Fort Worth Weekly // April 5-11, 2023

Easter 2023

The Fort is hopping with springtime events, eats, and treats this weekend.

BY JENNIFER BOVEE

FEATURE

Opening Day was a delight in more ways than one.

BY OZZIE GARZA

METROPOLIS

According to former employees, discrimination was part of Patriot Mobile’s ethos.

BY JESSICA WALLER

EATS & DRINKS

By Texas Wesleyan, the NY-style pizza comes cold correct at Joe’s Hangout.

BY LAURIE JAMES

MUSIC

No spring chicks, the indie-rocking Spring Palace finally do the do, a record.

BY PATRICK HIGGINS

Fearsome Foursome

The men’s final was fine, but the women’s was full of drama and energy.

By Buck D. Elliott

Play Ball!

Opening

STAFF

Anthony Mariani, Editor

Lee Newquist, Publisher

Bob Niehoff, General Manager

Ryan Burger, Art Director

Jim Erickson, Circulation Director

Edward Brown, Staff Writer

Emmy Smith, Proofreader

Michael Newquist, Regional Sales Director

Jennifer Bovee, Marketing Director

Stacey Hammons, Senior Account Executive

Julie Strehl, Account Executive

Tony Diaz, Account Executive

Wyatt Newquist, Digital Coordinator

Clintastic, Brand Ambassador

By Ozzie Garza

By Jennifer Bovee

Up for Whatever Happens

Spring Palace’s indie-rocking debut record has been a long time coming but has been worth the wait.

By Patrick Higgins

Christina Berger, E.R. Bills, Jason Brimmer, Buck D. Elliott, Juan R. Govea, Patrick Higgins, Laurie James, Kristian Lin, Vishal Malhotra, Cody Neathery, Wyatt Newquist, Madison Simmons, Teri Webster, Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue, Cole Williams

EDITORIAL BOARD

Anthony Mariani, Edward Brown, Emmy Smith

Cover image by Lee Newquist

METROPOLIS

Separate Lines

Several former employees accuse Patriot Mobile of discrimination.

BY JESSICA WALLER

Before he was fired last year, Rodney Banks got to know Patriot Mobile pretty well. The 42-year-old Black man worked for the conservative Christian cellphone company/PAC from April 2019 to May 2022, and his memories from that time are full of egregious displays of racism and economic exploitation.

The family-first, pro-life company has been facing intense criticism for several other reasons. In 2020, Patriot Mobile received a $367,000 loan as part of the federal government’s Payroll Protection Program (PPP) while donating $2 million to local right-wing political causes (“Mobile Patriots,” Feb. 9), and, more recently, former employee Kara Cunningham accused her boss of impregnating her, asking her to terminate the pregnancy, then firing her when she said no (“Shut Out,” March 15).

Over the past several months, former employees Banks, Cunningham, David Grinage, and Kala Matus have filed separate discrimination complaints against Patriot Mobile with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Cunningham has filed a lawsuit against her boss, CTO Everett Trost, and Banks said he and Matus tried to file a class action suit against the company but were told by counsel they could not because they accepted severance packages. Banks also said he signed a nondisclosure agreement. He was anxious about his finances and caring for his family, he said, and he was unsure how soon if it all he would find another job.

CTO Trost, CEO Glenn Story, former CEO Ron Montgomery, and the head of Human Resources, Richard Savage, did not return my requests for comment.

Patriot Mobile hired Banks after he interviewed with former CEO Maury Leland in spring 2019 at the company’s previous location in Irving. The two men bonded over their Navy service, but Leland was soon replaced. Montgomery was listed as CEO on Patriot Mobile’s LinkedIn page as recently as last month — there is now no CEO listed anywhere online.

The way Banks describes his first year at Patriot Mobile seems like a horror movie

in slow motion. “Patriot Mobile didn’t know much about me other than the fact that I was in the service when I first started the job, and as I learned in the service, it’s best to keep a low profile, sit back, and observe when you don’t know much about a place, so that’s what I did, and that’s how I got by, because I realized this day would come about a month after I started working there.”

The day Banks is talking about is when the media began to scrutinize Patriot Mobile’s questionable actions.

