Deep Ellum News

Dallas' Deep Ellum gets an unexpected new amenity: valet parking

Valet is coming to the neighborhood.

Courtesy photo

Dallas' once-grungy Deep Ellum entertainment district will now offer what is surely an unanticipated new amenity: valet parking.

The valet service will be open on Thursdays-Sundays beginning May 11, and is not connected with any one business, ergo, it's open to anyone visiting Deep Ellum who doesn't want to park their own car.

The service is one in a series of new measures introduced by the Deep Ellum Foundation (DEF) to ease access and walkability for visitors to the area's 100-plus restaurants, bars, breweries, nightclubs, shops, apartments, offices, and hotels.

The valet stand will be located at 2625 Commerce St., between Twisted Root and DOT's Hop House, and is the result of a partnership between DEF, the 501c3 that advocates for the neighborhood, and the owner of the parking lot, says DEF executive director Stephanie Hudiburg.

"This has been a priority we've been trying to do for a few years," Hudiburg says. "Originally, we were trying to find a way to do it on the public right of way, by using metered parking on the streets. But the parking lot owner is working with us to offer a program that serves the entire district, right in heart of district."

The lot is the large plot that stretches across a block from Commerce Street to Main, making it accessible to pedestrians from both streets.

"This particular lot is owned by a property owner who also owns retail, bars, and restaurants, and wanted to offer a holistic customer experience that benefits other businesses as well," she says. (FYI, it's Asana Partners.)

The valet stand will be in operation Thursdays-Fridays from 6 pm-1 am, and Saturdays-Sundays from 1 pm-1 am. At launch, it will cost $25, although there are hints that the price may increase down the road.

The valet is one part of a larger program to make it easier for people who want to visit Deep Ellum, Hudiburg says.

Other parts of the program include:

closing down the main streets on weekend nights to pedestrian traffic only, from 10 pm-3 am
new bicycle corrals on Main Street, and a new bicycle pump installed at 2626 Main St. in front of the Patagonia store
freshly painted crosswalks, at the intersections of Main & Crowdus, Elm & Crowdus, and Elm & Good Latimer Expressway

There are also 1,000 new parking spaces, and a new/additional dropoff spot in the neighborhood's Rideshare Flow Zones, a program it introduced in 2019 modeled after DFW Airport in which zones have been designated as drop-off/pickup rideshare zones for visitors coming via services such as Uber and Lyft.

The zones are 1 to 2 blocks away from core activity in Deep Ellum, with the goal of improving traffic flow and emergency vehicle access in the area, and are in play during the busiest nights and weekends.

The new zone is at 2551 Elm St., in front of Elm & Good at the Pittman Hotel and will launch on May 12.

It joins the five existing rideshare drop off/pick up zones:

Good Latimer Expressway northbound between Main & Commerce
Commerce Street eastbound between Crowdus & Malcolm X Boulevard
Pryor Street southbound between Main & Commerce AND extended zone on Commerce between Pryor & Henry
Malcolm X Boulevard northbound between Indiana & Junius
Swiss Avenue westbound between N. Hawkins & Good Latimer Expressway

The Deep Ellum Foundation has created an entire page dedicated to getting around the neighborhood with charts and maps and such, rendered in a pleasing purple-teal-chartreuse color scheme.

transportation traffic deep-ellum

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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