For the November issue of D Magazine, I wrote about one of the best dive bars in Dallas and the man who created it. Ned Smith died earlier this year, and just as my story published, the new operators of Milo Butterfingers had closed the place for major renovations. There was considerable consternation about whether the new Milo’s would still be Milo’s. Would it retain its divey character? Or would it become a sanitized, G-rated Disney version of the bar where so many livers have for decades gone to meet their Maker’s Mark?
It took me a bit, but I finally swung by Milo’s last night to check it out. To be clear to my wife, that means I went to Milo’s in a professional capacity, and I conducted actual work. Are we all in agreement? Super. OK, now I can tell you what you need to know about Milo’s.
For the magazine story I wrote, I talked with Chris Camillo, one of the two new operators. (The other is Len Critcher.) Camillo swore the following: “We will promise Dallas one thing. When you come back to Milo’s in six months, you are going to love it. You are going to re-fall in love with Milo’s.” I don’t know if I fell in love last night. But I got a kiss with a little tongue, and I’m definitely interested in a second date. I’m speaking metaphorically, of course, because I spent most of the evening with a 75-year-old Irishman named Tom Stephenson.
That’s really the most critical detail. Milo’s is still the sort of place where you might run into Tom and hear him tell a story about the last time he punched a guy out (which was just a few years ago, after the guy had vulgarly disrespected a lady). Tom used to be on staff here at D Magazine. Now he mostly works as an outfitter and broker of Texas ranches. But he freelanced a story for us in 2018 about an infamous local mass murder that had gone unsolved for 40 years. (Tom found a likely suspect. We did a podcast about this.)
Tom was good friends with Ned, and he knows all the longtime Milo’s staff. So his assessment of the remodel should carry more weight than mine. Last night was Tom’s first time in Milo’s since the big changes. His opinion: they did a good job. I concur.
Yes, there are new elevated banquettes, and, yes, Milo’s now has a fireplace. A number of general manager Tommy Donahue’s signed jerseys have been replaced by televisions. The naked lady mannequin has departed. The floor is level. The place smells like new wood and varnish instead of shame and regret and the March night in 2003 when the city collectively had to quit smoking in bars. Some will say that the preceding notes should be tallied as strikes against the new Milo’s, and I won’t offer much argument. I’ll just say that Milo’s still feels like Milo’s.
The Slackers’ broken tennis racquets still hang on the wall above the window into the tiny kitchen. Christmas lights still cast an inviting glow over the pool tables in back. Most important: though some of the staff have left, the servers I had last night were all familiar faces, women who give their regulars shit and take their jobs, but not themselves, seriously. One of them walked out from behind the bar just to give Tom a hug.
About that bar: this is probably the most noticeable change. Milo’s now has a proper length of bar (replacing the earlier, abbreviated, sad attempt) that is edged with a Chicago-style rail to lovingly cradle your elbows. There’s now an IPA on a glycol-system tap! It’s from Lakewood and will set you back $5.75 for a pint, which is a fair price, given that the last time I was in Time Out Tavern, a pint was so expensive that I had to pay for it on an installment plan. The food menu, too, is reasonable: $13 for nachos, $14 for Ned’s Jalapeño Cheeseburger (made with 44 Farms beef) and fries. I’d heard people grumble about a feared food upgrade that would put Milo’s offerings beyond the reach of the common man. Folks need not have worried.
In conclusion, I need to talk about the TVs and the sports displayed thereon. For all its obsession with sports, Dallas is a town bereft of quality sports bars (RIP, Lakewood’s 1st and 10). Was the previous iteration of Milo’s actually a sports bar? If you answer yes, you’re wrong. As indicated, it was a dive bar, and if I need to explain the difference for you, then I’m not sure how you got this far into my dispatch. Are you the potato head that Tom punched out?
Moving on. With its 19 interior televisions (an increase of 46 percent), the new Milo’s is definitely now a sports bar. That many TVs might sound like the setting for a Ray Bradbury novel. Our actual lives in America read a bit too much like that, don’t they? You don’t want your bar, your refuge from real life, to feel like a dystopian novel in which every wall, everywhere is covered with screens and we elect known sexual predators so that they can give government jobs to other sexual predators.
Whoah. That got heavy.
Really moving on. Milo Butterfingers has more TVs, but those numerous TVs don’t feel oppressive. I’m ready to watch sports here. That fireplace I mentioned? There’s a projector TV screen hanging over it. Note to Camillo and Critcher: please start opening Milo’s earlier on weekends so that I can watch Tottenham matches on it.
In conclusion to my previous conclusion and at the risk of insulting your intelligence by explaining something you already know (unless you’re the guy Tom punched out): Milo Butterfingers is a ship of Theseus. Theseus was the mythical king of Athens who slayed the Minotaur and then escaped on a ship to Delos. Every year, the Athenians would honor Theseus’ brave exploits by taking a victory lap in his ship, whose maintenance sometimes needed this or that part replaced. Ancient philosophers wondered whether Theseus’ ship—after hundreds of years of parts replacement—was actually still Theseus’ ship.
See where I’m sailing? A bunch of Milo’s parts have been replaced. Is it still Milo’s? Is the Stoneleigh P still the Stoneleigh P? I can’t answer those questions. Milo’s is more than a naked mannequin or a treacherously uneven floor. It’s a bunch of people breaking tennis racquets and bringing each other beer and limping around on one factory-issued leg and shooting pool and watching the Cowboys totally suck.
Ned Smith would dig it.
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