REARVIEW MIRROR

22

MOMENTS IN 21

Compiled by RACHEL STONE

A guy went skitching on the Interstate 30 bridge during the devastating Texas winter storm. More construction cranes popped up in our neighborhood, where restaurants and shops are booming along with the real estate market. Some lined up for vaccinations and unmasked for the first time in a year. Neighbors fought over zoning cases and came together for schools and nonprofits. Here are 22 more moments that made Oak Cliff in 2021.

GOLDEN BEARS ON THE GRIDIRON

The South Oak Cliff High School football team played a legendary season. The Golden Bears headed to the Texas 5A UIL championship game on Dec. 18, after this magazine went to print. Sunset High School was the most recent Dallas ISD team to hold a UIL title, in 1950.

Photo courtesy of Dallas ISD.

NAME CHANGE

Several Dallas ISD schools shed the names of people associated with the U.S. Confederacy this year, the result of students researching their own schools’ names. Bishop Arts S.T.E.A.M. Academy is the campus formerly named for John H. Reagan, who served as postmaster under Confederate President Robert E. Lee and later became a popular Texas politician. The former Sidney Lanier Middle School, originally named for a guy who wrote patriotic poems about the confederacy, is now named after José Moroles, a sculptor who grew up in Oak Cliff and died in 2015.

FOR THE COMMUNITY

A nonprofit, Behind Every Door, acquired the 50-year-old Cedar Crest Community Center, with plans for an $8-million renovation to serve the estimated 2,000 children and teens who live in that neighborhood. The Salvation Army previously owned the center at 1007 Hutchins Road until it closed in 2019 due to financial cuts. It comprises 8 acres and includes a 20,000-square-foot community center with a basketball court and workout center, a 4,000-square-foot chapel, a football field and a playground.

HORNS BLAZING

The owners of Revelers Hall started a record label this year and have released two albums already. The Revelers Hall Band put out their self-titled album in May. And Steve Austin & The Bioniq Brass Band released Head of the Street in September.

GIRL POWER

Female wrestlers from Oak Cliff made a strong showing at state in April. Sunset High School senior Maya Lewis took second place in the 5A UIL state championship tournament, competing in the 138-pound weight class. Ki’Aundra Green of Kimball High School won third place in the 185-pound weight class.

Photo courtesy of Dallas ISD.

COCKTAIL CRAZE

The Bishop Arts District’s first Indian restaurant opened in the corner space previously occupied by Hattie’s. Âme, from mother/daughter owners Afifa and Sabrina Nayeb, gives ambiance fit for a king, or at least, Instagram royalty. Its Elephant Bar, a “Parisian-style” lounge offering champagne cocktails, added another ruby to Oak Cliff’s cocktail crown. Not only does virtually every new restaurant offer a cocktail menu now, but upscale bars and “speakeasies” filled into every cranny hipster Oak Cliff has to offer. Cocktail bars Atlas, Ayahuasca, Casablanca, Mermaid and the Trove all opened in the Bishop Arts area this year. And you thought we had a lot of coffee shops.

Photo courtesy of Âme.

Photo courtesy of Luby’s.

CAFETERIA RULES

Luby’s lives! One of the world’s remaining Luby’s cafeterias does brisk lunch and dinner business almost every day at 5600 S. Hampton Road in Oak Cliff. Despite reports in 2020 that all of the Luby’s restaurants would be closing, this one hung on. And now the Houston-based Luby’s, currently amid liquidation, has struck a deal to sell more than 30 Luby’s stores to Calvin Ginn Associates, the founder of airline catering company Flying Food Group, for about $28.7 million.

Photo courtesy of Bywaters Special Collections, Southern Methodist University.

PUT SOME RESPECT ON IT

It was announced this past summer that Octavio Medellín, a sculptor who worked out of El Sibil at Lake Cliff Park in the 1960s, will receive a year-long retrospective at the Dallas Museum of Art beginning this February. The Mexico-born sculptor and teacher founded what is now the Creative Arts Center, and his work can still be found in public places around Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.

