The Dallas Dictionary

OBBING ALONG IN THE RIVER OF TRAF-fic one day, I noticed a new word had apparently made its way into our Dallas vocabulary. On official DART signage (another recent and annoying addition to our language; what was wrong with the simple word “signs”?) I read: “Bus pulse point.” Having just dabbed a few drops of fairly expensive essence on my own pulse points, I wondered what the buses’ pulse point would look like.

It looked like a bus stop.

So began a long and laborious search through the bureaucratic lines at DART, where I found many people who either had never heard of a pulse point {“They’re on which sign?” “I really don’t know much about it”) or weren’t sure what it was (one official, who admitted that he had never seen the signs, told me they were simply “time points” for drivers to check how fast or slow they were going on their routes, rather like checkpoints.)

JAVA JONES, A CHIC COFFEE STORE IN Oak Lawn, sells some of the most exotic coffees in the world-rich, aromatic beans from Kilimanjaro, Ethiopia, and Kenya. But it’s not the espresso grounds that make customers giddy. It’s not even the clear water used to make the perfect cup o’ joe that separates this restaurant from all others in Dallas. Rather, it’s water from a different source.

That’s right, the “water closet,” the “john,” the “head,” if you will. Whatever you call it, Java Jones’ room of relief has something no other North Texas eatery’s bathroom has: a blow dryer.