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The speed limit on most of Contour Drive is 20 mph, and it is in fact so serpentine that it's difficult to go much faster. Contour drive winds from McCullough through to Hildebrand through Olmos Park, an old money enclave close to downtown-- past some really fancy houses including some gated Georgian mansions and a lot of beautiful old trees. As you might imagine Contour drive is a highly favored bike route when the weather is nice.

.McCullough goes from Bonham street downtown to the airport just north of the loop, passing through the semi-gentrified Old Main neighborhood east of SAC(San Antonio College) through part of upscale Olmos Park, where you'll find the Olmos drugstore on McCullough and Hildebrand, which has been there for over fifty years and you can still get a malt or a shake.

Hildebrand goes east-west just a bit north of downtown, going from Fredricksburg(aka “Fred Road”) at the western end, passing by Trinity University, crossing Highway 281 and passing by the zoo and Incarnate Word, ending at the corner of New Braunfels and Hildebrand, at the entry to the San Antonio Country Club. The original Taco Cabana number one is still located a the the corner of Hildebrand and San Pedro.

San Pedro is probably San Antonio's main street, wide and mostly well-lit, the home of tons of businesses including restaurants and auto dealerships, and San Antonio College, the main junior college just north of downtown. North Star Mall is located at the corner of San Pedro and Loop 410, not too far from the airport. Eventually, north of the Loop San Pedro merges with Highway 281, aka McAllister Freeway.

Blanco Road is over 20 miles long. No, really- but that's if you count the stretch that goes outside of city limits. It goes south all the way to downtown, then north past the loop where it becomes. TX Highway 2696. Chris Madrid's, “home of the macho-burger”, is located on Blanco, a couple of blocks south of the intersection with Hildebrand, and is always very popular. So is Los Barrios, one of the best Mexican restaurants in a town full of them, on the 4000 block, just south Basse road. The Oblate School of theology, one of the oldest Catholic seminaries in the south is also on Blanco, a bit farther north.

Broadway is a big road, as the name suggests, that runs North-South. The original Earl Abel's restaurant used to be located at the corner of Hildebrand and Broadway, across from Incarnate Word College, now pompously known at The University of The Incarnate Word. But sadly, Earl Abel's is no more, the restaurant having been razed in 2006 to make way for condos. Back in the eighties SA congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, who famously tried to impeach Ronald Reagan, encountered an op-ed guy from the local paper at Earl Abel's and demanded he apologize for calling him a communist. When he didn't he decked him. To be fair, Earl Abel's has a new location on Austin Highway, albeit without authentic Populuxe architecture from 1940. But the original Pig Stand Diner is still on B'way a few blocks to the south.

Jackson Keller runs Southeast-to Northwest, starting at McCullough and heading NW through primarily residential neighborhoods until it crosses Loop 410 then curves left to intersect the similarly named Vance Jackson, which undoubtedly confuses people from out of town, at least once in a while. One way to remember which one is which is to remember the big L on the side of the gym at Robert E. Lee High School(the one that replaced the Confederate flag) on Jackson KeLLer and picture yourself driving by.

Culebra doesn't wind nearly as much as its name implies(it means “snake” in Spanish), but it does pass by Saint Mary's University(home of the Rattlers) and the Southwest Research Institute, as well as a bunch of used car dealerships and Mexican restaurants. The portion close to the University is beginning to be revitalized; further east is more run down,and still further east towards Leon Valley near the SWRI is mostly undeveloped countryside.

Fredricksburg Road is known to locals as Fred Road, even though they don't say San Antone.(That's just in the movies.) On the southern end of Fred Road there are lots of apartment buildings, Motels, and used car lots, as well as the inevitable Mexican restaurants. Farther north Fredricksburg passes by Crossroads Mall(formerly Wonderland Mall), and the huge USAA headquarters.

Babcock Road is in the Northwest side of town, and in driving it you mostly passes quickly through residential neighborhoods and some office complexes, until it becomes De Zavala Road, at which point you know you went too far if you meant to stay on Babcock and go towards the many gated apartment complexes found there on the northwestestern end, because around the 6500 block Babcock intersects itself(!), and you have to take a left at the light if you want to stay on Babcock.

Denton is a college town about 35 miles north of Dallas and Forth Worth. The town is centered around the two schools, the University of North Texas and Texas Woman's University, with student bodies of around 30,000 and 12,000 respectively.

(back in the early 90s TWU became officially co-educational,in part because of fear of legal action by male applicants citing their status as a state supported school. A certain portion of the student body was upset with this, as many felt that TWU had a unique educational mission as the only state supported all-women's school in the country. At one point somebody stole the “W” and the “O” from the pedestrian bridge that connects the two sides of the campus across Bell Avenue, and for many months the side of the bridge said “Texas Man's University”, because the administration refused to put more letters up and insisted they'd investigate and find the perpetrators. Eventually the W and the O were returned, anonymously.)

I've lived in Denton for a little over 20 years, having come up here to go to school. When I got here in the mid-eighties the population was about fifty thousand, and today it's double that. The schools are still an important part of the town culture, but it's gradually become somewhat less of a college town and something more of a bedroom community for people commuting to jobs in North Dallas, which is something of a pity, although the center of town retains most of the sleepy character of older Denton.