HOT AND UNBOTHERED

The world learned a name that won’t soon be forgotten: Sha’Carri Richardson. She wound up losing her spot on the U.S. Olympic team in July after testing positive for marijuana, and she finished last in a race against the world’s other fastest women in August. But the Carter High School graduate let the world know, in an interview that went viral: “This is one race. I’m not done. You know what I’m capable of. Count me out if you want to. Talk all the shit that you want because I’m here to stay.”

SNEAKER SCHOLARSHIPS

Pasos for Oak Cliff became a nonprofit in 2021 to raise money to buy shoes for kids who need them all over Dallas. Kimball High School teacher Jesse Acosta and his girlfriend, Alejandra Zendejas, are sneaker enthusiasts who started out raffling a pair of Air Jordan 1s and went from there. Since then, they’ve appeared on national TV a couple of times, and they’ve given away hundreds of pairs of shoes. In July, Pasos for Oak Cliff also awarded scholarships totaling $5,000 (and a new pair of sneakers) to 13 students in Dallas ISD.

NUESTRO OAK CLIFF

The Latino Cultural Center focused its lens on our neighborhood in September with “Nuestro Oak Cliff,” a history project from the Dallas Mexican American Historical League. The project culminated in a documentary film exploring the Latino culture and history of our neighborhood, also called Nuestro Oak Cliff, by Oak Cliff residents Eboni Johnson and Victorial Ferrell Ortiz.

DRAMA AND RESILIENCY

Arts nonprofits in our city lost an estimated $95.5 million in the last nine months of 2020, but Dallas philanthropy stepped up. The Arts Community Alliance, led by Oak Cliff native and Kessler Park resident Terry Loftis, gave $30,000 in emergency funding to arts nonprofits before the end of that pandemic year. In February 2021, TACA handed out $210,000. And in October, TACA awarded $276,500 to 50 nonprofits, including the Bishop Arts Theatre Center. Photo courtesy of Terry Loftis via Facebook.

Photo courtesy of Longhorn Ballroom via Facebook.

LONG-TIME COMING

This colossal bovine will not be moved. Kessler Theater owner Edwin Cabaniss announced plans to purchase the historic Longhorn Ballroom in September. Cabaniss wants to preserve the theater, which is best known as the place where the Sex Pistols opened their disastrous U.S. tour in 1978. It has a history going back to the early 1950s, when it opened as Bob Wills’ Ranch House, and the list of country-and-western luminaries who performed there is as long as your arm. It was also once owned by Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby.

MARCHING UP A STORM

Jesús Mata became the first Latino drum major for Prairie View A&M University’s Marching Storm band. Mata started his band career playing trombone at Greiner Middle School. He says Sunset High School band director Rametria Smith encouraged him academically. “I didn’t have a plan to go to college. I just thought I’d graduate high school and go straight to work. But now I have lots of goals and things I want to do in life – teaching, directing my own band and working my way up to the college-teaching level,” he says.

RAH-RAH HISTORY

The Carter High School cheerleading team became the first all-Black cheer squad to place at the Texas state 4A UIL competition, coming in ninth. The 13 cheerleaders, currently ranked fifth nationally, have set their sights on the national competition in Orlando in February, but they’ve needed to raise a total of at least $21,000 to get there. Donations may be dropped off at the school’s office, 1819 W. Wheatland Road, or given via Go Fund Me.

SURPRISE RELEASE

Microsoft surprised gamers by releasing a beta of Halo: Infinite for free on the 20th anniversary of Xbox, Nov. 15, and the game features sounds from Oak Cliff. Alex Bhore of Elmwood Studios composed and recorded all of the music for the game. Bhore worked on it from about April-November 2020. “I’m just happy players are enjoying it,” he told WFAA.

Photo courtesy of Catholic Housing Initiative.

A LIGHT SHINES

A story in The Guardian exposed to the world how hyper development has resulted in a loss of affordable housing and a rise of $1,600-a-month apartments in Oak Cliff. Residents and small businesses showed how they’re being pushed out of our neighborhood because of its newfound high value as a place to invest. “For those who can maintain, it’s great, right? Their property value goes up, and if they want to flip their house and make loads of money, then they can. But ‘if’ is the big word, because if you can’t, then you’re displaced,” Cimajie Best told the publication.