Banks believes that as a Black male professional he was the perfect person to oversee Patriot Mobile’s Tier 1 customer service department or call center. On his first day of work, Banks noticed that Tier 1 was full of people of color while Tiers 2 (sales) and 3 (leadership) were occupied by whites. Banks said the first two things you learn on the job about Patriot Mobile is that “they’re racist and not really a company. They don’t really want cellphone subscribers. They just need a front to gather alt-right phone numbers and move dark money around. They only took on about 30,000 new subscribers in the first year I was there. Other companies I’ve worked for, like T-Mobile, would take that on in one month.”

Banks also said most of the new customers calling in were from “country towns that were out of our limited service area.” When he told the CFO, Jenny Story, wife of CEO Glenn Story, about the service area being a problem that if fixed could generate a vast number of new subscribers, she said not to worry about it.

Another former Black employee, Kenneth Hadley, alleges that any time a Black employee came up for a promotion, “a white supervisor from another department would make up some reason that they couldn’t

move up, despite [Banks] pulling for us as our actual supervisor.”

Around August 2020, Hadley was looking forward to his quarterly performance review because he believed he had done well training new employees. Earlier that day, CTO Trost “came all the way across the room to look at a video I was laughing at on my phone with a co-worker and asked if he could see it,” Hadley recalled, “and then he got all serious when he saw what it was” — a man accidentally shooting himself in the leg. “Trost wrote me up, and because of that, I didn’t get the promotion.”

Hadley felt gutted. Up until that point, he said, he chalked up all the racist jokes and slurs that soundtracked the office to mere locker-room humor, feeling that underneath the bluster his superiors really did appreciate his hard work and wanted him to succeed.

Hadley was diagnosed with kidney failure later that year and terminated in the spring of 2021 for not showing up for work, even after he provided his bosses with medical proof of his dialysis treatments. As recipients of a PPP loan, they were not legally able to fire anyone for a year.

Banks said the day he realized the truth about Patriot Mobile started with a photo of popcorn. Shown on office TV screens one day was a tin divided into a majority white with smaller portions of cheese popcorn (“ya know, yellow as in ‘Asian,’ ” Banks said) and “caramel for Black people” alongside the caption “For those who say walls don’t work, explain this.”

Banks said he was “blown away by the boldness of that.”

The reference in the picture might have been to the border wall that indicted former president Donald Trump claimed the Unit-

ed States would build at Mexico’s expense — the wall was never completed, and Mexico never paid a dime.

The picture could also refer to the Wallbuilders. Categorized as terrorists by the Southern Poverty Law Center, they are closely associated with Patriot Mobile. The Wallbuilders are led by David Barton, a disgraced historian whose 2012 book The Jefferson Lies was recalled by the world’s largest Christian publisher “for too many serious whoppers,” the law center says, “the kind of gross factual mistakes that are a death knell for any real historian.”

Banks also recalls with disdain how Martin Luther King Jr. Day was removed from the office calendar, and in that same month, a huge cotton plant was placed in the bathroom used primarily by the Black customer service department. Banks said he felt that a “new culture of systemic racism” had been established and that without Leland or Montgomery around, he would never been seen as an equal.

Banks’ recollection is backed by Alecia Hackler, a Black customer service representative who said that in 2019, her trainer, Dan Weinstock, a current white employee, laughed when she asked if Patriot Mobile would be open on Juneteenth as well as MLK Day. She said he told her, “Those aren’t real holidays.”

Hackler also recalled that on a company trip to a nearby American history museum she was allegedly told to “try out the guillotine” by Jenny Story, “which everyone had a big laugh about.”

Hackler said the bosses would “look for any opportunity” to put down the minority employees “in these petty little ways.”

Hackler would play along, but she and many of her fellow employees “knew it was never actually funny for the people on the other side of the bankroll. They would joke around to get us to feel comfortable just so they could jab us as soon as we did.”

Summing up the executives at Patriot Mobile, Hackler said, “Wolves in sheep’s clothing,”

Banks further realized he was working for the wrong company when at Patriot Mobile events Glenn Story would “give speeches” about how racism doesn’t exist. “Do you know how it felt standing there as a Black man next to my department that was almost all people of color and listening to that?”

