Advocate Magazine

Preston Hollow students show patriotism

Monica S. Nagy — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:47:28 +0000

Providence Christian School of Texas fourth graders celebrated Patriot Day May 10 with presentations on American heroes and costumes. The school also set up special rooms, like the “Civil War Room” where headmaster Tony Jeffrey dressed like President Abraham Lincoln and read the Gettysburg Address. © Monica S. Nagy for Advocate Magazine, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

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Dallas City Council approves “vision” for Dallas Midtown project

Monica S. Nagy — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:09:57 +0000

The Dallas City Council on May 22 approved the Valley View-Galleria Area Plan that will transform 430 acres of North Dallas in a unanimous vote. District 12 councilwoman Sandy Greyson says that on June 12, the City Council will vote to approve a thoroughfare amendment plan and form-based zoning for the area that has come to be known as Dallas Midtown. “There will be tweaks along the way. What we approved now is the vision,” Greyson says. “The zoning is more when you get down into how the vision will actually be implemented.” Greyson says this type of form-based zoning will not be imposed on developers, but it’s an option for them to use. A few property owners’ representatives requested the council delay the vote on the area plan until the June 12 meeting because they are worried that when streets are extended, as laid out in the plan, some owners on Alpha and other streets fear widening of the streets will take up their frontage and turn them into non-conforming use, Greyson says. When Advocate spoke with Peer Chacko, the city’s assistant director for development services, in early May, he said the area would be divided into seven subdistricts, and businesses larger than 7,600 square feet would no longer be allowed. Stores like the Target at Montfort and LBJ will be of “non-conforming use,” which means the store has a legal right to stay in its place. Chacko said because their current zoning ordinance will be outdated when Dallas Midtown is complete, they will “face some limitations as regards to expansion.” While some have expressed mixed feelings about the whole project, it may be a relief to remember that it’s decades out. For now, check out what Valley View Center owner Scott Beck and a group of artists are doing to draw people back the area 25 years in advance of Dallas Midtown. © Monica S. Nagy for Advocate Magazine, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

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The Shops at Park Lane to host “Movies Under the Moon” Fridays in June

Whitney Thompson — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:46:13 +0000

The “Movies Under the Moon” series at The Shops at Park Lane kicks off June 7 at 8:30 p.m. with a screening of, “Escape from Planet Earth.” Sponsor 7-11 will be giving out free Slurpees and other movie-themed swag at the screening. The full movie series schedule is listed below: June 7-Escape from Planet Earth June 14-The Lorax June 21-Madagascar 3 June 28-The Blind Side Movies will be shown at the southeast corner of Park Lane and Central Expressway across from NorthPark Center. No tickets are necessary and all movies are free and open to the public. Food and beverages will be available for purchase from Gordon Biersch, including bags of popcorn at $1 a pop. © Whitney Thompson for Advocate Magazine, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

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The Regulars: Loyal diners dish about local spots

