Dan Singer
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Assistant arts & entertainment editor @dallasnews / daniel.singer@dallasnews.com
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Articles by Dan Singer
11 Best Pacific Northwest Towns For Retirees
Retiring to the Pacific Northwest comes with a tax strategy built into the map: Washington charges no state income tax, Oregon charges no sales tax, and Idaho undercuts them both on everyday costs. Add glacier-capped mountains, river towns, and coastlines that make the evening walk a destination, and the region earns its place on retirement shortlists. The catch is sorting the postcard towns from the practical ones, because a view does not schedule a cardiology appointment.
11 Underrated Places to Visit in the Pacific Northwest
North Cascades National Park has more glaciers than anywhere else in the lower 48, over 300 of them, and draws fewer visitors in a year than Yellowstone gets in a fortnight. That is the Pacific Northwest in one statistic: the famous places are rammed, and the ones half an hour further on are empty. Washington and Oregon hold a lot of both.
The National Parks Where People Still Own Homes Inside The Boundary
Of the 84.6 million acres inside American national park boundaries, roughly 2.6 million are privately owned. They are called inholdings, there are thousands of them, and they exist because the government spent the nineteenth century selling land and the twentieth drawing park boundaries around whatever people had already bought. Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska contains about a million non-federal acres and an entire town. You can see For Sale signs from the park road.
11 Most Breathtaking Towns on the Gulf Coast
For the first time in five years, there are oyster boats working Apalachicola Bay. The wild harvest reopened to permit holders on the first of October after a closure that ran from 2020, imposed when a fishery that once supplied a tenth of the nation's oysters collapsed almost completely. That is the Gulf Coast in miniature: places that take a beating and come back, usually smaller and stranger than before.
9 Most Quaint Small Towns in Michigan
Mackinac Island banned cars in 1898 and never got around to unbanning them. Copper Harbor has about 100 residents and sits at the very end of US-41, which otherwise runs to Miami. Charlevoix has thirty stone houses with wavy roofs that look like they grew there. Michigan has more coastline than any state but Alaska, and the small towns strung along it are stranger and more specific than the postcards suggest. Here are nine, and what each one actually has.
11 Most Affordable Towns To Retire In The Rockies
The typical American home is worth about $373,000. In Montana, the state average has climbed past $476,000, and in Colorado it is closer to $550,000. That is the problem with retiring to the Rockies: the view costs money, and the towns that trade on it have priced out the people who would most like to live there. There are exceptions, and they are nearly all former mining, smelting, and railroad towns where the industry left and the real estate never caught up.
11 Best Rockies Towns For Retirees
There is a river outside Lander, Wyoming that disappears into a limestone cavern, stays underground for two hours, and comes out somewhere else with more water than went in. Nobody has fully explained it. That is the kind of thing the Rockies keep in the towns most people drive through rather than stop in. Retiring well up here takes more than a view, though. It takes a hospital you can reach in winter, a downtown worth walking in February, and neighbours who notice when you are not about.
12 Nicest Small Towns In The Great Lakes
You have already been to the one near you. Everybody on this shoreline has a town an hour or two out that they have been going to since childhood, and most of us never get much past it, because the far side of the lakes counts as a whole separate trip rather than a weekend. That is the gap here. Twelve towns across five basins and two countries, and the odds are you know one or two of them well and have never set foot in the rest.
11 Best Towns On the Pacific Coast For A Two-Day Recharge
In Cannon Beach, a 235-foot sea stack rises straight out of the surf a short walk from your hotel. In Avalon, you reach town by ferry and get around by golf cart. In Friday Harbor, the whole pace shifts the moment the boat pulls away from the mainland. The Pacific Coast is full of small towns built for exactly this: two unhurried days of salt air, tide pools, and nothing on the schedule. Here are eleven of the best places to catch your breath, one stretch of coastline at a time.
11 Of The Most Captivating Small Towns In The Rockies
In Aspen, you can ski four separate mountains by day and catch a Grammy-winning act at an intimate club by night. In Ouray, 13,000-foot peaks wrap around town on three sides, close enough to earn it the nickname "Switzerland of America." The Rocky Mountains hide dozens of towns like these, places that are destinations in their own right, not just gateways to the scenery. Here are eleven of the most captivating small towns in the Rockies, each with its own personality and a reason to linger.
