The Dallas Club Scene Has a New Cash Cow. Will the Rest of the City Profit Too?

This week sees the opening of a new nightclub ironically named Cash Cow in Deep Ellum — specifically, the part of Deep Ellum that developers are trying to rebrand as the Good Latimer District, which already houses a murderers’ row of nightclubs: Green Light Social; Citizen; Saaya; Vice Park; Komodo with its upstairs lounge; the infamous Bottled Blonde, and its outdoor sports bar, Backyard. Bottled Blonde kicked off the trend, garnering some of the city’s largest liquor sales and attracting a TABC investigation following accusations of flouting COVID-19 protocols in the first year of the pandemic.

This little section of the Good Latimer Expressway, which falls under the interchange of several major highways, was home to underdeveloped blocks of properties for quite some time. The area has slowly gotten an injection of life since Bottled Blonde’s opening in 2017. Good Latimer now houses Dallas’s most popular nightclubs, with the Dallas Observer reporting that four clubs in the top 20 bars for liquor sales for August, each pulling in well over $400,000. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

How do Good Latimer’s nightclubs and bars impact Dallas?

First, the history: This stretch of expressway has been a dead zone for years. It was historically a racist divide between a Black neighborhood and white Downtown. Its revitalization kicked into high gear with the addition of the Epic at the intersection on the north side of Elm Street and Good Latimer. It features a hotel, including several massive (and expensive) restaurants, shops, and smaller food tenants alongside this row of clubs. All of that makes the area no longer a ghost town, but full of people at night.

Citizen

Citizen

Is Good Latimer’s development harming the surrounding neighborhoods?

We have to ask if the businesses being developed into these spaces add anything to the culture. Attempts to rebrand the area as its own district are taking hold because it’s on the other side of the railroad tracks from Deep Ellum and outside the four main avenues that make up the heart of the area. However, they are part of a historically Black neighborhood that is considered the birthplace of the Dallas music scene. But the current wave of new developments don’t offer any sort of home to musicians or deeper investment in the community. Other than Komodo, which is an extremely successful restaurant nationally, the businesses opening in this stretch offer basic drinks and uninspired DJs. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the fact that these businesses are not adding anything while clearly making the owners a significant profit begs the question: Who are these clubs truly serving?

Having these clubs tucked away in an area with more commercial buildings than homes is a plus. These massive clubs can turn it up as loud as they like, provide ample parking, and spit out tipsy customers (who are hopefully taking rideshares home without gunking up the regular lives of residents trying to put their kids to bed and get some shuteye) without much hassle. There’s nothing for NIMBYs to protest and no investment property owners to annoy. If you’re going to stick a mega club somewhere, this is the most frictionless place available in Dallas proper. Since it is outside of the Canton-to-Elm-Street span that most think of as Deep Ellum, it doesn’t necessarily have an impact on the already-bad weekend traffic and overtaxed parking there.

How does current development hinder Dallas’s culture?

As for the negatives, well, there’s the obvious problem of soullessness. These nightclubs are owned by a mix of local and out-of-state hospitality groups, but looking at the videos under Dallas nightlife-themed hashtags on TikTok gives the impression that it’s like being in a zombie movie with mobs of drunk folks in place of the living dead — and that’s exactly the point. The decor is frequently spray painted and neon signed to look “urban,” and sometimes there’s a roof deck. There is the option for bottle service in which mid-range liquor is priced at extortionist rates. Cash Cow will charge $3,200 for a bottle of Veuve Clicquot that retails for under $50, $11,000 for Dom Perignon that retails for around $300, and a bottle of Tito’s, the official vodka of Texas, will set you back $425 when you can pick it up at Walmart for under $20 — it comes with mixers so you can make your own drinks, which is perhaps the most clever scam to lowering the bar for service. What you’re paying for is a place to sit down, which also comes with bottle service, and the appearance of wealth.

Cash Cow

Cash Cow

With this unapologetically enterprising spirit on full display at every turn, the area grows increasingly shameless in fixating on places that offer a big night out with an equally big price tag, although the actual experience rings hollow. There is never an authentic story or community behind these clubs; it’s a place to separate people who want to be in a club from their money. Cash Cow is perhaps the most blatant name for one of these spots yet, verging on being a “Fuck You” to its customers, but what do we expect when the owners are a CEO and his partner who entered the nightclub business from the oil and gas industry? To quote Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a good time, but something feels nefarious about developing a new district that only aims to offer a good time — or some hospitality group’s idea of a good time. The way these places are replicating each other carries the same effusive disinterest as a corporate giant masquerading as a true Texan in unbroken cowboy boots.

Instead of falling into the dizzying dystopia that this area is becoming, head to Ruins or Tina’s Continental for a drink in Deep Ellum. Support a place that gives a damn about more than separating you from your money.