2023 February Lakewood/East Dallas Advocate

When we long for true comfort, it is often found where we live. If your current living scenario no longer gives you warm fuzzies, it could be the right time to get moving. We’d like to help you find somewhere to live and love. Reach out and let’s chat!

Sculpture by Maxwell Rasor. Photography by Julia Cartwright. Read more on page 10.

A History

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ABOUT THE COVER

Mural by Mari Pohlman at the CVS pharmacy on Abrams. Photography by Jessica Turner.

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FIT FOR MARRIAGE

Story by CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB

In episode 8 season three of Love is Blind, “The Perfect Fit,” dating show contestants descend on Dallas haberdashery Ken’s Man’s Shop to be outfitted for nuptials that might or might not end in marriage.

“I love the way it fits,” finalist Bartiste Bowden says, as Ken’s owner Kory Helfman, an East Dallas resident, slips a jacket over the 25-year-old’s buff shoulders.

Bowden’s sister asks him how he feels. “I like this!” he replies, admiring himself in the threeway mirror. “No,” she says. “I mean about the wedding.”

THE SET UP

Bowden and the others shopping for the perfect TVmarriage tux are taking part in a Netflix reality show in which contestants meet from individual pods that hide their appearance. They spend a few episodes “dating,” hoping to fall in mutual love with someone, sight unseen.

Pairs who connect get engaged and decide during a finale, at the altar, if they will tie the knot.

While living together in the Dallas area and navigating their weird relationships, couples prepare for a dicey wedding day. That’s where Ken’s comes in.

When producers called Helfman in spring 2021, he said “I will,” because he had worked with them before.

“Usually, I am not a big fan of doing this kind of thing,” Helfman says. “But if I know and trust the team, it makes sense. I (outfitted the grooms) for them a few years before on a series called Married at First Sight.”

Ken’s air time in Love is Blind totals 10 minutes, but the production crew, grooms and groomsmen were in the store two days, not only acquiring menswear but also filming pivotal content. On day two, the family members joined. “That’s when you get the scenes of Bartiste talking to his sister or Matt (Bolton) talking to his best friend,” the clothier says.

SPOILERS AHEAD

In game shows or real life, dressing a groom for the big day involves getting to know his style and personality, Helfman says. In doing so, he also gets a feel for the engagement.

The guy’s vibe often indicates whether he has a good chance of making it, Helfman says. He formed his own guesses about what might happen at the altar. He had a good feeling about Brennon, for example.

“He’s just down-to-earth, like your friend next door, and grateful to be there,” Helfman says. “Of all of them, I said this guy is going to say ‘yes.’”

He saw something different in Cole Barnett, who did not marry Zanab Jaffrey.

“He was really nice, they all were, but I think he was vacillating even in conversations with his friend. He seemed maybe emotionally young. Even though I didn’t know her, I felt that one wouldn’t happen.”

While the haberdasher predicted those two, he says Bartiste’s change of heart in the finale, where he said “I don’t,” surprised him.

KEEPING IT REAL

Helfman also witnessed the families’ concerns about their respective children and siblings.

“We heard conversations about, ‘You want to do this on live TV? With someone you barely know?’ And, ‘What if you embarrass yourself or us?’”

The shop owner also noted that the male contestants all genuinely liked each other. “They really had a great chemistry together. You could see that they spent a lot of time together and could already see friendships being formed, maybe long-term.”

When the series aired in late 2022, Helfman received countless calls and texts.

“I was a little surprised how many people were watching is Blind. And who was watching,” he says. “Like a football coach in Arkansas texted me that the football team was watching it in the locker room.”

Chris Harrison, former host of pioneering reality romance show The Bachelor, even weighed in with a teasing “stay in your lane” quip, Helfman says. (Harrison is Helfman’s cousin and friend.)

Helfman says his dad, Ken Helfman, who founded Ken’s Man’s Shop in the 1960s, while less interested in the show, was thrilled at how great the store looked on TV.

“I’m happy that we did it. It gave us a lot of exposure, and never in a negative light. That’s my fear with anything like this,” Helfman says. “I think that they really did an amazing job of capturing the store, the ambiance, the chemistry we have with clients and the way people come in and shop.”

Perhaps love is blind, but a local haberdasher made TV grooms look like a million bucks anyway

MAXWELL RASOR

MEET MAXWELL RASOR

Neighborhood artist who brings wire to life › Interview by ANDREA HANCOCK Photography by JULIA CARTWRIGHT

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It was an unseasonably warm November day, and the openair market at Greenville and Oram was packed with people. Among the vendors offering all sorts of wares, like custom skateboards or homemade hot sauce, there was a tent filled with wire sculptures of animals.

Maxwell Rasor, the man who made the sculptures, sat at the back of the tent, twisting a bird into life with a pair of pliers and looking just as wiry as his creations. He sat the bird down every time people stopped by the tent in order to greet them. His hands were stained black from the oil coating the wires, so handshakes were out of the question, but he offered every guest a wave and a hello. Then, he waited patiently to see if they had any questions about the art.

Here are the answers to the most common ones: Each sculpture takes about an hour to make, maybe longer if it’s particularly detailed. Birds and fish are the most popular with customers, because sporadically people will recognize their favorite species. Dogs are a popular choice, too, but Rasor says that a lot of the dogs he makes are by commission, so customers can receive a sculpture based on the likeness of their own pet.

One of the other common questions is how Rasor conceptualizes each creation in a 3D space. That question is trickier to answer, because it comes to Rasor naturally. But part of it is because he’s been making sculptures for almost his entire life.

