WEEKEND PREVIEW - FEBRUARY 15TH

Here are our picks for shows to hit up this weekend. If you think we missed something, tell us in the comments!

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Friday, Feb. 15th:

Camp David/ Sophomore/ Chambers/ Babar - VDAY.BDAY.PARTY.SHOW | 2300 W Oak St. 

Trebuchet/ Descender/ Bad Design - Dan’s Silverleaf | 9:00pm | Show 10:00pm | $5
Trebuchet is the working-man band of Denton. They always put in their time and they always do a good job. Definitely looks like a good show to get the slime of Valentine's Day off of your back. 

The Iron Claw/ Bubba Hernandez Y Los Super Vatos/ Fab Deuce  - Rubber Gloves | 9pm | $9 
Fab Deuce is a local group of MCs and DJs that always put on a good show, but the name Bubba Hernandez Y Los Super Vatos has us itching to be at Rubber Gloves to check these guys out based solely on the name.

The Paramedic/ It Lies Within/ Surrounded By Monsters/ Aspire/ I Am Man, I Am Monster/ Citadel/ Fist Meets Face/ My Dear Epidemic/ To Keep You Safe - Hailey’s | 7pm | $10 Over 21 | $15 under 21
All of these bands look “tough” in their band photos. So, there’s that. Also, It Lies Within has one of those awesome metal logos that is completely illegible.

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Saturday, Feb. 16th:

Deep Throat/ Bitch Teeth/ Princes of Fucktown/ Eccotone - Rubber Gloves | 9pm | $5 or $7
The Reggie Watts-approved local ridiculousness that is Deep Throat takes the stage this Saturday at Rubber Gloves with a whole crew of other grossly interesting bands. If you wanna sleaze it up after a nice Thin Line doc, this is the place to be.

Denton Babe Bash featuring The Virgin Wolves/ The Red Death/ Sol Tax/ Classy San Diego/ Stormy Durant - Hailey’s 8pm | $5 Over 21 | $7 ages 18 -21
Uh... so apparently Class San Diego is a female-fronted local ska band that we didn’t know existed. Might be worth your $5 just for that alone. Besides that, this is a show featuring a bunch of women-as-frontperson bands.

Denton Babe Bash

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Sunday, Feb. 17th:

Hares on the Mountain - Dan’s Silvearleaf | 7pm | Free
And you can of course hit up Dan’s early Sunday evening for some always-accountable Americana for free. Do you not do this already? 

Oh, and Thin Line, too!

Also, here’s the entire schedule for the rest of Thin Line with our selections bolded. If you have not yet attended a Thin Line show, we highly encourage you to do so! Joshua Butler and crew do a great job of selecting documentaries that are not only interesting, but pertinent and thought-provoking. 

Campus Theatre:
Friday Feb 15:
3:30pm – Beyond Pollution/There Is No Place...
6:00pm – Seadrift vs. The Big Guy
8:00pm – 4 Nights in December
10:00pm – Shorts Program #7
Saturday Feb 16:
11:30am – Shorts Program #8
1:30pm – DocuDenton 7k Films
3:30pm – Brother on the Line
6:00pm – The House I Live In
8:30pm – The Informant
Sunday Feb 17
2:00pm – The Anderson Monarchs
4:00pm – In No Great Hurry
6:00pm – Central Park 5
8:30pm – Building Babel

Fine Arts Theatre:
Friday Feb 15:
6:30pm – Drawing Dead
8:30pm – Backyard Blockbusters
Saturday Feb 16
12:00pm – Swingman
2:00pm – Stories from Lakka Beach
5:00pm – Bat City USA
7:00pm – Invisible Young

THE JIVE FIVE - TAKE A SEAT

THE BEST AND WORST TOILETS IN DENTON

In our constant quest to present you with the best of Denton, we thought we'd take a peek into the oft-overlooked, but ever-so-important restroom. Below you will find what we have designated the five best restrooms in Denton. In the midst of our search, we also found many water closets that weren't exactly up to par (and that's putting it lightly). Needless to say, we decided to do you a favor and include them in a "worst of" list at the bottom! Comment and let us know if we missed one!

The pleasantly scented men's room of Paschall Bar. 