When I got here in '86 The Denton Record Chronicle was one of the last locally-owned daily papers in the country, and now it's owned by a media conglomerate. Likewise Morrison Milling was an independent company and now an out-of-town corporation owns them. The large neon sign above their grain silo is still there, although they've stopped running it at night. It used to say,

“BIS-KITS”
then
“PAN-KITS”
then
“CORN-KITS”,

then “MORRISON'S”(which would flash on and off)

If you sat in the lounge area of the 2nd floor of the Willis Library you could see the Morrison's sign across town and read, which was very relaxing, waiting for dark and for them to turn the sign on. But no more. Once many years ago I ran into a truly plastered drunk at a bar in Denton who told me a joke about Denton that involved to American P.O.Ws in Vietnam who ended up in the same cell and who found out they were both from Denton and started to quiz each other about the order in which the Morrison's sign flashed the names, because they both thought the other was a spy, and because neither could remember for sure they drove each other crazy. It was more surreal than funny, but needless to say memorable-- except I can't remember exactly how it went.

. Harry Hines Blvd is colloquially referred to by some as a prostitution haven, but I suspect this is exaggerated by locals. It is the home of UT Southwestern medical school and Parkland Hospital, which is where they took Kennedy after he was shot. Maybe hookers lost his brain. Seriously though,although I'm aware that other sections of HH are regarded as higher crime areas, the neighborhoods around Parkland and the medical school look perfectly respectable to me. And Parkland is very highly regarded for its burn unit.

Northwest Highway is also known as Loop 12, although nobody in Dallas calls it that(also, it's not actually a loop, which may have something to do with it.) On the west side of NW Highway is Bachman Lake, which is a really lovely spot. You can walk or jog the entire perimeter of it to get some scenic exercise. There's also a really cool-looking muffler man just across the street from the lake if you dig that sort of thing. It's a nice place to visit during the day but probably not someplace you'd want to go at night. I once ran into an old man at the Whataburger next to the lake who told me the city will never drain the lake to clean it because they're afraid of finding dead bodies and having to investigate who they were. But I think he was just shooting his mouth off.

Webb Chapel goes North-South, and it's a little rough on the south side("webb chapel extension") around the three thousand block, where there are row after row of apartment complexes. On the northside around the intersection with LBJ you'll find “Two Guys From Italy” one of Dallas's best affordable Italian restaurants, as well as an IMAX theater on the corner of LBJ and Webb Chapel.

.Royal Lane near I-35 is mostly not much to look at, but it has a lot of computer wholesalers and other IT businesses , as well a lot of interesting hole-in-the wall Chinese restaurants. Much of Royal on the west side near the Bush turnpike is still undeveloped, until you get to Hackberry Country Club on the other side of the turnpike, near DFW.

Young Street is a good street to know if you want to go downtown, because it has a lot of day parking lots, as well as the Dallas Public Library and the oddly shaped city hall just across from it. Also, if you get hungry for inexpensive fare, Young St has a McDonald's and a Subway!

Yes, Dallas has a Lover's Lane, er, Lovers Lane. Its best known intersection is Inwood and Lovers, where you'll find the historic Inwood theater( including the swanky art-deco Inwood bar inside the lobby), which has been an Art House theater for at least 25 years now. There's also a great Turkish restaurant in the same strip mall, as well as Lovers Egg Roll.

Mockingbird Lane is probably the premier “main drag” running through midtown Dallas, and a veritable restaurant row. Lemmon Avenue, which intersects Mockingbird across from Love Field, is probably a close second, but Mockingbird has more restaurants and hotels and motels, and it passes through the Dallas Country club and the Park Cities then across White Rock Lake on the east side, so if you had to choose one street as Dallas's main street, it would be Mockingbird.

Dallas has a Main Street, but Lemmon Avenue, possibly tied with Mockingbird Lane, probably has more of a claim to being Dallas’s “main drag” far more than Main Street proper does. The downtown section includes a lot of older, medium-sized businesses, mixed in with newer ones that represent a part of the Oaklawn rehabilitation of the neighborhood. Lemmon intersects Mockingbird at Love Field in fact, or becomes Mockingbird, which can confuse some visitors.

Oaklawn(Avenue): it’s a little rump of a road compared to Preston, but possibly better known for the adjoining neighborhood that bears the same name, mostly around the intersection with Lemmon Avenue. Oaklawn is rapidly becoming gentrified, with independent bookstores and cafes popping up seemingly everywhere. For some, however, there are still too many abandoned buildings in nearby areas to make Oaklawn an appealing locale just yet.

Preston road goes all the way from north of the loop(LBJ-635) to downtown, where it becomes Oaklawn, but most Dallasites think of Preston as a street in North Dallas because of Valley View Mall’s location, on Preston and LBJ, as well as because of the Prestonwood Country Club just a bit farther north.

(Also, people who don’t like to use the tollway to get to the Galleria will often go north on Preston then hang a left on Alpha, often stopping at Valley View first.

South of the loop a lot of Preston is residential. It’s regarded as a very desirable neighborhood, being centrally located but still (a little) less expensive than the Park Cities downtown-- although some stretches are catching up.