Keri Mitchell — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:14:13 +0000

Forget the latest culinary craze — here’s what keep the regulars coming back, and back, and back It’s a challenge to keep up with the trendy and innovative restaurant landscape in Dallas. Every day, it seems, brings the announcement of a new upscale taco joint or slow-food gastropub or microbrewery. Amid the blur of media clamoring to cover the city’s latest and greatest foodie hotspots, it’s easy to forget the neighborhood restaurants that have stuck with us over the long haul. But the regulars don’t forget. They patronize their favorites week in and week out, sometimes daily. Their allegiance isn’t just about the food. They tend to be loyalists and creatures of habit, in contrast to those of us who have restaurant attention deficit disorder. The neighborhood eateries with established regulars aren’t typically the ones enjoying Twitter and blogger buzz. If we lost them, however, they would leave gaping holes in the fabric of our community. While most of us play the restaurant field, we salute the regulars who make sure our neighborhood’s dining staples will be around when we crave them. The pilots-only club Every Monday right around 11:30 a.m., a group of retired Braniff pilots make their way to Kel’s for lunch. Well, one is a retired American Airlines pilot. But they try not to hold it against him. Lunch at Kel’s has been a tradition for three or four years, they say, but they’ve known each other since their flying days. “At our age, it’s hard to remember how long,” Don Maynard says. Maynard says he’s the oldest of the bunch, and claims he showed the others the ropes. “I raised these from pups,” he says. “I taught ’em layovers — good places to eat and drink.” These days, “we try not to get more than 2-3 feet off the ground,” Russell Moehle says, so they hunt down good eats in Dallas. The men come together every weekday for lunch, and sometimes for breakfast on Saturday. Rich Russell is the organizer, calling everyone to let them know where to meet. But on Monday, they know where to go. It’s always Kel’s. “Food’s good,” explains Chuck Martin. “And Ralphie even has the table set up for us when we come in,” Russell says. Waiter Ralphie Hernandez reserves a table in the back of the restaurant for the men, keeps close tabs on their drinks, and brings out their orders quickly. “You’re a mind reader, Ralphie,” someone says when Hernandez sets extra bowls of gravy on the table for the chicken-fried chicken orders. “We tip a little heavier,” Russell says. The group is a couple short today, and among the missing is Denny Kelly, who has been a Kel’s customer longer than any of them. “I started going to Kel’s in 1972 — 40 years ago,” Kelly says later in a phone interview. “I lived in an apartment at LBJ and Montfort, and at the time, they were up on the corner of Forest and Preston. After about four or five years, it burned, and so they were closed for about five months and reopened where they are now [at Forest and Inwood],” he says. “I’ve been going there ever since. I couldn’t break away from it.” He wasn’t an original member of the group, but ran into them at Kel’s and, being a retired Braniff pilot himself, began joining them for lunch. “I knew all of them by name, knew who they were at Braniff, but I really didn’t know any of them. We weren’t running buddies or anything,” Kelly says. “But since then, we’ve developed friendships. One guy, our wives and us go out to dinner.” The group calls Kelly “the chief” and ribs him for being the “resident aviation expert.” He often appears on TV and radio reports dealing with aviation topics — sometimes live in front of Kel’s. “I think I’m the only one of the bunch that still works. The rest are all wealthy,” Kelly quips in response. Around the table, much of the discussion is pilot talk. This week it’s a plane that landed in the water instead of on the runway in Bali. The men debate the technicalities of the landing, using language that sounds foreign to anyone outside the aviation realm. It’s not the only topic of discussion, but they try to keep it civil. As one of the men begins talking politics, Russell cautions him. “You don’t want to start that,” he says. Kel’s Kitchen 5337 Forest 972.458.7221 Order like a regular The men vary in their orders, but the chicken-fried chicken is popular. This is Maynard’s order today. “If I’m going out in the evening, I just eat a salad,” he says, “but tonight I’m staying home and watching TV.” Kelly orders breakfast the vast majority of the time. “One of the things I like about Kel’s is that anytime they’re open, you can eat breakfast,” he says. His typical order is oatmeal or egg-white omelets. “I try to watch my weight,” he explains, “but I watch it go up and up.” The starving artist Country musician Ray Johnston writes roughly 25 percent of his songs while eating at the Original Pancake House at Northwest Highway and Midway. He’s on the road 180 days a year, but when he’s in town, “I’m here four days a week,” Johnston says. “These are kind of my friends between 7 and 2.” Johnston lives “about three par fives” from the restaurant, and found the place soon after moving to Dallas in 2003. The son of a cattle rancher, he hails from Montgomery, Ala., and the pancake house seemed down-home. “One thing about Dallas that gets on my nerves is the velvet-rope action with your name on a list,” he says. Back when he moved here, he wasn’t a musician. His first gig was as a waiter at Houston’s (which is one reason Johnston double- and triple-tips when he claims a booth for long periods of time). Then he spent about a year [...]

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This weekend: “Mozart Requiem,” “The Last Good War,” how does your garden grow and Carry The Load

Monica S. Nagy — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:54:30 +0000

Ballet dancers will perform Ben Stevenson’s “Mozart Requiem” and George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” as a part of Texas Ballet Theater‘s “Springfest” May 24-26. Performances start at 8 p.m. Friday, and run at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 8 p.m. Sunday. Tickets to the AT&T Performing Arts Center event can be purchased here. The Frontiers of Flight Museum will host a special presentation featuring, “The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of WWII,” by photographer and author Thomas Sanders. The event is the cost of regular museum admission ($8) and runs from 1-5 p.m. May 25. How does your garden grow? Or does it? North Haven Gardens will host an 11 a.m.-4 p.m. class for beginners all the way to experienced gardeners about planting, maintenance, summer water tips and more. The May 26 class will include lunch, handouts on soil amendments, planting, maintenance and more. The class is $30-$35. Nonprofit organization Carry The load will celebrate Memorial Day by conducting a 20-hour memorial march to honor veterans, active service members, police and firefighters. The event starts at 3:30 p.m. May 26 and ends with a closing ceremony and awards 12:30 p.m. May 27. Participants don’t have to walk the whole time – you can show up and join the march whenever you like. The walk begins at Reverchon Park at 4 p.m. May 26. © Monica S. Nagy for Advocate Magazine, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

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Dallas City Council approves lighted soccer field for Ursuline