10 Towns in Washington that Are Ideal for Seniors
For a comfortable retirement, it is hard to beat Washington. The Evergreen State pairs a mild, green west side with some of the highest life expectancies in the country, and it hands retirees a real financial break: there is no state income tax here, so pensions, 401(k) withdrawals, and Social Security all go untouched. Add walkable waterfront towns, top-tier healthcare, and the Cascades and Olympics for a backdrop, and the case makes itself.
11 Best Downtowns In The Pacific Northwest
A good downtown has to work on a Tuesday in February, not just on a August Saturday. That is the test here: enough shops, theatres, restaurants, and reasons to be outdoors that the place runs year-round rather than emptying when the tourists leave. The Pacific Northwest turns out to have an unusual number of them, partly because so many of these towns were built as ports, rail stops, and mining camps, and a street laid out to move freight is the right shape for walking.
11 Best Towns In Oregon To Retire Comfortably
You do not have to leave Oregon to find an easier, cheaper version of it. Social Security goes untaxed here, there is no sales tax, and once you get past Portland and the valley's bigger cities, home prices fall well under the state's roughly $500,000 median. The trick is matching the setting to the life you want, whether that is a wine-country main street, a quiet stretch of coast, or a sunny high-desert town. These 11 small towns are the best places in the state to do exactly that.
9 Must-Visit Small Towns in Upstate New York
Woodstock did not happen in Woodstock. The festival took place on a dairy farm sixty miles southwest, in a town called Bethel, because Woodstock turned down the permit. Half a million people turned up anyway, and the museum marking the spot now sits on the exact slope where they sat.
10 Best Ozarks Towns For A Weekend Trip
Two days is just enough time to fall for the Ozarks. Spread across northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, this highland region hides a run of small towns tailor-made for a weekend: a cave restaurant here, a folk-music jam there, a float trip, a famous art museum, a lake cabin. Each of these ten has enough to fill a Friday-to-Sunday and leave you plotting a return. Here are the best Ozarks towns for a weekend away. Eureka Springs, Arkansas Historic downtown of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
11 Best Small Towns In South Carolina For Retirees
A good retirement town hits a sweet spot: quiet and safe, close enough to a hospital and a grocery run, yet near enough to the water or the woods that an ordinary Tuesday can feel like a getaway. South Carolina has a deep bench of them, helped along by a mild climate, a low cost of living, and a tax code that goes easy on retirees, with no tax on Social Security and a deduction on other retirement income. Here are 11 of the best small towns in the Palmetto State to settle into.
12 Overlooked Towns In North Carolina Worth Visiting
In Edenton, the oldest courthouse in North Carolina still faces a colonial waterfront that looks much as it did in 1767. In Belhaven, a quirky small-town museum displays everything from a button collection to a preserved eight-legged pig. These are the kind of places that never make the travel headlines, the overlooked corners of North Carolina that trade crowds for character. From the Pamlico waterfront to the Blue Ridge foothills, here are 12 small towns worth the detour.
9 Best Pacific Coast Towns For Retirees
You can buy a house four blocks from the Pacific for $340,000. You just have to be willing to do it in Washington rather than California, and to accept that the nearest hospital bed is an hour inland. That is the shape of every decision on this list: the ocean is the easy part, and the hard part is whether the town around it still works on an ordinary Tuesday in February. So each of these nine was checked against two things that do not photograph well.
11 Underappreciated Towns To Visit In North Carolina
Everyone in North Carolina already knows about Blowing Rock and Mayberry. The towns below are the ones you drive past on the way to somewhere else, or have vaguely heard of and never stopped in, and several of them are better than the places you were headed. They run west to east, from a Jackson County seat under the Parkway to a fishing town at the mouth of the Cape Fear, and every one of them is worth turning off for. One note before the western stops.