A PARK WITH MEANING

The City of Dallas recognized the contributions of Oak Cliff landscape architect Kevin Sloan with a proclamation to name a park in his honor, before he died of brain cancer in November. A park that will replace the five-lane Jefferson/12th Connector in South Winnetka will be named Kevin W. Sloan Park.

SUITING UP

Gary Blair will end his career as the winningest basketball coach in Texas A&M University history when he retires at the end of this season. He tied the previous record of 438 wins on Nov. 30. Blair has led Aggie women’s basketball teams to five conference titles, including the 2011 national championship. Blair was the first girls’ basketball coach at South Oak Cliff High School, starting in 1973, and he also started the boys and girls golf teams at SOC.

BEAUTIFUL BURN

Kimball High School came this close to winning its seventh 5A state title in March. The Knights lost by one point in the final seconds of overtime. Head coach Nick Smith told Inside High School Sports that the team’s discipline is “something you can’t teach, but the culture at Kimball High School, that’s something that’s been embedded in in them.”

STANDOUT SCHOOLS

Two Dallas ISD high schools in Oak Cliff were named National Blue Ribbon Schools. Trini Garza Early College High School at Mountain View College and Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy were among 26 in Texas to receive the coveted honor from the U.S. Department of Education. They were recognized, along with 325 schools across the nation, for “overall academic performance or progress in closing achievement gaps.”

Photo courtesy of Texas A&M University.

Photo courtesy of Dallas ISD.

Photo courtesy of Dallas ISD.

ROUNDABOUT WAYS

Major construction on our neighborhood’s new roundabout was completed. The plans to convert Tyler and Polk to two-way streets connected by a roundabout near Kidd Springs Park at Sylvan and Canty have been nearly a decade in the making. Take it easy around the curves, and expect traffic lights to activate and lanes to reroute as soon as the end of the year. Advocates for the project say the changes will slow traffic and boost retail and restaurant business in our neighborhood.

ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL

50 miles of trails to connect Dallas County

Map courtesy of the Circuit Trail Conservancy.

IT WAS A CASE OF “WHO YOU

KNOW.” In 2016, Joseph Pitchford asked Philip Hiatt Haigh to work with the Circuit Trail Conservancy. They met each other through positions at Dallas County. Earlier, Pitchford had been appointed to serve on a board by Judge Clay Jenkins, Hiatt Haigh’s boss. Pitchford’s request was for Hiatt Haigh to meet with the rest of the CTC Board of Trustees to brainstorm how to implement the organization’s vision: The Loop.

The trustees had already identified the four missing links the locations around Dallas where 11 miles of new trails would connect 39 miles of existing trails, forming a walkable, bikeable, 50-mile loop.

At first, Oak Cliff resident Hiatt Haigh was there to help the CTC find sources of funding.

“The old ‘a million dollars a mile,’ that was the old formula,” he says. “Now it’s much, much higher.”

They knew a City of Dallas bond issuance was coming soon and that they would also need to raise private funds.

Dallas County had already approved $5 million. The Texas Department of Transportation contributed $8 million. Another $20 million came in the 2017 bond program, and $10 million was raised from private donors. That added up to $43 million in initial funding to get the project started.

Then in 2018, Hiatt Haigh joined the CTC full-time as the executive director. Given his past experience, he was prepared to secure approvals required for a project involving three public entities: the City, Dallas County and TxDOT.

The Loop, which the City will eventually own and maintain, won’t just fill the gaps in the Dallas trail network. Hiatt Haigh says it will “change the perception of Dallas” into a connected city where communities aren’t divided by the built environment. The same amenities available to residents in Uptown and near White Rock Lake will be available to residents in Pleasant Grove and Joppa.

“That’s a huge statement for what Dallas is investing in and what they think about their people — to say, ‘you are as important as all these other people, and we’re going to invest in the same amenity across the entire way.’ And it’s going to create this green identity,” he says.

The Loop could also be good for business. In certain places along the trail, especially south of I-30, land is zoned for industrial use. Hiatt Haigh has been meeting with City staff to discuss how the zoning might be amended to make those spaces more desirable for retail, restaurant or residential development.

