bernard, the buyer at Select-O-Hits who he had known for some years, and gave me a cold root beer, and then I headed down to the Eargzaum at Southwest Center Mall. In Grand Prairie, there was a large store called Forever Young Music, and they had a Houston CD I had been looking for called Queen of Hits: The Macy's Record Story, so I bought that and then drove over to the Irving Mall to leave posters and promos at another Eargazum location. I had decided to eat at a Texas Land and Cattle Company in Garland near Lake Ray Hubbard, and I didn't want to fight LBJ expressway traffic at the 6PM time of evening, so I decided to take the new George W. Bush Tollway, little knowing that by the time I reached the end of it in Garland, I would have spent almost $10 and killed nearly an hour. Worse, the tollway abruptly ends at a city street in Garland that doesn't lead to I-30, so I had to drive down through Rowlett to get to the restaurant. The Dallas Cowboys pre-season game was on the TV screens at the restaurant, and I ordered their signature smoked sirloin, which is unique and very good. Afterwards, there was supposed to be a jazz group playing at R. L. Griffith's Blues Palace on Grand in South Dallas, but there wasn't, and so I drove down to Brooklyn Jazz Cafe again. But the group there had quit playing because of the Barack Obama speech at the Democratic National Convention, which everyone was listening to. I hung around the club for awhile, but ultimately headed back to my hotel.