The rainbow bike rack outside Hunky's was paid for by people drinking wine on a Thursday night. So were the rainbow Oak Lawn signs at each end of Cedar Springs Road, the trash cans along the sidewalk, and the new lighting on the Oak Lawn Monuments. When the Cedar Springs Merchant Association sells you a commemorative glass outside The Round-Up Saloon, most of what you are buying is the street you walk down to fill it.
Tonight, Thursday, November 5, the Wine Walk returns from 6 to 9 p.m. with an '80s theme and more than 30 stops, according to the Cedar Springs Merchant Association's event page. Whether you go every month or have only stepped around the crowd on your way home, the evening makes more sense once you know where the money ends up.
How tonight works, start to finish
The format is simple. A few details save you time in line.
- Buy your glass. It costs $20 and comes with a map of that month's participating businesses. You can pay at the tent or buy ahead online.
- Pick it up early if you prepaid. Online buyers can collect their glass inside The Round-Up Saloon and Dance Hall, but only from 5 to 6 p.m. From 6 p.m. on, every glass is handed out at the regular check-in area outside The Round-Up.
- Go in any order. Dallas Voice reports that there is no set route. If one shop has a long line, move on to the next and come back later.
- Expect small pours. Dallas Voice notes that it isn't legal to take your drink out on the street, so merchants pour about two ounces. Each business buys its own wine, which means a different pour at every stop.
- Stay for the raffle. Merchants donate the prizes for a drawing late in the night. Past prizes have included theater tickets and restaurant gift cards.
The stops change every month. Past maps have reached from Crush Nightclub on Oak Lawn Avenue to the UPS Store on Cedar Springs and Tacos Y Mas at Cedar Springs and Knight Street, as the Dallas Observer described. Aura Salon has taken part, and so have the Caven Enterprises venues Station 4, Sue Ellen's and JR's. Bad weather can postpone or cancel the night, so check the association's page before you head out.
A neighborhood event that grew past its neighbors
The scale explains why the Wine Walk can pay for things on the street. It began in 2011 as part of Razzle Dazzle Dallas, ran a few times a year after that, and became a monthly first-Thursday event in 2015, according to Dallas Voice.
Look at the stop counts side by side. CSMA's Wine Walk committee chair, Chad Mantooth, told Dallas Voice that the Deep Ellum wine walk has 15 stops and Bishop Arts has about the same, while the Cedar Springs walk in June 2026 had 30 participating businesses. He also said other wine walks he has visited draw several hundred paid participants, while the Pride walk on Cedar Springs in June 2025 sold 3,000 glasses.
Growth like that has been recent. In July 2025, Mantooth told the Dallas Observer that monthly attendance had been around 500 or 600 people when he joined the board about eight months earlier. The July 3, 2025 walk drew nearly 1,500, and the busiest month up to then reached about 1,900. Those are headcounts, and the 3,000 Pride figure counts glasses sold, so the two don't measure quite the same thing. They point the same way, though. In less than a year, a monthly crowd of a few hundred became a crowd in the thousands.
Where the money has gone
"One hundred percent of the money that we raise stays in the community."
Mantooth said that to the Dallas Observer in July 2025. The reported projects add up to a working list of street improvements:
| Project | When reported | Where it was reported |
|---|---|---|
| Rainbow Oak Lawn signs at both ends of the Strip, street trash cans, landscaping | July 2024 | Dallas Voice |
| Refreshed rainbow crosswalks | 2025 | Dallas Observer |
| Redone art walls in front of Alexandre's | July 2025 | Dallas Observer |
| Replacement lighting for the Oak Lawn Monuments | July 2025 | Dallas Observer |
| A neighborhood porter to pick up trash, three days a week in 2025 and four in 2026 | 2025 and 2026 | Dallas Observer, Dallas Voice |
| Rainbow bike racks at Hunky's, Salon Aura, TMC and S4 | June 2026 | Dallas Voice |
The porter is the item you're least likely to notice and probably the one you benefit from most often. Going from three days a week to four means Wine Walk money now covers more than half the week of litter pickup on the Strip.
After the crosswalks came out, the projects moved off the pavement
The crosswalk entry has an unhappy ending. Wine Walk money helped repaint the Strip's rainbow crosswalks in 2025, and then the new paint had to come out. A City of Dallas memo dated May 15, 2026 explains why: a Texas Department of Transportation directive ordered decorative crosswalks removed, and the city's Office of Arts and Culture held community sessions in April 2026 afterward. In the city's survey, roughly 67 percent of responses named murals as a preferred identity marker, along with street banners or gateway signage.
What CSMA has funded since then points the same direction. The bike rack project was planned by the association and paid for privately with Wine Walk money. Reinhardt Fabrication, an LGBTQ-owned metal shop, built the racks. TrueLine Marking and Stooc GC donated the labor and cost of setting them into the ground. They come in powder-coated Progress Pride colors and work as bike parking and as public art at once.
Dallas Voice reported in June that brightly colored banners were going up on poles along the street and that more landscaping was in the works. In June 2026, CSMA also announced two larger projects, both still planned. One is a shaded pocket park on an underused strip of right-of-way. The other is "Walls of Pride," a multi-year program with Artitude to commission permanent murals on buildings along the Strip through partnerships with property owners and tenants. The association said the work is backed by CSMA, the City of Dallas, community organizations and donors, and that artist names and ribbon-cutting dates would follow.
The murals at the library came from a different pot
If you've driven past the Oak Lawn Branch Library at 4100 Cedar Springs Road lately, you've seen the newest painted landmark on the corridor. It wasn't paid for by the Wine Walk. The city memo says the project was funded by a donor through the Benjamin and Selma Parrill Trust Fund, a special library fund for the Oak Lawn branch. It covers four exterior columns facing the parking lot, painted by local muralists Will Heron and Sam Lao, who were selected in 2025.
Dallas Voice reported that Oak Lawn Library Friends cut the ribbon on Friday, September 18, 2026. The same donor-funded project painted the front entrance steps in rainbow colors in June. The same article notes that the branch houses one of the country's largest special collections of LGBTQ+ materials. It had been proposed for closure in budget planning, and it will stay open after the City Council voted on September 16 to restore $3.1 million to the budget. So the columns and steps are new, and the building they're painted on has been confirmed to stay open.
Your next first Thursday, and what's around it
If tonight doesn't work, the next Wine Walk is Thursday, December 3, from 6 to 9 p.m. Mantooth told Dallas Voice that the December glass is always holiday themed, which makes it the one to collect if you're giving glasses as gifts. CSMA notes that stops, themes and ticket details can change from month to month.
Three days later, on Sunday, December 6, The Market on The Strip is back on the neighborhood calendar. It's a free gathering of more than 20 LGBTQ+ and ally small businesses. The December listing doesn't give a time yet, so check the Strip's event calendar as the date gets closer.
For a meal before or after a walk, one of the newer spots nearby is Mo Thai & Pho at 3211 Oak Lawn Avenue, between Sushi Axiom and Snooze. It serves lunch and dinner and stays open late on Saturdays.
Living near Cedar Springs means a monthly event helps pay for the trash pickup, lighting and art right outside your door. If being close to first Thursdays and the Strip's small businesses matters to you, whether you live here now or plan to, CoCo Residential would like to hear what makes a block feel like home to you. Take the Questionnaire, and Oracle and the team will help you connect that list to a plan for your next move.