The Best Rooms

Rose Costumes - The restroom at this square ex-pat is decorated like 221B Baker St., AKA Sherlock Holmes’ apt. Distressed chairs, fabric-covered walls and other things that sound like they’d make a restroom gross are all over this baño, but somehow it works. Just don't touch anything. Plus, you get to pretend to be Benedict Cumberbatch while you pee. Can’t beat that.

Paschall Bar - Cleanliness is absolutely vital to the quality of a restroom. Many bars apparently missed that meeting. Paschall Bar didn't. In addition to providing a respite from the cigar and cigarette smoke, the restrooms at Paschall are always clean and well-stocked with interesting artwork. In addition, the patrons here are such gentlemen that nobody yells at the ladies for sneaking into the mens’ room when the ladies’ has a line. Another interesting aspect is that the men's room at Paschall is routinely cleaner and nicer-smelling than the ladies. Well done, men. Well done. 

Loco Cafe - This is an executive/level restroom in an unexpected location. These facilities are not only spacious, private and quiet but also clean enough to eat your biscuit sandwich off of the floor (please don't actually do this). As an added bonus, you get to smile or grimace at a photo of Glen Farris as you make your way to the throne.

Chestnut Tree - Where else can you read recipes that include jello molds while peeing at the same time?

The Possibly Mythical Secret Restroom In the Gateway Center - Some We Denton Do It-ers swear by this restroom as the number one place in town to take care of business, but we went investigating and couldn't find it. Our friends wouldn't share as to keep this unicorn of a restroom a secret. We think they might just be big fat liars.

The men's room at Recycled.

The Rest (of the) Rooms

Recycled Books - Recycled employees even avoid this hellhole of a lavatory, instead finding safe-haven in any other restroom on the square. Due to the fact that these rooms are open to the public, it is nearly impossible to keep them clean or even passable. There is almost always a line to get in them. Also, if you enjoy hot water, you're out of luck, it's only freezing cold or lukewarm at best. However, if you're an exhibitionist and enjoy people listening to the sound of you pee, this is 100% the place for you. It's made even better due to the fact that it's right next to the children's section so you can hear small children critiquing Seuss as you try to hover above the seat.

Andy’s upstairs bathrooms (behind the stage) - These rooms are usually missing toilet seats and smell like dead things. There are no mirrors. They probably haven’t been cleaned in years, and you can’t count on toilet paper being readily available.

J and J's - The constant fear of falling into the basement below with your pants at your ankles makes for a stressful restroom experience. In addition, the long walk down the hall to get to them has a very The Shining feel to it for some reason. We wouldn't be surprised to see a guy dressed in a dog costume walk out of the men's room at some point.

Rubber Gloves - These restrooms smell of stale urine and a flavor of Doritos that hasn't been invented yet. They're always extremely dark, giving off a very dungeon of doom feeling. We wouldn't want it any other way, though, Rubber Gloves. 

PHOTOGRAPHER SPOTLIGHT: LAUREN APEL

Lauren Apel is one of the many young talents coming out of Denton. She has an eye for quality and an impressive drive. We caught up with Lauren to find out what life for a young photographer in Denton looks like. Read the interview and then follow Lauren for what I am sure will be a promising photography career. 

Pictured above is Lauren Apel and her husband Mark.

Tell us about yourself. What does life in Denton look like?

My name is Lauren Apel. I’m married to writer-musician-co-photographer-Mark Apel and we live in here in the great and wonderful Denton, Texas. We love it here. Denton has such a special culture. It feels like a small town, but it isn’t really all that small. And everyone you meet is an artist of some sort. There are so many musicians and designers and culinary artists—there’s always something going on. And when there isn’t, you can drive thirty minutes and be in Dallas or Forth Worth. We live in northern Denton. We both work in Denton—for UNT. I am a student at UNT as well. Mark leads worship at a new church in Corinth (Lake Sharon Community Church) and on the weekends we shoot weddings and portrait sessions.

What brought you to photography?