Banks said that while he took some personal time off in fall 2022, his department was mostly outsourced to a third-party vendor because, he believes, many of his workers had quit or been fired due to racial discrimination. When Banks saw the depleted office, he told his higherups he could not operate an entire department smoothly with so few people on-site. Patriot Mobile fired him. continued on page 5

“For those who say walls don’t work, explain this.”

Courtesy Alecia Heckler

“I was told I was fired for undermining” Jenny Story, Banks said. “That’s the reason they gave, anyway, but the truth is that by then, they had simply figured out I was not going to be controlled by them, which they thought would be possible at first because of my military background.”

Banks also claims that at one point the mostly Black customer service employees were not paid on time because the company had spent so much money on the most recent election — successfully. Thanks to Patriot Mobile donations, 11 Christian Nationalists now sit on local school boards when there were little to none before.

There was also an ambitious transgender man Banks knew who was fired by the former head of Human Resources, Janette Minasian Pires, allegedly because he lived “against their moral code of conduct.”

It was when Patriot Mobile rejected a well-qualified friend of Banks’ for tech support that the former customer service manager decided to speak out. The friend’s right arm didn’t work properly after a stroke, and Patriot Mobile bosses allegedly told Banks “point-blank that was the reason” for rejecting the man.

Banks, a Christian, was appalled at the company’s “delusions of Christianity,” especially the way the executives mistreated his friend and then flaunted their behavior with such detachment. Banks told the Storys that their company had discriminated against his

friend, and it was then that they began distancing themselves from him. He was fired shortly thereafter.

“They’re so detached from reality it honestly did not even occur to them that they had openly admitted textbook discrimination,” he said.

Even though Banks felt remorseful for possibly leaving his department vulnerable by going public, he said he could no longer ignore the company’s unabashed displays of discrimination.

Hackler claims she was fired after requesting to work from home because she

was pregnant. Even after being an employee for over a year, she claims she was told Patriot Mobile “didn’t offer maternity leave,” which Hackler said is “ludicrous” given that the company advertises itself as pro-life and family-first. “But something I just found out from a friend of mine who still works there is that as soon as a white woman got pregnant a couple months ago, then they decided they were gonna have maternity leave.”

Patriot Mobile fired Hackler last June when she was five months pregnant. The company’s explanation was that she did not properly handle a call with a customer with

high blood pressure when she sympathized with him. Patriot Mobile said her comments were “inappropriate.”

Hackler is still disgusted by the way Patriot Mobile treated her. She said she worked hard for years for a company whose executives discriminated against her and others and that all she has to show for it is trauma.

“But I’m over it now,” she said with gusto. “I’ve moved on with a new and better job, and they can’t affect me anymore.”

Long before Patriot Mobile relocated to Grapevine, the city had passed an ordinance outlawing call centers, so “none of us should have even been working there in the first place,” Hackler said. “Maybe that’s why they moved the company to Grapevine: to get rid of all the Black people since then they would have to start working from home in this city.”

Further complicating the lawsuits is the fact that Patriot Mobile appears to be invisible to the federal government. Banks claims his former employer routinely changed staffing companies. ADASTAFF, ADP, ExtensisHR, and Robert Half Staffing are just four that he can recall from before the time he was fired.

“That’s another reason we’ve all been through hell trying to file these grievances: Patriot Mobile is a company that the federal government can’t even find,” Banks said, “but it kind of makes sense that all these different human resources companies are part of their big scam, considering they really just see us as resources to use and throw away anyway… I mean, unless you’re as white, rich, and soulless as they are.” l

TIMELESS MELODIES TRINITY METRO

Banks (right): “The truth is that by then, they had simply figured out I was not going to be controlled by them.”

Want to make Friday on the Green even more fun? Ride instead of drive! Take a Trinity Metro bus straight to Magnolia Green, or transfer from TEXRail or TRE at Fort Worth T&P Station to ZIPZONE – type “Friday on the Green” as your destination in the app for easy trips straight to the event! Find routes, rates and more at .

Opening Day ’23

The Rangers’ first game had a little bit of everything.

STORY AND PHOTOS

BY OZZIE GARZA

It was an Opening Day like no other. The inaugural 2023 Rangers game had a little bit of everything, including a thrilling comefrom-behind victory over the reigning National League Champion Philadelphia Phillies. It was the home team’s fourth opener at Globe Life Field and their 52nd overall since the franchise moved to Arlington in 1972.

