Another shiny new year has arrived......whoo-hoo! Be still thy beating heart.
As The Cracker Daddy sits here in Starbucks, thinking of the year past and the year upon us in all of its infantile glory while grooving on some Black Keys, he thinks what the grunt in a foxhole on a cold, wet, miserable night thinks -- this is shit. Yes, The Cracker Daddy has lowered himself to sit in a Starbucks, drink their swill and barely tolerate the consumerist sheep imbibing their crappy coffee. For those of you who know The Cracker Daddy, you know he DESPISES Starbucks. However, into the belly of the beast The Cracker Daddy ventured to have a chai soy latte with cinnamon (what a putrid cup of swill that was) and to write to you gentle readers. Yet, The Cracker Daddy has a bond with this particular Starbucks. In a past life, this Starbucks was a Souther Maid Donut shop. A donut shop where The Cracker Daddy in his youth would skip church (forced religious indoctrination sessions) with his church-going, upper middle-class, hooligan friends. So, when The Cracker Daddy holds his nose to enter this particular temple to consumerism, it is viewed with a forlorn fondness of days past.
The Cracker Daddy's coffee shop of primary preference, It's A Grind, is closed today......as is the coffee shop of secondary preference, Murray St Coffee Shop and as is the coffee shop of tertiary preference, Mokkah. Well, fuck The Cracker Daddy running........Starbucks it is. While mentally pissing and moaning about the dearth of good coffee/chai being available for commercial consumption today, The Cracker Daddy longingly reminisces of his All-Time Favorite (ATF) coffee shop/cool cultural hangout -- The Nodding Dog Coffee Shop......aka The Nodding Dog. Ah, The Nodding Dog.......how The Cracker Daddy misses you! The Cracker Daddy discovered The Nodding Dog back in February 2004 with The Cracker Daddy's Only Legitimate Spawn on a field trip through Dallas on a Saturday to show The Cracker Daddy's Only Legitimate Spawn what Dallas had to offer. The Nodding Dog was in the Bishop Arts District at the corner of Bishop Ave and 7th St across 7th St from Hattie's (another The Cracker Daddy fave). It was a magical place in a magical time. This was before the D Magazine crowd, aka douche-bags, discovered the Bishop Arts District. What can be said about The Nodding Dog -- Great art, eclectic decor and music, great staff...and an area of Dallas that didn't look like suburbia hell. They had free wi-fi, a bottomless coffee cup option, great selection of teas, and were dog-friendly which is solid gold in The Cracker Daddy's book. Such a great, deliciously diverse and eclectic mix of patrons and staff -- The Cracker Daddy had indeed found his nirvana, his Shambala. Alas, as all good things do, The Nodding Dog came to an end in August 2008 -- the victim of the commercial success brought upon by the douche-bags discovering the Bishop Arts District and a greedy landlord's lust for commercial gain. Needless to say, The Cracker Daddy was DEVASTATED at the loss of his beloved home-away-from-home. An establishment that epitomized what it was about the Bishop Arts District that made it an oasis of diverse, heterogeneous, hip coolness in the desert of bland, conforming sameness that is Dallas. Oh, how the Cracker Daddy has wished plagues of biblical proportion upon the douche-bags and greedy-ass landlord -- think Moses and Ramses with some rectal warts and hemorrhaging thrown in for good measure. The Cracker Daddy has refused to even enter the business that replaced The Nodding Dog. It would be like climbing into a grave -- not going to happen. RIP The Nodding Dog -- dear, dear friend you are missed.
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