Monica S. Nagy — Thu, 23 May 2013 05:39:59 +0000

In 2001, the Dallas City Council denied Ursuline Academy’s request for a lighted soccer field for its soccer and lacrosse players, but a May 23 vote ended the school’s 12-year disappointment. The council approved lighting for the on-campus field at the corner of Walnut Hill and Inwood in a 14-0 vote with more than 250 Ursuline supporters in its chambers. While this is certainly good news for the Ursuline community, one that is proud of the academy’s competitive teams, more than a couple neighbors aren’t too happy right now. In early April, several neighbors penned angry letters expressing their concern about the bright lights and field traffic the updated field could cause. However, the proposal that passed Wednesday is on a smaller scale then what the private school previously requested. On most nights the lights will turn off at 7:30 p.m., 20 nights a year they’ll turn off at 9 p.m. and the field will not be lit on weekends, KDFW/Ch. 4 reports. “A timetable for construction is yet to be determined, but Ursuline is expected to move forward on the field project as soon as possible,” according to an Ursuline news release. © Monica S. Nagy for Advocate Magazine, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

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Child dies after being left in a hot car: who does this?

Christina Hughes Babb — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:10:21 +0000

A couple years ago I was at a writer’s conference where Gene Weingarten spoke about the time he almost accidentally left his child in the car all day. It prompted him to write the 2009 Pulitzer-winning piece Fatal Distraction, which is about parents who accidentally kill their child by leaving him or her in a hot car. Finally, today, I actually read the whole story. The first time I tried, I got to the part — about six paragraphs in — that begins to describe in detail the physical impact on the body of a baby or child experiencing hyperthermia. Later, I read through to the part about Andrew Culpepper, whose son baked in a hot car; he was not prosecuted, but he is serving a life sentence of unimaginable guilt, shame and loneliness. I decided to read the whole article last Friday, when a Dallas ISD teacher reportedly, allegedly, left her child in the car to die while she went to work at a Pleasant Grove elementary school. My cousin, a Dallas police officer, was one of the first on the scene. When they went in to question Vibha Marks (after, unbeknown to her, a teaching assistant had called 9-1-1, smashed Marks’ car window and attempted, unsuccessfully, CPR on Marks’ 1-year-old) she asked if her child was OK? Did something happen at day care? It seemed to observers that teacher Vibha Marks initially believed her daughter was at day care, while she actually was dying of hyperthermia in the school parking lot. Why am I doing this? Reading Weingarten’s article makes me physically ill. Writing about this is uncomfortable, too. But there are two important points about Weingarten’s article, gleaned from his extensive research, that I want to point out. 1) Everyone believes this would never happen to them. Clinical Psychologist Ed Hickling: “Humans have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.” The comments section following stories about Marks and others like her are full of anger and vitriol. That is because we need to assert that we are not vulnerable to this sort of thing, Hickling told Weingarten. “We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.” 2) But the truth is, it could happen to anyone. What kind of person forgets and accidentally kills a child? Weingarten: The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years [published 2009], it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist. The summer before Weingarten wrote the piece, it happened three times in one day. Now it has happened here in Dallas. Only by being humbly aware of our vulnerability can we make sure it does not happen again. © Christina Hughes Babb for Advocate Magazine, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

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Think pink

Jeff Siegel — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:09:58 +0000

Charles & Charles Rosé ($10) Washington This month marks the 11th annual Advocate rosé column where we celebrate pink wine that costs $10, pairs with almost any kind of food you can think of, and — despite what the wine snobs say — isn’t sweet or unpleasant to drink. In this, rosé is pretty much the perfect cheap wine. That it’s not more popular is a function of its color — it’s too often confused with white zinfandel (or white merlot or whatever), so wine drinkers shy away from it because they think it’s sweet. In fact, most rosés are bone-dry and combine the best qualities of red and white wines. What should you drink? This will get you started: • Rene Barbier Mediterranean Rosé ($6). Maybe the best cheap rosé on the market, consistent and varietally correct. This version has a little more fruit (strawberry) than usual. • Goats do Roam Rosé ($10). This South African wine is very nicely done and a fine value, with flavors of strawberry and cranberry. It’s more like a European rosé — crisper and less fruity — than its New World cousins. • Charles & Charles Rosé ($10). The quintessential New World-style rosé, with lots of fruit (mostly strawberry), as well as style and structure. One of my favorite rosés every year. Ask the wine guy Q: Why is rosé pink? A: Rosés are made mostly with red grapes, and they get their color from the skins. The skins are left in the fermenting grape juice just long enough to color the wine and are then removed. ASK THE WINE GUY taste@advocatemag.com © Jeff Siegel for Advocate Magazine, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

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Out and About: June 2013

Monica S. Nagy — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:14:42 +0000

Brilliantly bright dirt; We Yogis’ yoga camps; Erwin Waldman Memorial Golf Tournament and much more

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Local makes waves

Monica S. Nagy — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:14:42 +0000

Preston Hollow resident Dirk Ebel noticed that the crystal-clear pool at T Bar M Racquet Club wasn’t being used — so he decided to dive right in.

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