All projects are now under design, with the last design contract executed in September. This stage should be completed by next year. Then the rest of the construction can begin. If the process continues without delays, Hiatt Haigh says The Loop could be open to the public by the end of 2024.

Funding is still coming for the projects, estimated to cost $75 million. This year, the Dallas City Council awarded the CTC $11.5 million in tax increment financing dollars, which will be used to add amenities to the Hi Line Connector, the trail linking the Katy to the Trinity Strand.

After years of planning, the CTC broke ground on the north phase of the Trinity Forest Spine Trail in September. When finished, it will be 7.5 miles long, connecting White Rock Lake to the Great Trinity Forest. On its northernmost end, it juts out from the Santa Fe Trail south of Garland Road. It will run south along White Rock Creek, cross Interstate 30 and meet the Pemberton Hill Road Trail. Though it will be built in a flood plain, staff members plan to build it to the five-year flood level.

For two years, Hiatt Haigh has been working to form an agreement between the City and a railroad to build a trail under a railroad bridge that has stood for more than a century. There are fewer than 500 of these trails in the U.S.

“Those railroads have traditionally been barriers between communities, and so this will be the first dedicated pedestrian trail in the city of Dallas that crosses that barrier,” Hiatt Haigh says. Part of the Trinity Forest Spine Trail passes through Samuell-Grand Park. There are two 18-round golf courses there, but not for long. The updated master plan calls for one 18-round course and one nine-round course, and in the space leftover, there will be a nature preserve.

“Outside of the nature preserve even, there is 50 acres of forested area that is now going to be accessed by the public for the first time off of the Spine Trail,” Hiatt Haigh says.

The Loop’s potential future benefits — a means of transportation, an economic stimulant and a bridge between neighborhoods, to name a few — are only theoretical unless people use the trails. That’s why Hiatt Haigh is in communication with Dallas residents so they “feel like they have some ownership of it.” Soon, the CTC will begin working on wayfinding and signage, using language to encourage trail use. Saying something is a three-mile bike ride away may seem more daunting than saying something is a 10-minute ride away.

“This type of amenity coming online is going to continue to make Dallas incredibly resilient and ready for that future,” Hiatt Haigh says. “This is a 50-year investment that we are making right now.”

By ERIC FOLKERTH

Steady chipping

Shawshank your way to goals in 2022

If you want to do great things in 2022, don’t make public New Year’s resolutions. Or, I like to say, “resolve to not resolve.”

I know that seems bizarrely counter-intuitive as we face a New Year. Everyone else in the culture is rushing out resolutions for you to read.

Entrepreneur Derek Sivers first taught me of the power of not making resolutions in a TED Talk he gave long ago.

Sivers cites this data:

“Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.”

The psychological path goes something like this: Resolve to be a runner. Tell everybody. Rush out and buy running shoes. Admire new shoes, and brain says “Hey! I’m a runner now.” Thus satisfied, never or rarely ever do actual running.

It’s not that you’re morally defective or lack so-called “will power.” What happens, brain scientists find, is that *thinking* about a thing is exactly the same as *doing* a thing. Right down to a slight release of feel-good dopamine.

By the way, the department stores know this is how our brains work. Pay attention. This month, they put the running shoes, the exercise equipment, the spandex pants right up in the front window. They know that by March that new treadmill is likely to be your most expensive clothes hanger.

So how do we make progress toward our goals this year?

It sounds trite, but as Nike would say, “just do it.” Make some small progress, any progress, every day. And you will get where you hope to go.

This is the heart of what the writers of James meant when he said, “faith without works is dead.”

Instead of announcing grand goals, be kind to yourself, day by day, and keep your spiritual intentions before you every morning.

Tim Robbins’ character in the film Shawshank Redemption is Andy Dufresne. Dufresne spends decades in prison for a crime he did not commit. But all during those years, he’s secretly tunneling out, through the walls and underground, using nothing larger than a handheld rock hammer.

Day by day, he chips away at overwhelming stone. He never quits. He never stops. And! He never tells another soul what he’s doing.