“My dad was a sculptor growing up, so I was always kind of into it,” Rasor says. “I kind of grew up sitting in his lap with him bending wire right in front of my face, and it just kind of caught on.”

Rasor was born and raised in Oak Cliff, and he made his first creations when he was about 6 years old. That is also about the same time his father stopped sculpting; Rasor’s parents got a

divorce, and his father had to focus on being a single parent. But Rasor never stopped, and he attended W.E. Greiner and Booker T. Washington for middle and high school to keep honing his artistic skills.

After high school, he moved with his then-girlfriend Ariel Reno, who is now his wife, to Austin. They moved around Texas as Reno, who designs prosthetics, completed residencies. Her last residency was in San Antonio, and when she completed it, she received a job offer in the city. A few years later, she gave birth to the couple’s first child. When Reno returned to work, Rasor would stay home to watch their son, but he continued to sell his artwork, too.

“My wife is definitely the breadwinner in our family,” Rasor says. “She was like, ‘I can make more money than you can, but make what you can.’ And I do. I watch the kid and save cash and make sure he is learning how to read.”

Then, when their son was a few months old, the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“And so I spent two years just making stuff,” Rasor says.

Rasor and Reno moved to East Dallas in October 2021 to be closer to Reno’s parents.

“I think the pandemic changed everything here,” Rasor says of Dallas’ art scene. For example, before he moved away, there were few vendor markets. “When I got back to Dallas, they were just all over the place, which is just awesome.”

In addition to the vendor markets, Rasor says there’s a strong network of artists involved in various collectives around the city, and galleries will occasionally do open calls in order for local artists to showcase their works.

For Rasor, the biggest challenge to being an artist is not selling his works, but finding time to make them. His first priority, of course, is raising his son. Reno is pregnant with

Maxwell Rasor says it takes about an hour to make each of his wire sculptures.

the couple’s second child, and Rasor knows a second kid will make life even more hectic.

“Just having a 3-year-old, he eats up 90% of my time. I have about an hour and a half that he takes a nap where I can work quietly,” Rasor says. Then, when Reno gets home, the family has a sit-down dinner and spends time together until Reno and their son go to bed.

“Then I start working again. I work until the late hours in the night, and then I go to sleep, and I don’t get enough sleep, and then I wake up at 7 o’clock all over again.”

But when asked if he still finds his work rewarding despite the stresses associated with it, Rasor doesn’t hesitate to answer.

“Oh, yeah. I would never be in a situation where I couldn’t make stuff all the time,” Rasor says. “I am, at my core, a maker.”

Rasor’s home is filled with his artwork — not just his wire sculptures, but other creations, like wind-up automatons and kaleidoscopes. Rasor doesn’t usually make anything that he wouldn’t display in his own house, which is a good thing, because that’s where he keeps most of his artwork before he takes it to market.

“If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t sell anything that I make,” Rasor says. “I would just give it to people if I wouldn’t get in trouble for it. But I have to pay the bills.”

He sees his love of creation reflected in his son.

“My kid is already like a little builder guy,” Rasor says. “Like, I can barely give him toys. He’s just taking them apart immediately, because he (has) spent the first two years of his life watching me cut wooden cogs out.”

Rasor’s creations are best enjoyed in person. If you ever get the chance, be sure to stop at the Underground Market, which is held every Sunday at Greenville and Oram, and look for the wiry man with his palms stained black.

Story by ANDREA HANCOCK | Photography by JULIA CARTWRIGHT

Courtney Kelly is an engineer, but as a child, it seemed certain she would be a veterinarian.

At the time, that career seemed like a natural fit for her. The farmhouse she grew up in always had an animal presence; her family owned several dogs, chickens and ferrets. Her father, a farrier, kept horses in the backyard. When veterinarians came to visit the horses, Kelly would shadow them and learn all she could about their job.

The farmhouse Kelly grew up in, known around her neighborhood as the Red Barn House, was located in New Orleans. Hurricane season was an unavoidable aspect of living in southern Louisiana, and the Kelly family was used to evacuating almost every year. Courtney was the family’s designated hurricane tracker. She would get maps provided at Popeyes and listen to the news to find out a storm’s longitude and latitude, and then she would plot out the storm’s course on her map.

One storm she didn’t pay much mind to formed early in her sophomore year of high school. It began

as a tropical depression in the Bahamas, and after it became a hurricane, it weakened as it crossed Florida — but then it drew strength from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and transformed into the infamous hurricane that decimated New Orleans.

“Katrina was not on my radar at all, at least to the extent that the intensity that the storm ended up being,” Kelly says.

Still, as they did with any hurricane, her family packed up and drove north to wait out the storm in Baton Rouge. Her mother and sister packed as much as they could into one car, and Kelly rode with her dad in the truck pulling a trailer full of their horses.

As she sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Kelly didn’t yet know that she would never live in the Red Barn House again.

“Here we are on the bridge, evacuating, all of these people having to leave their homes, but we really had no idea of how bad the city was going to be devastated,” she says.

Kelly spent the next few months at her aunt’s home in Baton Rouge. Kelly’s other relatives from New Orleans evacuated to Baton Rouge, too, and initially there were 24 people crammed into the threebedroom house, usually jockeying for a spot in front of the television as scenes of the destruction filled the news broadcasts.

“Everybody was just kind of glued to the TV,” Kelly says.

