The adventures and various works of a photographer, road tripper, former patron of the local arts, aspiring app developer, and late night coffee drinker and conversationalist.
This is part of a continuing series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarksImage courtesy of Central Motion Pictures
On an sweaty August evening in 1997, I headed down to Deep Ellum to meet up with some friends. After finding a place to park my car, I journeyed down Elm Street and made contact with my group, and although I don't remember whose idea it was, we ended up patronizing a coffee house to pass time before seeing some local music. In the group was my coworker, Heather, and her boyfriend at the time, Chris, her friend DeShanna, another co-worker named Glenn (a forty-something year old scenester who probably had no business being down there with a bunch of teenagers), and Björn, a former foreign exchange student turned annual visitor from Germany. Björn was excited at being able to buy brownies at the coffee shop, declaring to me that he was only able to get them when visiting America. I ordered a turkey sandwich, and after taking a few bites I realized that it contained real turkey and not the turkey slices I was accustomed to getting when ordering sandwiches. After leaving the café, our group finished off the night at Trees with a UFOFU and Bobgoblin show, and I ended up trying to bum $10 for a copy of UFOFU's with everyone coming up empty until Glenn was able to help me out. For the next few years I wouldn't recall much about that coffee shop, but I would always remember that sandwich and the brownies and the night's experiences that followed our visit. Thus was my introduction to Deep Ellum's premiere coffee house and hangout at the ripe old age of eighteen.
Continue reading "Ghosts of DFW music history: Insomnia Coffee Bar"
1988 show flyer
The Deep Ellum neighborhood has been home to a dizzying number of music performance venues over the past century. In the early days of Ellum's renaissance, many an aspiring entrepreneur opted to roll the dice on a new venue. Some, like Charlie Gilder, were able to successfully circumnavigate the sea of red tape put forth by the City Council and obtain permits and liquor licenses; other, perhaps more bullish, entrepreneurs chose to go a different way, with all ages clubs and "unofficial" liquor on tap. Some of the resultant venues, such as the Prophet Bar and Theatre Gallery, achieved fairly long term success and drew a regular contingent of music fans and clubgoers, but Deep Ellum's history is also full of short-lived, fly by night venues that had their brief moments in the sun before flaming out and disappearing completely. And perhaps the most infamous of these long gone, also-ran hotspots was a hole in the wall off Commerce Street, a one time weighing scale and butcher equipment outlet turned punk club known as the Honest Place.