The excitement was brewing all day as thousands of fans tailgated while waiting for the gates to open.

“I love the smell of tailgating, especially on Opening Day,” said German Pulido of Fort Worth as he grilled steaks and flipped burgers.

The cool overcast day made being outside comfortable and enjoyable. The food aroma was overwhelming as tailgating is mostly about food, and there was plenty.

For me, it was my 23rd consecutive Rangers home opener, and it was certainly one of the most memorable. My day started at 10 a.m. as I headed to the ballpark to pick up my media credentials. I always like to walk around the ballpark — both indoors and outdoors — on Opening Day.

I then headed to the media room, where at 11:15 a.m. new Rangers Manager Bruce Bochy made an address and took some questions. Bochy, who came out of retirement after winning three World Series championships as the San Francisco Giants’ manager — his first one against the Rangers in 2010 — said Opening Day excitement never changes.

“The excitement is always there,” he said. “There is anxiety and a little nervousness. It’s a good day. We’re anxious to get it going.”

Bochy has been part of 26 Opening Days in his career.

Following the manager’s press briefing, I headed to batting practice, but my main purpose for going to the field was to take a close look at the new bases, which are now 18 square inches, up from 15, which means that now home plate is 3 inches closer to first base.

It will be something to watch next time you’re at a Major League game.

Another new thing is the pitcher game clock posted in centerfield and be -

hind home plate. It’s part of the league’s new rules to create a quicker pace of play.

Another rule change is the shift. All four infielders are required to be on the infield dirt with two on each side of second base prior to the pitch. Pitchers and batters will certainly have to make adjustments.

I believe fans will enjoy the new rules as they are geared to provide more offense also.

One thing that was not quick was the three hours fans had to wait for the start of the game. The gates opened at noon for the 3:10 scheduled start. Fans entering the stadium received a 2023 Rangers schedule magnet. Once inside, they had the opportunity to buy and taste the new specialty food items at the stadium’s concession stands. The most popular have to be the 2-foot Boomstick Burger and the brisket croissant.

Pregame ceremonies on Opening Day are festive, lively, and long, and this one was no exception. On hand to take part in the festivities were seven members of the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame and two members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Also taking part in the pregame ceremony were former President George W. Bush and Gov. Greg Abbott.

In commemorating the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Texas Rangers law enforcement agency, Lt. Reuben Mankin, a 21-year veteran of the agency, was on the mound with Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan prior to throwing the ceremonial first pitch to Hall of Fame catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez.

He bounced it, but who can blame him. After all, he was surrounded by baseball legends and 50 of his fellow Texas Rangers officers who lined the outside of the infield.

Following the ceremonial first pitch, the National Anthem was performed by the Texas Tenors as large United States and Texas flags covered the outfield.

A flyover that was scheduled to take place following the song had to be scratched because of the heavy overcast skies, although the stadium roof was open.

Then there was the introduction of both teams as they lined up on the foul lines in front of their respective dugouts.

At precisely 3:05 p.m., Rangers public address announcer Chuck Morgan said the words people had been waiting for all day, “It is baseball time in Texas.”

But not quite, as the umpires’ home plate meeting prior to the game took longer than usual as the men in blue went over the new rules with both managers.

Then at 3:09 p.m., home plate ump Jeff Nelson signaled to play ball, and the Rangers’ prized ace Jacob deGroom delivered a

99 mph strike to Phillies leadoff hitter Trea Turner.

The game had finally begun. A sellout crowd of 38,387 that included baseball commissioner Rob Manfred saw stadium history in the fourth inning as the roof was closed for the first time during a game due to incoming showers in the area. The crowd also saw the Rangers erase a five-run deficit when they scored nine runs in the fourth inning (oddly after the roof had been closed), ultimately winning the game 11-7.

During the game, Commissioner Manfred talked about the new MLB rules with Rangers TV announcers Dave Raymond and C.J. Nitkowski.

“We think we’re restoring the best form of the game,” Manfred said. “We’re not looking to change the game. We’re looking for more action, more balls in play, and that’s good for the game.”