The Kelly family was relatively lucky. The Red Barn House only had two feet of water inside and the family ultimately repaired the damage to it, but Kelly’s parents decided to relocate to Baton Rouge for the remainder of their daughters’ high school years. The next summer, Kelly’s parents encouraged her to attend a summer camp at Louisiana State

University called “Recruiting into Engineering for High Ability Minority Students.”

“Basically, that program did its job,” Kelly says with a laugh. “It introduced me to all of these different engineering concepts, and civil engineering just kind of stuck with me.”

Lamar University. Kelly lives in East Dallas and works as a project manager for a construction company, but she still drives back to Louisiana fairly often to visit her parents. On one such drive, she was listening to a podcast about singer Janelle Monáe. On the podcast, Monáe encouraged other Black women to tell their own stories.

“I thought, ‘You know what? She’s right. I have a story to tell,” Kelly says. On that drive to Louisiana, Kelly began dreaming about the book that would soon become Celeste Saves the City , a semi-autobiographical children’s book about a young girl who has to flee Hurricane Katrina, only to grow up, become a civil engineer and devote her life to ensuring such devastating floods never occur again. Celeste’s solution is wetland restoration, a form of “green infrastructure” that would help maintain Louisiana’s eroding coastline.

Over the next two summers, Kelly attended engineering programs at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Elmhurst College. In the process, she left her dreams of becoming a veterinarian behind in favor of a career that she thought could help her hometown recover.

“I was like, ‘Alright, civil engineering is the way. If there’s going to be a thing that I can learn, where maybe I’ll get some knowledge (about how) I can somehow help New Orleans in the future, civil engineering is it,’” Kelly says.

Kelly went on to receive her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from SMU. She also received an MBA from

It took several years to go from the idea Kelly had on her drive to the book now on shelves. After she finished the manuscript, there was the matter of finding an illustrator and a publisher. When she could not find a company willing to publish the book, Kelly decided to create her own publishing company. Then, she had to broker deals with retailers. But those who know Kelly say it’s no surprise that she persevered through every challenge she faced.

“She is what I call a grinder,” says Karla Nivens, one of Kelly’s friends and mentors who has also written her own book. “She has the ability to problem solve, and then turn that into something creative, and then bring whatever that is to life.”

Kelly’s parents are proud of her achievements, but they’re not surprised that she’s accomplished them.

“She has the ability to PROBLEM SOLVE, and then turn that into SOMETHING CREATIVE, and then BRING WHATEVER that is to life.”

“We always considered her a child before her time,” says Karen, Courtney’s mother. “All of this, she found her own illustrator, she wrote the book and edited it and had individuals read it and edit it — she essentially had that dream, and she made it happen.”

Karen refers to Celeste almost interchangeably with Courtney, noting the striking physical resemblance between the two. That resemblance, according to Courtney, is intended to inspire the young Black girls who read the book. According to the National Science Foundation, Black women are currently severely underrepresented in Kelly’s field, making up only about 1.6% of those in science and engineering occupations. Celeste Saves the City demonstrates that despite the asymmetry, Black women can find success and satisfaction in civil engineering.

“I think about how many books that I picked up when I was a kid where I actually could see myself reflected in the pages, and what impact that can have on someone,” Kelly says.

While Kelly said she would love all the girls who pick up the book just to become engineers, her main goal is to encourage them to pursue their passions, whatever they might be.

“I want them to know that things are going to be difficult,” Kelly says, “but you can do it, like Celeste did it.”

Story by ANDREA HANCOCK

IT WAS A BUSY AFTERNOON AT Dallas United Crew’s boathouse on White Rock Lake, even though no one was preparing to get on the water. High schoolers pulled down rowing machines from where they were stored vertically along the walls. Middle schoolers milled about, chatting with their friends, and then reluctantly headed toward the walking trail outside for a warm-up jog. Intermittently, coaches give orders, explaining the day’s workout to high schoolers or doing their best to wrangle the middle schoolers. The boathouse is loud with chatter and the whir of the rowing machines’ fans; the high ceiling and carbon fiber boats bounce back every noise.

In the middle of it all was Nan Miller. Miller has been DUC’s middle school coach for the past five years, and if there’s anyone who knows how to navigate the din, it’s her. If her shoulder-length shock of straight white hair wasn’t enough to make her stand out in a crowd, the megaphone she wields makes her impossible to miss. When the middle schoolers returned from their jog, she explained the plan for the day, which was the last practice of the fall season: a 250-meter sprint on the rowing machines, a test of how much fitness the rowers had built over the past few months.

The middle schoolers wore different expressions at the news: some excited, some nervous, some unimpressed. Some of them have joined the team through RowDallas, a program DUC has created in partnership with Dallas ISD and Dallas Park and Recreation. RowDallas invites kids from two Title I schools in the city to join the middle school crew, and if they continue to row in high school, DUC provides them with unique

scholarship opportunities.

Half an hour later, when it’s time for the 250-meter test, half of the middle schoolers sit on rowing machines, while the other half whoop and cheer their teammates on. You’d never guess who is and isn’t from the RowDallas program — at the boathouse, and out on the water, the rowers are one cohesive unit. It’s the first year of rowing for all of them, so they’re all learning together.

“I always say, ‘There’s no equalizer like the boathouse,’” Miller mentions.

Rowing is traditionally reserved for the wealthiest and most privileged of athletes. For example, the Henley Royal Regatta, one of the most prestigious rowing races in the world, used to explicitly exclude anyone “who is or has been by trade or employment for wages a mechanic, artisan or laborer.” Even today, the expensive upkeep of rowing boats and equipment often makes the costs to join the sport exorbitantly high. Traditionally, it is also an overwhelmingly white sport — only five Black rowers have ever represented the United States at the Olympics.