This is going to sound cliché, but I’ve always loved pictures. I always loved getting disposable cameras and taking them to summer camp or on trips or wherever. I remember being a thirteen year old and dressing my friends up and styling them and then posing them and taking their picture. And they were awful pictures. But I just loved it. I shot all the time. Five years ago a friend’s parents asked me to shoot their family portraits. It was my first paid job and I knew then that I loved it. It was the most wonderful thing.  

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Describe your style and what inspires you.

It is difficult to describe “my style.” I know what I like and what I don’t like. I like clean photographs if that makes any sense. I like them to look matte—like if you touched them. I also want them to look cohesive. If you scroll from the top page of my blog to the bottom, I want all of the images to have the same feel. I want the images to be consistent. In some ways, that is more important than anything else. Photography is like any other form of artistry—if you want to get better you practice and study. If you want to be a better writer, you write and you read. If you want to be a better photographer, you study the photographer’s work that you admire and identify what makes their images awesome. And you shoot everything.

How do you define a successful photograph?

A successful photograph is a hard thing to define. A successful photograph makes you feel something. Maybe it is as simple as feeling, “wow, that’s beautiful” or maybe it makes you tear up. A successful photograph makes you stop for a second to look at it. It makes you scroll slow.

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What are the benefits and challenges of being a photographer in Denton?

One of the biggest benefits of being a photographer in Denton is the supportive community of photographers that already exists in Denton. There are a LOT of photographers in the DFW, as I am sure you can imagine. Every interaction I have had with any of them has been positive. I think that is important. When I’m unable to take on a job, I love having five names that I can send to that client and being able to know that the names I sent are awesome people.

If you could be invisible one day with your camera, where would you go?

This might sound really lame, but it would be really cool to shoot behind the scenes of the Oscars—the rehearsals and sound checks before the event, and all the chaos that happens backstage. Stars getting their makeup touched up. The tech crew. All the little stuff. The presenters. I bet it’d be a lot of fun.

What is your favorite thing about Denton?

I would say the community. We have so many wonderful friends here. Friends that design custom mid-century furniture, friends that create beautifully hand crafted stationary, friends that make music, refurbish, paint, write, bake, and grow. There are a lot of big servant hearts in Denton that want to work for the good of the city. There are a lot of churches in Denton that want to work for the betterment of the city. It’s really neat to see. We live in a great community.

Find more from Lauren at

Portfolio / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter

DENTON LIT - WALKER SMART - "HERE"

The following prose piece is a selection from the upcoming zine entitled Local Lore, to be released next month during the 35 Denton music festival. The zine is the fourth in a series printed by the art collective Spiderweb Salon and will showcase a wide variety of art, prose, poetry, and essays inspired by and within Denton, Texas, USA. Copies of the freshly printed and hand-bound zine will be available at 35 Denton Presents: Spiderweb Salon on March 10th at Dan’s Silverleaf. 2-6 p.m. The show will feature art, readings, music and performance pieces, as well.

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“Here”

by Walker Smart

There used to be a hospital here, the one I was born in. The grounds were donated to the city to make a park. They made the City Park apartments instead. Here used to be a pizza place where I played the Dungeons and Dragons arcade game while my dad wrote in his notebook. They tore it down and built something else, but it was here. Here used to be a school, the school where I met my two oldest friends. There’s the creek we used to explore, to us it was a separate world. Here used to be the video store where we rented the movies that desensitized us. We still see the ghost face of Piggly Wiggly through the trees driving down Greenwood. This was the theater we had our first jobs at, where we first stayed out too late. They spent a million dollars renovating it after it closed. When I saw it after I felt a part of me was gone. But you go up into the projection booth and it’s like walking back in time, they didn’t change a thing. That part of a place that makes it home can’t be changed.

Here’s the house I met your mom in. Later it became the house we lived when you were born. Then it became the house I first felt heartbreak in. Soon it will be the house another baby girl lives after she is born. The part of a place that makes it home can become complicated.

You are the place that makes hell feel like home again. You are the place that can make something old feel new again.

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Walker Smart is the on stage alter ego of Walker Smart. He's twice as weird and loves the sound of his own voice even more than the real Walker Smart. The real Walker Smart has lived in Denton, TX his whole life. You’ve probably seen him around.

You  can find more Walker here... You can get more Spiderweb Salon there and you can catch them at 35 Denton in March!