The 10 Nicest Small Towns On The Gulf Coast
Shrimp boats unload at a dock two blocks from a downtown you can cross on foot. A whole main street fits in a handful of brick storefronts, and the day ends with the sun sinking straight into the water. That is the small-town side of the Gulf Coast, the part the big resort strips drown out, and it is where the coast is at its best. Skip the high-rises and the crowds, and these ten towns hand you fresh oysters, quiet beaches, and a slower clock instead.
11 Best Towns In Arizona To Retire Comfortably
People rightly call it the Grand Canyon State, but Arizona answers to the Sunset State too, and one look at the desert lighting up during the summer monsoon shows you why. It is an outdoor wonderland of epic hiking, boating, and wide-open sky, and it treats retirees kindly at tax time: Arizona does not tax Social Security, keeps a low flat income tax, and has some of the lowest property taxes in the country.
9 Best Small Towns To Retire In Georgia
A couple over 65 can shelter $130,000 of retirement income from Georgia income tax before the state takes a cent. The exclusion runs to $65,000 per person at 65, $35,000 from 62, and Social Security is exempt on top of that. Add mild winters, no estate tax, and county homestead exemptions that wipe out school taxes for seniors in a lot of places, and the arithmetic gets interesting fast.
These Towns in the Great Lakes region Have The Best Main Streets
A good main street is a short one. Four blocks, ideally, with a bookstore that has survived Amazon, somewhere to get a beer, and water at the end of it. The Great Lakes are unusually good at producing them, because most of these towns were built to move something: cherries, iron ore, lumber, limestone, canal freight. A street built for commerce in 1880 turns out to be exactly the right shape for wandering in 2026. Here are eleven where the walk is the whole point.
11 Best Towns On The Atlantic Coast To Retire Comfortably
Retiring on the ocean usually means picking two out of three: the water, the weather, or the price. The typical American home is worth about $369,000 right now, and along this coast you can find a walkable historic town at $250,000 or a beach five minutes away at $593,000, sometimes within the same afternoon's drive. Georgia lets anyone over 65 exclude $65,000 of retirement income per person. Delaware charges no sales tax at all. Florida takes nothing off the top.
Why New England's Fall Colors Beat Europe's
Every autumn, leaf-peepers pour into New England from all over the planet to witness its hillsides erupt into fiery reds, oranges, and golds. Europe's autumn is undeniably beautiful too, but visit a forest in France or Germany in October and you'll notice something: it is overwhelmingly yellow. New England genuinely does put on a more colorful show, and the reason why is one of the great surprises of natural history, stretching all the way back to the ice age.
11 Best Downtowns on the Pacific Coast
16 hours ago From wider seats and extra legroom to better food and service, these are the perks that set Skytrax's top five economy airlines apart. An extra inch of seat width, a little more space between rows, a better-shaped headrest or even somewhere separate to put your drink can make a surprising difference …
11 Best Downtowns on the Pacific Coast
A good coastal downtown has to survive two things: the weather and the tourists. The ones on this list have managed both, mostly because they were built for something else entirely before anyone thought to visit them. These were shipbuilding towns, salmon canneries, lumber ports and Victorian boomtowns, and the streets that now hold galleries and oyster bars were laid out for hauling freight.
The Widest River In The United States
How wide can a river actually get? At one remarkable spot in northern Minnesota, the Mississippi River spreads out to more than 11 miles from bank to bank, which makes it, by most measures, the widest river in the United States. But that jaw-dropping number comes with a sizable asterisk, and the real answer depends entirely on how you choose to measure. Here is the full story of America's widest river.
The National Parks With A Town Inside The Boundary
Thurmond, West Virginia has a mayor, a recorder, a ZIP code, an Amtrak stop and five residents. It was incorporated in 1903, it covers less than a tenth of a square mile, and the National Park Service owns most of it, because the entire town sits inside New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
11 Best Towns In Georgia For Retirees
Here is the number that matters most if you are retiring in Georgia: $65,000. That is how much retirement income each resident aged 65 or older can exclude from state tax, so a married couple can shelter $130,000 a year in pension, IRA, and 401(k) withdrawals. Social Security is exempt on top of that, at any income level.