At one point Dufresne says: “That there are things in this world not carved out of gray stone. That there’s a small place inside of us they can never lock away, and that place is called hope.”

Hope, in the spiritual sense, is always beyond the event-horizon of this world. But, to keep hope, we need small victories along the way. And, if our hope is to do great things, we must allow those small victories to light the path of our future hope, instead of depressing us that we have not traveled farther.

It’s tricky. Too much contentment and self-satisfaction can lead us to believe we are done when we are very much still digging. Too much desire to change now can lead us to believe the stone is too thick, the hammer too small, and that we should never even bother starting.

In the end, whatever goals you may have for 2021, I’m here to tell you that you can do them. As the Psalmist says, faithfulness is like working in a field, every day, not just talking about it.

This year, “resolve to not resolve.” Resolve to just do it.

Lift your tiny hammer and start chipping away. By next year, you’ll be amazed how far you’ve come.

ERIC FOLKERTH is Senior Pastor at Kessler Park United Methodist Church. The Worship section is underwritten by Advocate Publishing and neighborhood businesses and churches listed. Call 214.560.4212 or email sales@ advocatemag.com for advertising information.

WORSHIP

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CLIFF TEMPLE BAPTIST CHURCH / 125 Sunset Ave. / 214.942.8601 Serving Oak Cliff since 1898 / CliffTemple.org / English and Spanish 9 am Contemporary Worship / 10 am Sunday School / 11 am Traditional

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By LIZ GOULDING

How to use the muse

Seeing inspiration as a tool for long-term progress

“Your relationship to inspiration might say a lot about how you feel about New Year’s.” Photo of Kiest Park by Danny Fulgencio.

The new year, a time of ephemeral promise. Some of you reading this love New Year’s, and others hate it. I guess like everything else these days, it’s a bit polarizing.

I’ve come to think of New Year’s as neither good nor bad, but rather a tool. Tools can be used all kinds of ways. To use a tool well we must understand its place and purpose. Without this understanding we will likely misuse the tool or not use it at all.

The New Year’s tool I’m talking about is inspiration. Your relationship to inspiration might say a lot about how you feel about New Year’s.

To my mind, inspiration is best used when it’s seen as a catalyst. It’s the energy that precedes action. It helps us gather ideas and make plans. It’s an invitation to imagine ourselves anew.

But there’s also a false promise baked into popular New Year’s rhetoric. And that’s that inspiration is enough. Which, when you take a step back and think about it, is pretty funny. The idea that a few days’ worth of inspiration is going to carry you through weeks and months of habit building and action makes absolutely no sense. Inspiration is necessary but not sufficient, and problems arise when we confuse the two.

Instead of being deflated, I hope you find this idea liberating. When we accept it, we’re free to let inspiration be what it is, and then build on it from there with other tools.

If inspiration is this fleeting energy, then how do we harness it? Like most things, it depends on how you work best.

How often do you feel inspired? What are you doing when ideas and inspiration usually come to you? How can you put yourself in those situations more often?

From there it’s important to remember the limits of inspiration. Inspiration often helps us envision the end result, but we need daily and weekly habits and processes to actually achieve the results we want.

Left unchecked, inspiration can cause us to make goals and plans that are too ambitious initially. In our rush to capture the fleeting nature of inspiration, we try to make it all happen in a week or two. I like to encourage people to flip how they usually think about making a plan. What is the absolute minimum you could do on a daily or weekly basis that would still move you toward your goal? How can you craft your plan so that it would be easy to do day in and day out for weeks or months? Once you’ve mastered your baseline plan, add onto it from there. The feelings that come from making a commitment and meeting it can help propel you forward once inspiration is gone.

The more clients I work with, the more I’ve come to believe in the power of small changes done consistently for long periods of time. You don’t have to do it all when you’re feeling inspired. In fact, I can almost guarantee you that you won’t. Humans don’t walk around inspired 24/7. Just make a plan that you can realistically commit to, even through the days and weeks when inspiration escapes you.

LIZ GOULDING is a health and wellness coach in Oak Cliff. Reach her at liz@alongsideliz.com and alongsideliz.com. JAJANUARY 2022 oakcliff.advocatemag.com 31

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