Yes, that’s right. DALLAS.

Ok, so not Dallas, TX…not even Dallas, IL (there in fact is a Dallas City, IL, but that is neither here nor there). Rather, Dallas & Co. Costumes and Magic, located on 101 E. University Ave. Champaign, IL:

http://www.dallasandco.com/

This store…is awesome. By just checking out the website alone, if you are not intrigued by their promises of “Escape Illusions” or “the best selection of luau, Hawaiian, and tropical themed party goods, accessories, costumes, and leis in the area,” I just don’t know how you could become intrigued by the mysteries of local gag-goods ever. Ever! ALSO, check this out:

http://www.dallasandco.com/shop/dallas_007.htm

For those of us that currently reside in the Champaign-Urbana locality we have a hard-core, bonafide, accredited magician in our midst! Holy crap!, did anyone know this?

           To explain my initial intrigue for this place I must backtrack to a couple weeks ago when I was watching the local news. A segment was dedicated to reporting on the haunted house that the store is putting on for the Halloween season. The segment bespoke of some of the new features added to this year’s production, like the “Insane Lady.” I was hooked. By the next Saturday I had gathered my boyfriend and my two friends Ryan and Kate to investigate alongside myself. 

To begin, the back parking lot of the store has a life-sized T-Rex emerging from its back wall. Great. Also, there was a hand-written sign on the door notifying all customers of the FREE haunted house. Awesome.  Past these two paradoxically threatening and innocuous/welcoming barriers, the inside of the store is somewhat of an anomaly. I was shocked at how many people were mulling around. It seems that the store, at least during this particular holiday season, is a regular family event; it was CROWDED. And the website is right; there are more leis than I think the good  people of Champaign can keep up with.

The store’s design is rather variegated, in that it is sort of subdivided into various rooms with specific themes in mind. Since the season calls for Halloween decorations, costumes, and the like, the two biggest rooms in the store have been decorated and supplied in this vein. I don’t know if it is like this all year-round, or if Dallas & Co. switch it up as it becomes timely to do so for other holidays, but the store is big and was crammed with Halloween paraphernalia. (In addition to the mountainous amount of themed crap this store has, they also have pretty sweet sunglasses and tricks/pranks sections, respectively.)

As perhaps one might expect at this time of year, Dallas & Co. is filled with lots of creepy, weird, and disturbing items. (Walking into the store, a life-size wax witch is politely offering her guests a tray of finger pizza.) But it’s not like mall chain-stores of Spencer’s Gifts, where on the side walls are suggestive costumes and horrific masks and in the middle a card rack filled with obese naked people, nether parts hidden by their monstrous rolls of fat. No, like I said, this place is a family affair. Kids and teenagers were walking around freely and comfortably with their parents, seemingly hanging out and having a jolly time together.

Although my mission was to visit the haunted house, as you can image, my boyfriend and I were temporarily sidetracked by the aforementioned amazing array of sunglasses. As we tried on polka-dotted cat eye, drag-queen butterfly, and aviary pilot shades Ryan and Kate wandered around the store…in sort of a bored, apathetic way. I could not completely understand this, because the store is so full that from the ceiling hang not simply plastic masks of Jason or decaying monsters, though they are there, but mascot heads of various TV characters or big fuzzy animals. There are house/lawn decorations of ghost-filled mirrors or portraits and giant evil rats with open wounds, which large worms squiggle out of. There is a plethora of “traditional” cheap costumes of rabbis, gladiators, 300 characters, princesses, and priests. There is a wide selection of plastic weapons ranging from scythes to pistols. It’s a place that completely accepts the crazy and crazed desires of the disgusting, disturbing, and fucking weird concepts of Halloween.

And finally: the haunted house. There was a line, but it became very long. The way the house operated was that one small group at a time could walk through. Through stereo speakers were ominous booms, creaking doors, and the voices of squawking skeletons, which hung on either side of a door, through which a short portly lady dressed in black and dark blue garments would hand each group a beaded necklace and allow them to enter into the foyer of the house. 

For our turn, the portly lady opened the door, asked us how many were in our party, and handed each of us our beaded necklaces. She told us to wait in the foyer until a mannequin head located above us came to life and started speaking. The inside of the house was perfectly creepy. In fact, I don’t know how any little kids could walk through with or without an adult. I was already worried if I would even enjoy the experience. But there is an innate fascination, maybe in all of us, that I experience when it comes to disturbing and unsettling themes of “scary” places. Although, I will say that haunted houses such as this one where customers must foot it, is quite different from the experience of, say, Disney World’s Haunted House ride, where all you have to do is sit in a car and be electronically wheeled around. There, you are completely vulnerable, like you are when you’re simply walking, little old you, by yourself, when all of a sudden a giant booming ax-murderer pops out at you when you reach the finish line, just when you finally think you made it after all…which is of course what happened.

As goofy and pathetic as this may sound, I don’t think I would be able to give a very accurate account of the house itself, seeing as how I spent the entire two minutes peeking through half-shut eyes, or just closing them entirely. Like I said, while fascinated with the horrific, I’m too much of a scaredicat to face it head on, real or fake.

 So what makes this a great place for my local travel mission? Several factors are easy to identify, such as hearing about the haunted house through the local news, or the fact that the store is located within a five-minute drive from my apartment. But also, the idea of Dallas & Co.’s namesake being derived directly from the people that own and work there today. In addition, the accepted-ness of the surrounding community members, young and old, and their willingness to participate actively in the playfulness of the store. Whether there was a need for a local costume store before Dallas & Co. showed up is almost beside the point; Champaign-Urbana folks seem to have embraced the concept of the store, and families (and college students) want to be there. Local experiences of this nature are great, because you can escape, in some sense of the word, from work or school-based reality without ever leaving town.

Jenny

 

 

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