“From a bigger picture standpoint, we are not drawing our best athletes because of the lack of inclusion that we have in the sport,” says Austin Brooks, the executive director of DUC. “Our hope is down the line, as RowDallas grows and improves, that we’re really drawing the best athletes into our program (and) promoting them to get recruited to college.”

Not only does RowDallas give middle schoolers the opportunity to row, but the program also provides tutoring. The RowDallas students meet weekly at the Harry Stone Recreation Center and hone skills they might be struggling with at school, particularly in math. Jacqueline

Dallas United Crew’s RowDallas program teaches rowing and provides academic help to students at Title I schools. Photography courtesy of Dallas United Crew.

Freeman, a former CPA who rows in the DUC’s masters program, is one of the tutors who volunteers to help out. She says that their sessions usually focus on helping students with foundational skills they need to start learning more advanced concepts like algebra.

“It’s not a drudgery type of tutoring,” Freeman says. “It’s something that I believe firmly; if you’re passionate about what you’re teaching, they’re going to pick up your passion for it as well.”

In addition to math tutoring, RowDallas students also work on science projects, which Freeman says the kids have a lot of fun with. Last year, the project was thinking of a problem astronauts might encounter while living in a space station, and how they might solve that problem. This year, with the help of an SMU computer science student named Nicole Sood, the students learned about coding. Sood walked students through demonstrations, showing them how changing small variables could make or break codes.

“It really got their attention, and

then they were asking a lot of questions,” Sood says.

Sood believes STEM is best taught in a hands-on fashion, so before the last practice of the season, she arranged a field trip for students to visit the Deason Innovation Gym at SMU. There, students got to experiment with 3D printers and laser cutters. Solving a math problem was no longer about getting good grades; suddenly, it was in order to configure a laser. Sood was proud of how students’ eyes would light up when they brought the designs they had created to life through math and science.

“They got to see some other potentials of engineering that isn’t just like, ‘Solve this math problem to get this answer.’” Sood says. “It’s like, ‘We’re solving this math problem so we can cut this out and physically have it with us.’”

In the future, Miller hopes that DUC can expand the RowDallas program into more schools and provide more opportunities to the kids in the program, like offering swim lessons. In the meantime, she focuses

on fostering a love of the sport. She emphasizes the psychological benefits rowing can provide besides the physical aspect, like being out in nature or learning about teamwork.

“Nothing about rowing is about you,” Miller says. “You can’t do anything if you’re not working together, and that’s why it’s called the ultimate team sport.”

You can’t do anything if you’re not working together.

THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING WINDOW SEAT COFFEE

No need to stow tray tables at this neighborhood shop

Story by RENEE UMSTED | Photography by KATHY TRAN

Artwork at Window Seat Coffee was created by North Texas artists.

ACCOUNTANTS TOM AND KRISTEN BOYD bonded over coffee breaks.

Though not long-distance trips, the 15-minute recharge sessions were enough to generate the feeling of “getting away” from the monotony of their day jobs.

“Going in and seeing the barista, and they learn your name, and they learn your order,” Kristen Boyd says. “And you get these smells and the sounds of the coffee shop. And it was just a very comforting feeling and just something that we really enjoyed, looked forward to in our day.”

The Boyds, who are married, knew that they didn’t want accounting to be their long-term career plan and that they wanted to own a business.

They shared a love of drinking coffee and a background in the business world. But they needed to know how to operate a coffee shop, so they took a class at Arlingtonbased Texas Coffee School.

Learning the technicalities of craft coffee, including regulation of temperature, pressure and grind, was appealing to the numbersoriented couple.

Finding the location for their business was the most timeconsuming step in the process, but Kristen Boyd says they fell in love with the space on Lower Greenville as soon as they saw it.

“I can’t say enough good things about this neighborhood. It is the reason we’re still here, 100% the reason we’re still here through COVID,” she says.

The long, narrow interior, formerly home to a clothing store, lent itself to a planeinspired theme for the coffee shop, which the Boyds ideated

during their time as accountants. Travel magazines are displayed on shelves, along with whole-bean coffee and branded merchandise, including mugs and T-shirts. Ten paintings by five artists, most of them based in Fort Worth, depict landscapes that could be seen from the window seat of an airplane.

By March 2020, the Boyds had the technical skills, a theme, a storefront and a trained staff, complete with bakers and baristas. Window Seat Coffee was ready to open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.

Left: Draft nitro cold brew. Right: The tres leches cold brew, the most popular drink order at Window Seat Coffee, is made with a three-milk creamer, vanilla and cinnamon.

“We were open for a day,” Kristen Boyd says. “I think we had seven customers all day, and four of them were our friends and family.”

After that, Window Seat was completely closed for a couple of weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, the Boyds started running the shop again by themselves, offering a few baked goods and coffees to-go.

Around June, Window Seat brought a few employees back and was open for in-person service at 50% capacity.

Eventually, the shop stopped baking its own pastries, instead opting

to sell Tacodeli tacos and Richardsonbased La Casita Bakeshop items.

The kitchen in the back was replaced by a roasting area.

Tom spearheaded the roasting component of the business. Around the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021, they purchased a small roasting machine to get the hang of the process. About six months later, they bought a 12-kilogram roaster, which barely fit through the back door after a panel on the machine was removed.

Though warming up the roaster takes some time, beans roast for less than 15 minutes. The Boyds monitor

the beans using a computer software, which helps ensure consistency in bringing out the flavor profile of the beans.

