Bar closure
East Dallas dive bar Elbow Room finally drops the curtain
After nearly a year of doom hanging over its head, East Dallas dive the Elbow Room will finally close its doors for the last time. It'll finally pour its last draft. It'll finally serve its last bowl of hummus. Alright already, enough with the fanfare, the last hurrah is April 15.
The bar is going to be demolished to make room for a dental school being built by Texas A&M. The closure comes after a protracted saga, since Elbow Room owners Joe and Rosalie Nagy owned the bar but did not own the building. But A&M will finally prevail.
Even if you never went to the place, now you have the opportunity to storm it as if you were a regular, and lament the demise of Dallas history. The Elbow Room is a very old building on Gaston Avenue, in a neighborhood that's being slowly cannibalized by Baylor Medical Center and its companion businesses.
According to owner Rosalie Nagy, the building is set to be demolished sometime in May, probably at the end of the month. She says she's been trying to find another location, and had her eye on a building on Swiss Avenue nearby, but hasn't been able to secure a lease.
"We are incredibly sad about this, but we plan on going out with a bang," she says. That includes drink specials, surprises, and offering up bits and pieces of the building for sale.
"People have been asking for memorabilia, they want a brick or the chair they always sat in," she says. "Someone has asked for the bar itself. I said, 'Well, if you can get it out of there, it's pretty big.' Other people have asked for stained glass. But we'll keep the big things like the sign, in case we can reopen."
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