Last night, NBC 5 ran a piece on one of our favorite places,
Soda Gallery in the Bishop Arts District. If you're looking for a specialty soda, like real ginger ale that doesn't wimp out on ginger, or that special soda that "they just don't make anymore," check out Soda Gallery. If it's still around, Tony Font can track it down and get it for you.
The
NBC 5 report on Soda Gallery highlighted the sodas with real sugar, which consumers are seeking out, now that we're getting educated about avoiding high fructose corn syrup. Soda connoisseurs claim that real sugar tastes better, too, giving the soda a cleaner taste than the heavy corn syrup--and don't even get them started on artificial sweetner! Real soda, real sugar, 28 kinds of Root Beer, and real
Dublin Dr. Pepper can all be found at Soda Gallery.
Soda Gallery also features comic books and art, hence the "gallery" part of its name. On the first Thursday of every month, Soda Gallery hosts
Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School mini drawing session. Artists are invited to bring their sketch pads and try some cartoon art, and anyone is welcome to watch the art being created.
The only thing that ticked us off NBC 5's report is that they didn't give credit to Oak Cliff for having such a cool store. Several times during the report, they called it "Dallas." This is a huge pet peeve of ours, as well as other residents of Oak Cliff--we never get credit for the good stuff. The only time they mention Oak Cliff on the news is anytime something bad happens south of I-30. Then, they call it "Oak Cliff," even when the incident happens miles from here. The news is always announcing that some horrible thing happened in "Oak Cliff," and we fall for it every time, running to the TV to see the gunman, robber, child snatcher, or whatever, who's loose in our neighborhood. Then, we see the name of the street where the horrible thing happened, and it's some street we've never heard of before. We get out the map, find out it's someplace far away, like near the border of Duncanville, and call the media again. "That's South Dallas," we explain to the geographically challenged media, "Not Oak Cliff." But it does no good.
My joke about that type of reporting is that at least it keeps out the riff-raff--developers who want to fill every street corner with big box retail stores and chain restaurants. Oak Cliff is safe haven for artists, entrepreneurs, and cool independent retail stores like Soda Gallery, just as long as we can keep convincing the "slash and burn" developers that Oak Cliff is too dangerous and they shouldn't come here!
Good news, North Oak Cliff art lovers--the Icehouse Art Gallery
This is the closing week for Organica, at