“It’s fun to just have another step in the process as well,” Tom Boyd says. “We can buy the beans that we want and try to roast them in the way that we want to have them roasted, and it really just makes things a little bit more of our own, too.”

Roasted beans, sourced from places such as Costa Rica, Brazil, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Colombia, are used to make drinks at Window Seat, and they’re packaged and sold online and at the shop.

Other coffee shops grow by adding stores. But the Boyds say they would rather develop the manufacturing side of the business, with sales of their roasted beans and maybe even bottled cold brew.

“I think that’s kind of a good fit for both of us,” Tom says. “We get to really take pride in the things that we’re able to offer. It kind of can be our products that we feel really

good about, and we get to be here, present and talking to people in the community.”

The most popular drink — regardless of the weather — is the tres leches iced coffee, which costs about $5 with tax. A three-milk creamer with vanilla and cinnamon is added to cold brew, all made and brewed in house.

Lattes are also popular and can be

flavored with seasonal syrups, which are also made at Window Seat.

“I think when people come to the store, that’s what I want them to feel more than anything is, they’re welcome,” Kristen Boyd says. “Even if it’s just for 10 minutes, it’s just a really nice, joyful experience during their day.”

Window Seat Coffee, 3018 Greenville Ave., windowseatcoffee.com

Co-owner Kristen Boyd can often be found behind the counter, making drinks and chatting with customers.

Photos courtesy of SWOON, the studio

An ode

A THIRD-GENERATION RESIDENT REMEMBERS OUR NEIGHBORHOOD’S STORY

Story by RENEE UMSTED Photography by SYLVIA ELZAFON

the property at the intersection of Paulus Avenue and Junius Street where the Lakewood Branch Library sits is a gathering place for the community. But for Teresa Musgrove Judd, it couldn’t be more personal.

Her grandparents, Terrell and Marie Musgrove, bought the property from relatives in the 1920s. The initial owners had wanted to build something similar to the nearby Parks Estate at Worth and Paulus. They never got around to it, so they sold it to the Musgroves.

In 1974, after the house was demolished, Teresa Musgrove was standing on the property, performing with the J.L. Long Middle School band at a ribbon-cutting for the Abrams Road bypass.

Some may not know the history of the library property, but Judd hasn’t forgotten.

“I just have this feeling of familiarity every time I go in there,” she says. “I can’t explain it.”

Judd’s father, Terrell Musgrove Jr., was born at Baylor Hospital in 1930, and he grew up in that house. As an adult, working for over 30 years at the Western Electric warehouse on Mockingbird Lane, he stayed in the neighborhood.

Because of that, Judd also grew up in Lakewood, though her previous homes on Coronado and Casa Loma aren’t there anymore.

The roads have changed, businesses have come and gone, and development continues to alter the look of the neighborhood. But for 100 years, Lakewood has kept drawing people in.

This is Judd’s lived experience.

She and her father, both born at Baylor, attended the same Dallas ISD neighborhood schools — Lipscomb Elementary, J.L. Long Middle School and Woodrow Wilson High School. Judd says she loved hearing her father’s stories about school and his childhood.

One of the most memorable was the tale of the construction of the Lakewood Theater. Her father, 8 at the time, watched the local landmark be built. It’s where he and his friends spent Saturdays watching cartoons, comedies and serials. Decades later, Judd saw Batman and Disney movies there.

“This was his home, and I don’t think he ever wanted to live anywhere else,” Judd says of her father, who died in 2005.

Judd graduated from Woodrow in 1977 as the class valedictorian, having participated in band and the

Sweethearts Drill Team. After high school, she earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. Though she worked in the capital for a while, she always wanted to come home to East Dallas. And that’s what she did.

After her father died, Judd got

serious about chronicling stories of Lakewood. She initially decided to dive into the first 50 years of Lakewood Shopping Center, which her father and grandparents had seen develop. But a friend convinced her to expand her range to 60 years, to include the Abrams bypass, an

infrastructural change meant to ease traffic near the shopping center.

Judd’s book will be formatted like an encyclopedia, with business listings alphabetized. This is a project she’s been working on for years — as of publication, she’s made it to the “R” businesses — but she says she

Teresa Musgrove Judd holds photos of her relatives who have also lived in Lakewood. On the left, her father, Terrell Musgrove Jr., sits with his mother, Marie Musgrove. The portrait on the right is Terrell Musgrove Sr., Teresa’s grandfather.

hopes to have it finished by 2025, in time for the centennial of the shopping center.

Her research began at the library Downtown, where she consulted city directories to find businesses located in Lakewood, starting from the 1920s. She also used archives from The Dallas Morning News to find important events — robberies and murders included — that happened at the shopping center, and she has conducted interviews with Lakewood residents and shopping center employees.

“It’s a huge undertaking, and sometimes I wonder why I did it, but I haven’t stopped,” Judd says. “I just feel like this is something I’m supposed to do. So I’m going to keep at it until I finish.”

Even though three generations of her family have lived in the neighborhood, she has still come across information she didn’t know. Abrams Road, a central corridor connecting Lakewood to other parts of Dallas, used to be called Greenville Road. It was renamed in the 1930s because of confusion with similar addresses on nearby Greenville Avenue — a postal worker’s nightmare.

In her younger years, Judd used to shop at a dress store at Lakewood Shopping Center called Margie’s, which carried discounted designer labels. It was badly damaged in a fire in the early 1970s, and Judd says she didn’t think it would reopen. But the business was saved in part by a loan from Lakewood Bank, which was led by president Don Wright, the father of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright.