Who Actually Uses Colorado River Water
Ask most people who uses the Colorado River, and they will picture thirsty desert cities: Las Vegas fountains, Los Angeles lawns, Phoenix swimming pools. That picture is almost entirely wrong. The most thorough accounting ever made of where the river's water actually goes reveals a very different, and genuinely surprising, cast of characters. Here is who really drinks the Colorado. It's Farms, Not Cities Colorado River Agriculture.
The Longest Great Lakes Freighter Ever Built
A ship longer than three football fields laid end to end sails the Great Lakes, and yet it can never, ever reach the ocean. This is the Paul R. Tregurtha, the longest freighter ever built for the Great Lakes and the undisputed "Queen of the Lakes." At over 1,000 feet, she is a genuine giant of American shipping, and one with a few surprising quirks. Here is her story. The Answer: The Paul R. Tregurtha Paul R.
The Rivers Where Smallmouth Bass Grow Largest
The smallmouth bass, or "bronzeback" to the people who obsess over them, punches so far above its weight that plenty of anglers rank it as the hardest-fighting freshwater fish there is, pound for pound. And in exactly the right river, that scrappy little brawler can get shockingly large. The recipe is simple: cool, clear, rocky water absolutely loaded with crayfish and baitfish.
What Happens If The Welland Canal Closes To US Shipping
Most Americans have never heard of the Welland Canal, a modest ship canal in southern Ontario. But it happens to be the only way vessels can get around Niagara Falls, which makes it one of the more quietly important pieces of infrastructure on the continent. So what would happen if Canada ever closed it to US shipping? The honest answer is that it would sting more than you would expect, and a good deal less than you might fear.
How Hot Death Valley Actually Gets Compared To The Sahara
The Sahara is the planet's poster child for unbearable heat, the desert everyone reaches for whenever they need shorthand for "brutally hot." So here is a fact worth sitting with: the single hottest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth was not in the Sahara at all. It was in a narrow, below-sea-level valley in California. Death Valley versus the Sahara is not the blowout you might expect. Here is how the heat actually stacks up.
The US Beaches With The Most Venomous Snakes
In September 2018, three eastern diamondback rattlesnakes turned up near Fort Pickens on Pensacola Beach, Florida in a single week. One was at a condominium, one was in the national seashore campground, and one was swimming in the surf of the Gulf of Mexico. That last detail is the one worth sitting with, because the largest venomous snake in the United States is a competent swimmer and the barrier islands off the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts are full of them.
The Largest Swamp Left In America
America used to be full of great swamps. Then, over a couple of centuries, we drained most of them, filling in the muck for farms, cities, and highways until the country's wetlands were cut roughly in half. The word "left" in the title is doing real work, because a lot of the giants are gone. But one enormous swamp still sprawls across the map, a genuine wilderness bigger than an entire state. The largest swamp left in America is the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana, and it is a spectacular survivor.
11 Prettiest Small Towns In New England
The most painted building in the world is a red fishing shack on a granite wharf in Rockport, Massachusetts, and the one standing there now is a 1978 replica of the one a blizzard knocked into the harbor. That is New England in miniature: a place so committed to how it looks that it rebuilt a shed to exact specification. These eleven towns are the prettiest in the six states, and none of them holds more than about 15,000 people.
The Lakes Where Tiger Muskies Grow Largest
Only two tiger muskies over 50 pounds have ever been recorded, and both came out of the same lake. That is the single most useful fact about this fish, and it explains why a question that sounds like it should have ten answers really has about three. The tiger muskie is a hybrid, a cross between a female muskellunge and a male northern pike, and it is almost always sterile, which is precisely why it grows so fast and why fisheries agencies stock it in places neither parent belongs.
9 Breathtaking Towns to Visit on the Gulf Coast
The Gulf Coast has a knack for beach towns. Warm water, white sand, and long, slow sunsets have shaped some of the most beloved small towns in the country along its shores, a mix of polished resorts, working shrimp ports, and quirky island one-offs. Here are nine of the most beautiful, with the beaches, wildlife, and sunsets to prove it. Fairhope, Alabama Alabama Gulf Coast sunset on Mobile Bay.
