Funny I should ask. The idea of writing a blog of my Texas adventures hit me as I was driving all my stuff down here. At normal speeds it is about 12 hours of drive time from Bloomington, IN to Dallas, TX. Put a U-haul trailer on the back of a KIA Spectra5 and you can pump that up to about 15 or 16 hours of driving, not counting naps and other breaks. I thought it would be a fun project but it kind of got lost as there was a lot to do to get settled in a new place. I would get to it, eventually.
So then a couple of months ago my friend Amanda posted a pic of herself wearing her new t-shirt. The shirt had a nifty take on the Miller High Life logo. As someone who used to almost live off of “The Champagne of Beers” I really liked the shirt. Further discussions taught me that the design was the product of a man named Ralph who has a little shop down my Fair Park. Hollywood Five and Dime. At the time I had no idea where this was.
Some time passes and I really need to find a decent barber. Amanda suggests I check out Rob’s Chop Shop. I look him up online and this dude is a very highly regarded barber so I make an appointment. I will talk more about Rob in another post but he does some amazing barbering. Rob’s shop is right next to Fair Park and as I’m walking up to it I notice this little shop with a Dallas Low Life shirt in the window. I had found Hollywood Five and Dime.
After my haircut I stroll over and check out this little shop. It is small but filled with some really cool shit. Nice belts, wallets, western and work shirts, and several boots including a pair of engineer boots I really will buy one day. I start talking with Ralph and buy a little Dallas Low Life patch for my vest. Ralph is a helluva nice guy and we talk for at least a half an hour about Dallas and our various travels and whatnot.
A week or two later, after becoming delirious on the treadmill, inspiration hits and I decide to finally start this blog. After looking at various platforms I settle on this one and write up a small introductory post. But then I hit a roadblock; what the hell am I going to call this thing? Try as I might I can’t come up with anything that doesn’t sound like a theme park, “My Dallas Adventure” for example. It is then that I look over and see my vest and the Dallas Low Life patch and decide that is perfect.
I set it up and post the blog. It is then that this platform suggests that I buy a domain instead of just using their sub-domain. I search and dallaslowlife.com is open. Now I don’t know what to do. Ralph is an awesome dude and it is his design; it should be his domain. I decide to wait and think about it for a bit.
Now I had every intention of going down to the shop and talking to Ralph and asking if I could use this domain but I never made it down there. I write a few more posts and start to worry that some cyber-squatter bot is going to notice and swipe it out from under both of us so I just go ahead and buy the domain.
Finally the other day I make it back down to Hollywood Five and Dime and start telling the story to Ralph. All is good, he tells me the story of coming up with the logo and I tell him about starting the blog and finding the domain open. Then I tell him that I bought it out from under him and he gets one of those WTF looks on his face. I explain that I didn’t want it to get swiped and that I would be more than happy to give it to him if he wanted it but he said he had no need for another domain and gave me his blessing to use it.
So even though it took me a while I did the right thing and now I feel like I can let people know this is here. That is the story of how I got the title for this blog. If you happen to be reading this in Dallas please visit Hollywood Five and Dime at 3621 Parry Ave, Dallas, TX. You will be sure to find some good stuff.
dallaslowlife 