“I’ve seen other areas of Dallas where the shopping centers have kind of gotten bedraggled or even have been bulldozed,” Judd says. “But Lakewood maintains itself and continues on, and that’s a real tribute to its neighbors and its customers and supporters.”

SNAPSHOT OF SUNSHINE

DAVE AINLEY CAPTURES PHOTO BOOTH MAGIC

Story by EMMA RUBY | Photography by KATHY TRAN

At some point or another, you’ve likely been warned never to get into a stranger’s car, but Casa Linda resident Dave Ainley wants you to put that aside. At least, for the few minutes it takes to get your photo taken inside of his yellow Volkswagen bus-turned photo booth.

If the Eternal Sunshine Photobus is a circus, then Ainley is the ringmaster.

You may have seen Goldie, his bus, parked on Bishop Avenue in front of the restaurant Paradiso, but before you see Goldie, you likely hear Ainley.

If he is in the middle of a session, Ainley’s yelling can be heard down the block.

“Three… Two… One…” he thunders, counting down until a camera flashes, capturing whatever moment is taking place inside of the van.

After that first photo, Ainley yells increasingly hectic and hilarious instructions to his customers. He may yell for a large group of people to rearrange seats, which, with only two seconds between photos and in the tight confines of the bus, often ends with at least one person’s rear end caught on film.

Or, he may suddenly throw props — huge mascot heads or funky glasses — into the mix.

Even when his bus is empty, Ainley’s presence is noticeable.

He stands outside Goldie in the rain, cold or beating sun with a smile on his face, greeting the people who walk up and down Bishop Avenue. Ainley says if he can just get someone walking by to glance at his bus, he has an opportunity to invite them into the chaos.

And that chaos, he says, is an integral part of the magic of the photobus.

“I want it to be anxiety driven, because that just is a part of it. What you create when you’re under pressure is so much better than when you’re not,” Ainley says.

BUILT UNDER PRESSURE

While Ainley loves Texas, everything for him goes back to Spokane, Washington, where he was born, raised and lived most of his life.

It was in Spokane where he started his photography company, Dave Ainley Photography, and where he met his wife, Jill Paullin.

And it was in Spokane where he and Jill were

photographing a wedding in 2005, when Jill commented on the growing number of freestanding photo booths she had noticed at the events.

“She said we should put a photo booth in a Volkswagen bus because I was driving one, and I was like, dude, that’s a brilliant idea,” Ainley says.

At the time though, Ainley was driving a bus he called Parker, and Parker was a “total beater” (although Ainley also admits he once told Jill she would have to bury him with the bus, he loved it so much).

Plus, the photography business was doing alright. So Jill’s idea for a photo booth bus floated freely for the next decade.

Ainley spent the next few years focusing on building up his business photographing weddings and senior portraits. But in 2011, his eldest daughter was born, and what he thought would be a quick break to be there for his family resulted in a significant hit to his clientele.

Then in 2017, Ainley and Paullin decided to move their family and photography business down to Dallas, but ultimately struggled to acclimate and “left with their tails between their legs” a year later.

But Ainley says that first move to Dallas, which someone less optimistic may have written off as an abject failure, was what got the Eternal Sunshine Photobus off the ground.

“The year of living in Dallas, seeing businesses pop up and fizzle out, I realized the thing that separates a business that makes it from a business that dies out is you bring something to the table that nobody else has, and you get people excited about it,” Ainley says.

In October 2018, back in Spokane with an orange bus named Clementine, Ainley and Paullin finally started the business they’d schemed up 13 years earlier.

“The idea of Eternal Sunshine — it’s uplifting, it’s a breath of fresh air. And that’s what I want when somebody comes to my bus. For them to have a breath of fresh air and say ‘Man, I just want to be a part of that,’” Ainley says.

THE GOLDIE ERA

It was in 2021, after spending a year navigating small business ownership through the ever-changing regulations of COVID-19, that Ainley decided it was time to look back to Texas.

Left: Dallas resident Katie Van Sloun poses inside of the Eternal Sunshine Photobus.

He and his family moved to our neighborhood, Volkswagen in tow, and this time, it’s been nothing but sun, Ainley says.

“Dallas, Texas, is the promised land,” he says.

Ainley first brought the bus to Bishop Arts in December 2021 where he set up outside of the Tipsy Elf holiday bar. But what started as a holiday pop up has turned into a permanent home base.

The Eternal Sunshine Photobus is now a yellow bus named Goldie, and she is decked out with a bench and a fireplace with a camera on the mantle. Ainley sells T-shirts, hats, stickers and any other merchandise he can think of to his growing fanbase.

An experience in the photobus costs $20 and comes with two printed out photostrips of three photos, a boomerang for your Instagram, and a GIF.

Ainley also rents the photobus to private events like weddings. He is back in the photography business with Dave Ainley Photography.

But on Friday and Saturday evenings, Ainley and his bus can be found holding court on Bishop Avenue, waiting for the next person who is ready to experience the Eternal Sunshine.

“If you just are along for the ride, you’re just willing to have a good time, you’re gonna make magic,” Ainley says. “And I want them to remember that. Cut loose, let go, and have fun.”

Eternal Sunshine Photobus parks at 308 N. Bishop Ave. @eternalsunshinephotobus, daveainley.com

Casa Linda resident Dave Ainley poses next to his photobus in the Bishop Arts District.

