In Big D, shopping isn't merely a mundane chore necessary to outfit yourself, your kids, and your home. Shopping is a sport and a pastime, a social activity and entertainment. Dallasites don't pull on sweats and go incognito to the mall; they get dolled up and strut their stuff. Having grown up in North Dallas, I know all too well that locals are world-class shoppers. Every time I return home, I initially have a hard time even finding my way around -- retail outlets, mostly national chain stores, seem to continually reproduce like a computer virus, blanketing all four corners of every intersection in the bedroom communities that envelop Big D. The Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau likes to tout that there are more shopping opportunities per capita in Dallas than any other city in the United States. So if you're a shopper, and come from a place less rich in retail mania, you've got your work cut out for you.
If you need to focus your shopping attention, incline it toward Western duds (especially Texas-made cowboy boots) and upscale clothing and accessories (this is the home of world-famous Neiman Marcus, after all). Texans aren't fond of taxes (there's no state income tax, still), but there is a state sales tax, and it's one of the highest in the country: 8.25%.
Great Shopping Areas
Downtown Dallas largely has been eviscerated of shopping outlets as inhabitants flocked to the suburbs. Only Neiman Marcus, the mother of all Dallas purveyors of luxury goods, has stayed put. The West End MarketPlace (www.westendmarketplacedallas.com) was carved out of an old candy and cracker warehouse to draw hungry tourists and get things going downtown. The real high-volume shopping is done north of downtown, in Uptown as well as Highland Park, North Dallas (north of LBJ Fwy.), and suburbs such as Plano and Frisco. The best spot in Plano is the chic Shops at Legacy (Legacy at the Toll Road).
In the area real-estate agents have designated Uptown, a vintage trolley line travels along McKinney Avenue, allowing shoppers to jump off to duck into its many antiques shops, art galleries, furniture stores, restaurants, and specialty shops. West Village is an outdoor, European-style mall full of chic shops, restaurants, bars, and a movie theater at the north end of McKinney Avenue. The streets Knox and Henderson, bisected by Central Expressway, are lined with home-furnishing stores and antiques dealers, with an eclectic decoration shop or two mixed in. Routh and Fairmount streets have a large number of art galleries and antiques shops. Greenville Avenue is home to a dizzying array of funky shops, including antiques dealers and vintage clothing stores. The avenue gets a little funkier the farther south you travel, with Lower Greenville in particular home to plenty of bars and restaurants that make great pit stops. Deep Ellum, which rules the alternative night, is loaded by day with offbeat furnishings stores, art galleries, folk-art shops, and vintage resale shops. Of course, locals head straight for the malls, and if you're in Dallas doing some big-volume shopping, you might do the same; the best are listed below.
