David Blend is a weird dude. I met him maybe 15 years ago, when he somehow caught on at the now defunct Met. David had just finished law school but, before taking the bar exam, decided he wanted to become a writer. Like I say, weird dude. He wound up becoming the bars correspondent, writing a column created by Joe Capasso called simply “Cocktail Hour.” If I’m misremembering any of these details, David will correct me in the comments.
Anyway, thing is, David could write — can write. And now he’s the executive editor of Thrillist, in NYC. In fact, he was Thrillist’s first employee and is so beloved there that they made a carpet for him with his likeness on it, which, if you know David, sounds like par for the course.
All of which is an introduction to this, which I think you’ll enjoy. David is writing about the 50 things he misses about Dallas. Oh, like Randy White, a guy named Bob who used to hang out at the Amsterdam Bar, swimming pools, and Dickey’s gas station drive thru. His most recent entry is Haunted Lavin Manor, “the Texas State Fair’s Southern-plantation take on the Island of Dr. Moreau.” It’s no longer at the State Fair, so David tracked down the guy who used to run the thing and got the scoop, including this gem:
The fog machine was a Roscoe, refueled by bottles of fluid. One time J.W. [the former operator] picked up a bottle of what appeared to be the right stuff. Ten minutes after filling ‘er up, “it smelled like a boys’ locker room that hadn’t been mopped for a year.” What had happened was that the vampires in the next room hadn’t been given regular bathroom breaks, so they’d just started peeing in an empty Roscoe bottle. Say what you want about unions, but this is where they all start.
I strongly recommend a few minutes of perusal and perhaps even a revisit down the road, as David adds more entries.