COYOTE

Jackie Sutherland and her dog, Missy, patrol Dallas’ wooded areas for coyotes that neighbors have reported. She says the pup draws attention so she can do “high-intensity hazing, and teach coyotes that there are negative consequences if they try to approach a dog.”

Story by CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB | Photography by JULIA CARTWRIGHT

IT HAS BEEN ALMOST A YEAR since a coyote attack on a small child had Dallas residents on edge.

A White Rock Valley incident involving 2-yearold Knox Thomas was the driving force behind a coyote management plan the City of Dallas launched in 2022, city spokesperson Margo Clingman says.

Following the event, in which a coyote grabbed the boy by the throat and held on until his siblings screamed and mom charged the animal, Dallas partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create a comprehensive program to educate people and observe the animals. The goal: Broker peace between human and beast. The city web page BeDallas90.org/ coyotes includes a coyote reporting system and displays a map that tracks sightings.

Dallas’ coyote lady

The attack also prompted our city government to appoint a coyote czar, of sorts, whose primary role is investigating, advising and helping to coordinate wildlife policy specifically related to the increasingly problematic canines.

That’s Animal Services officer Jacqueline Sutherland. She says she was called to the scene (of Thomas’ incident) immediately and led the investigation.

As the little boy underwent surgery and recovered from his injuries, Sutherland’s team, with help from USDA hunters, captured and euthanized four neighborhood coyotes.

Lethal removal is only for extreme cases. Extracting or exterminating coyotes typically does little good, Sutherland explains, because the species will breed precisely to replace each family member lost to death or relocation.

Sutherland has been Dallas’ coyote point person since that investigation.

Urban coyotes have been a hot topic in the White Rock area for decades. But until the toddler’s attack, residents had been led to believe that while cats, squirrels and small dogs are at risk, coyotes are not likely to harm humans.

It remains true that assaults on people are atypical. But when a neighborhood child is the victim, it doesn’t matter how rare they are, parents

pointed out during public meetings. The city did not do enough to prevent an attack that was imminent, they said.

White Rock area dad Clayton Rainey told the Advocate last year he had reported an animal that might have been Knox’s attacker in the days before the incident. The coyote was brazenly scouring the treeline and alleys in search of food.

“It’s scary, and it should have been taken care of right then.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests an increase in Dallas’ coyote population, Sutherland says. “In some neighborhoods, I’ve spoken with people who lived there 30 years without seeing a coyote but now (are) seeing an entire family of them,” she says.

For an even more scientific assessment, the coyote management team is analyzing data they began collecting after the White Rock Valley event.

“Now that we’re monitoring families, territories, activities, behaviors, that kind of stuff is going to give us some insight in regard to their growth and how they function and how they distribute themselves.”

Please don’t feed the fauna

What she knows for sure is that coyotes are quite content to live among people, especially when they connect a human with a food source.

“It makes them want to hang around.” And that turns into a habit for the animals and their offspring.

“People who come from Colorado or East Texas are shocked by the way the coyotes behave around here,” Sutherland says.

This habituation can result from unintentional or deliberate feeding, which does happen, Sutherland says, though people don’t want to admit to it.

She says some people use food to get good wildlife photos. That includes social media users with feeds to fill.

“I was working with an apartment where we found kids throwing food over the fence to get a coyote to come out of the woods so they could get it in a TikTok video,” she says.

The more problematic members of the coyote populations tend to be tweens, Sutherland says,

These “teenage” coyotes “are going places they shouldn’t be; they’re missing curfew,” she quips. They are going to be asking a human’s permission, in a sense, to get close, and people just need to make it clear that that is not OK.

“If people are on board with that, then the behavior goes back to normal relatively quickly.”

Coyotes serve a vital role in the ecosystem by helping to control the population of rodents. That means they go where the rodents go — unsecured trash bins, for example.

Even feeding ducks and other birds can inadvertently attract coyotes, she says. An ordinance banning wildlife feeding will go to a City Council vote sometime this year, and Sutherland says it’s necessary.

Sutherland says that if everyone did their part to tackle the coyote-feeding problem, the risk of further injuries to humans would be almost nil.

“We’re really struggling to educate people about the dangers of feeding, and we’re still trying to get that (ordinance) passed,” Sutherland says. “I’ve got areas where I’m basically having to beg people to stop leaving food out in an inappropriate fashion.”

There have been a dozen or so incidents on record of coyotes attacking humans in the entire state of Texas, Sutherland says, and every one of those cases, “they’ve been able to trace back to somebody feeding the animal.”

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Set

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with a

WORSHIP

By DR. ROBERT HUNT

The elephant in the city

Spiritual but not religious WORSHIP

Changes in the religion of a neighborhood often happen so slowly, you hardly see them.

We can see this happening throughout Dallas. My daily drive takes me past churches that have become bilingual or host a whole new congregation. It takes me past churches clearly in decline, holding fewer worship services on a Sunday morning or simply having fewer people.

There has been an invisible elephant in the religious world, and its name is secularization. Part of this is the process of religion becoming less visible in public, the classic sign of a secular society. Yet the secular age in which we live is characterized less by the disappearance of religion than by religious transformation.

The biggest transformation is people who used to say they were religious now say they are spiritual.

These changes, often so slow that they go unnoticed, are accelerating. Recent polls carried out by Pew Research, Gallup and others show the number of Americans who identify as Christian (by far the dominant religion in the United States) has declined from 90% to 64% in the last 50 years.

It’s the abandonment of institutional religion. Since each generation is less religious than the last, the continued decline is certain. The youngest generation of Americans, Gen Z, is 20% less likely than the national average to identify as Christian.