The Tallest Mountain East Of The Mississippi
The tallest mountain east of the Mississippi River is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, and it is a genuine overachiever: at 6,684 feet, it is the highest peak not just east of the river but in the entire Appalachian range and the whole eastern United States. It is also a mountain with a wonderfully grim backstory, a summit you can reach with a minivan and a snack budget, weather that seems convinced it lives in Canada, and a height that would get it politely laughed out of Colorado.
Zen and the Art of Production Support
Production support at a startup can be unpopular. In a world of "move fast and break things," things break a lot, and you have to MOVE FAST. Bug reports and alerts are stressful, everything is high priority, fixes are built quickly and inelegantly, and nobody knows what is going to happen next. This doesn't have to be stressful! Our goal on production support isn't to build products, it's to solve problems. We're not scrambling to hack together solutions: we're solving customer issues fast.
Post Malone to perform at ACM Awards in Frisco
Upcoming Editor's Pick Events May7 Destination: Dinosaurs Presented by Reliant Dallas ZooTue, 3:00 PM CDT May12 Second Sunday Funday Irving Arts CenterSun, 6:00 PM CDT May18 Deep Ellum Wine Walk Deep Ellum PlazaSat, 9:00 PM CDT Jun6 JumpstART Stories and Art Irving Arts CenterThu, 3:00 PM CDT This is member-exclusive content arts entertainmentPop Music Post Malone performs "America the Beautiful" before the Kansas City Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers in NFL Super Bowl 58 football game...
Keith Urban to play surprise show at Dallas’ Club Dada
Country star Keith Urban plans to give Dallasites something to remember Friday night in Deep Ellum. On Thursday, Urban announced a surprise gig at Dallas’ Club Dada in celebration of his new single with Lainey Wilson, “GO HOME W U.” “I wanted to celebrate the release of GO HOME W U in a setting that is perfect for the song and feels very familiar to HOW I GOT HERE! Playing in clubs and dive bars,” he wrote in an Instagram post. Tickets to the one-night-only appearance are sold out.
Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, more to perform at ACM Awards
DALLAS — Weeks before the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 16, details are emerging about what’s planned for the ceremony’s return to Frisco. First came last week’s news that 16-time ACM Award-winner Reba McEntire would host. And now, organizers are out with the first round of artists set to perform at the Ford Center at the Star. The list includes Texas-born Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Jelly Roll, Cody Johnson, Thomas Rhett, Chris Stapleton and Lainey Wilson.
Live Nation offering $25 tickets to Dallas shows in annual Concert Week promo
Concertgoers looking to score a deal on tickets to area shows are marking their calendars for what entertainment giant Live Nation calls Concert Week. The annual promotion runs May 8-14 this year. And its offer? $25 tickets to more than 5,000 Live Nation shows. Live Nation says more than 900 artists are included in the promo, which is in its 10th year and aims to build hype at the beginning of the summer concert season. Genres span from pop to metal, and comedians are included as well.
Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, more to perform at ACM Awards
DALLAS - Weeks before the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 16, details are emerging about what's planned for the ceremony's return to Frisco. First came last week's news that 16-time ACM Award-winner Reba McEntire would host. And now, organizers are out with the first round of artists set to perform at the Ford Center at the Star. The list includes Texas-born Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Jelly Roll, Cody Johnson, Thomas Rhett, Chris Stapleton and Lainey Wilson.
Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, more to perform at ACM Awards
DALLAS — Weeks before the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 16, details are emerging about what’s planned for the ceremony’s return to Frisco. First came last week’s news that 16-time ACM Award-winner Reba McEntire would host. And now, organizers are out with the first round of artists set to perform at the Ford Center at the Star. The list includes Texas-born Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Jelly Roll, Cody Johnson, Thomas Rhett, Chris Stapleton and Lainey Wilson.
Country star Reba McEntire will host the ACM Awards in Frisco
For its second year in Frisco, the Academy of Country Music Awards is calling in a veteran. On Thursday morning, country music’s oldest awards show announced Reba McEntire will host the 59th ACMs on May 16 at the Ford Center at The Star. It will be McEntire’s 17th time hosting, the most of any artist. “I am tickled to pieces to get to host,” McEntire said in a statement.
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