But while we Americans and Dallasites are less attached to traditional religion, secularism is transforming rather than destroying the religious landscape.

Moreover, younger generations who

are turning away from traditional religion are turning their energies toward organizing new religious groups, adopting new spiritual practices and engaging in social entrepreneurship based in religious ethics. America is becoming “spiritual but not religious.”

For every story of a church turned into a bar, there are a dozen of a coffee shop turned into a Bible study, a restaurant into a prayer group, or a failed business into a Christian clinic, a Muslim food pantry or a Jewish counseling center.

These changes don’t even take into account the way that religion and spirituality have moved online. One of my students has a daily Christian meditation podcast with hundreds of thousands of listeners. The largest online Bible study has more than three million subscribers. If we add the number of people participating in online ministries of existing churches, the number increases exponentially.

For nearly a century, the boundaries between self-help, positive thinking, motivational speaking, political organizing, entertainment and worship have become increasingly fuzzy. Online or in spaces that resemble arenas, auditoriums, gyms, coffee shops and even bars, it may be hard to tell where religion ends and secular society begins.

When we look closely, religion in our city isn’t going away. Instead, it’s going to look different than it has in the past, reflecting the dynamism and energy that continue to make this an exciting place to live.

DR. ROBERT HUNT is director of SMU’s Perkins School of Theology Global Theological Education department.

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By PATTI VINSON

Love at first sight

It all started in a framing department

The date: Nov. 29, 1998. The location: Framing department at Garden Ridge in Mesquite, Texas. The event: Furtive glances and fireworks between Curtis Fesser and James Brad Boling.

It was a case of love at first sight — perhaps helped along by a loved one who had died — that has stood the test of time.

A few years prior, his first love, also named James, had been murdered during a robbery at the Casa Linda Blockbuster.

“I was in the mode of being alone for the rest of my life,” he says.

From time to time, though, Fesser would talk to the late James, asking if he would send someone true and good.

On the day his life changed forever, Fesser was working in custom framing, shut down to the thought of romance.

In walks Boling, out shopping for art with some friends. Those cheesy, unlikely thunderbolt moments in romantic movies? It actually happened for Fesser and Boling.

“Our eyes locked, and we knew we were meant to be,” smiles Fesser. “I remember whispering to my friend at the frame shop, ‘He’s going to be my husband.’”

Boling was equally smitten. “I knew from the start we were soulmates,” he says. “I knew he was the one.”

He called Fesser a couple of days later, and the two talked for hours, discovering shared interests in art and gardening and a common history growing up in Richardson. They were raised in the same neighborhood and attended the same high school, 11 years apart. Curtis

had walked by Boling’s family’s house when he was in high school, though their paths never crossed.

Their first date, dinner and a movie, was unusual. Boling brought along his best friend, who wanted to meet Fesser.

“I gave in since he lived down the street and to get him to shut up,” Boling says.

Many dates followed, including early on when Boling decided to cook dinner. Perhaps a bit distracted, he caught a kitchen towel on fire as he pulled green bean casserole out of the oven. The fire was quickly extinguished, the skilletcooked chicken was delicious, and they had a good laugh.

Several months into the relationship and shortly before moving in together, they began talking about commitment.

But Fesser, who is African American, felt the need to have a serious talk with Boling, who is white.

“I remember putting everything out on the table and being transparent,” he says. “We needed to have the conversation about the challenges ahead being in a gay, interracial relationship.”

They were undaunted, despite stares, rude comments and the loss of judgmental “friends.” One of the worst situations they were subjected to was when Boling’s friends — the ones who were with him that day at Garden Ridge — took Boling’s mother out for a farewell dinner because they did not approve of Fesser’s ethnicity.

Fortunately, Boling’s mother never wavered in her support. And those

“friends”? Boling wasted no time dispatching them.

“They were quickly kicked to the curb, so to speak,” he says. “I didn’t want anything to do with them moving forward.”

They’ve both enjoyed support and acceptance from many family members and friends, and they’ve learned to ignore the whispers and criticisms.

“We’ve experienced discrimination from the gay community and society as a whole,” Boling says. “The ignorance and racism is quite the eye opener.”

Fesser and Boling have built a life together at their home in the Alger Park-Ash Creek neighborhood. Avid gardeners, they have transformed their backyard, which abuts Ash Creek, into a tranquil and lush showcase, filled

with plants and Fesser’s murals and sculptures. Their garden was honored with a spot on the Water-Wise Landscape Tour a few years ago.

They are constantly maintaining and updating the garden, and one of their favorite activities is searching for discarded objects to reuse.

“Bulk trash days are fun days for us,” Fesser says.

The couple also enjoys travel and lists Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, Miami and London as favorites. They were particularly taken with London and its accepting atmosphere, food, history and museums.

Almost 25 years after first laying eyes on each other, they’re going strong.

“He always wants to do the right thing for the better good without expecting

anything in return,” says Fesser. “He’s a selfless gentleman who’s highly empathetic and courageous.”

For Boling, the admiration is mutual. “He has a sincere honesty and is amazingly talented.” Even more important, he knows Fesser will be there for him.

Any advice for couples? “Communicate, communicate!” insists Boling. “Be willing to compromise.”

For those wishing for someone special, Fesser advises not to look for love.

“You might be surprised by the unexpected,” he says.

She’s

PATTI VINSON is a guest writer who has lived in East Dallas for more than 20 years.

written for the Advocate and Real Simple magazine.

Curtis Fesser and James Brad Boling have been together for almost 25 years. Photography by Jessica Turner.