He also talked about the All-Star Game coming to Globe Life Field in 2024. “We will have a great All-Star Week here in Texas.”

Manfred also hinted that maybe Globe Life Field will be one of the sites for the next World Baseball Classic. “This place is a show place. People are going to like what they see.”

Manager Bochy definitely liked what he saw on Opening Day. “What an Opening Day, with the atmosphere and all the fans. It was loud down there. It was just a really exciting game. Of course, the comeback made it that much more exciting. I’m just appreciating that here I am back doing what I love to do and being part of that game.”

The game was played in three hours and four minutes despite the 18 runs scored and numerous pitching changes. I feel the fans will enjoy the pace of the game now that a pitching clock is in place. Pitchers have 15 seconds to deliver their pitch, 20 if there is a runner on base.

The Rangers went on to sweep the defending National League champs, winning the second game 16-3 and eking out a 2-1 victory in the third game.

It should be an exciting and fun season. See you at the ballpark. l

Ozzie Garza has been writing about the Rangers for more than 20 years. He is a frequent contributor to the Fort Worth Weekly

LIVE MUSIC CALENDAR

FRIDAY, APRIL 7 • 6-9:00 PM

MIKE WISSEL & THE PAWN

SHOP PISTOLS | TEXAS COUNTRY

SATURDAY, APRIL 8 • 5:30-9 PM

STEVE HILL TRIO

BLUES, ROCK & SOUL

SUNDAY, APRIL 9

EASTER SUNDAY | STORE CLOSED

The larger bases should increase runs.

The parking lots outside the stadium were packed with tailgaters.

It was a great day for Rangers fans as the home team clawed back to beat the Phillies 11-7.

Actual Texas Rangers were honored before the game.

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BUCK U

Final Four Horse(wo) men

The women’s NCAA basketball tournament was the sport to watch in March. Is the apocalypse next?

BY BUCK D. ELLIOTT

I don’t care much for the WNBA. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s not gender-fueled rhetoric, because I don’t much care for the NBA, either. Maybe my elder-Millennial cognition has slowly eroded as more technology invades my life. It’s also likely I have a touch of attention deficit disorder, but professional leagues in which more than 50 regular-season games are played (hockey, basketball, baseball especially) just don’t carry the weight game-to-game for me to follow and give a damn before playoffs commence.

The men’s NCAA tournament this year featured one good week: the first. Semi-historic upsets of a 16 eliminating a top seed were replicated, and highly touted benches were sent packing early and often. But there’s a fine line between teasing potential underdog victors and literally eliminating every squad the layperson thought might appear in the final four. Well, David slayed Goliath — repeatedly — and the sport and ratings suffered for it. The round-of-64 brought record viewership this year, but as network executives were lighting bonfires with Cuban cigars and showering with Glinlivet, they performed an aboutface as later rounds experienced a sharp ratings drop. Top — and even mid-tier — household names were dismissed as the DJ queued the “Electric Slide” and everyone downed their drinks and left.

The highest seeded Final Four team was the University of Connecticut — who advanced to win the national championship — and they’re the only power team despite not appearing in the semifinal since 2014. The Huskies were a regular contender in the early 2000s and had won four championships since ’99, but as a fourth seed out

of the mostly defunct Big East conference, they were hardly expected to play for it all this year and were the highest ranked team remaining after the quarterfinals. Florida Atlantic University were the annual Cinderellas after dispatching Kansas State during the Elite Eight and are tied for the sixth-lowest seed to ever appear in the fourth round. (No squad lower than 11th has ever made the semifinal.) The Owls looked to be in position to punch their ticket as the largest underdog to play for the title before the San Diego State Aztecs went coast-to-coast with less than 10 seconds remaining before hitting a fadeaway jumper for a walk-off one-point victory as the backboard rectangle glared red.

The Aztecs are underdogs of sorts, never advancing past the Sweet 16, in which

they’ve appeared twice. Longtime Frog fans are no stranger to the black-and-red basketball prowess, and the Mountain West ballers spent years beating on the beleaguered Horned hoopers when the two shared conference affiliation for six years. The Aztecs’ last-second downing of the Owls was the game of the weekend — on the men’s side — while UConn ran roughshod over Miami, winning by 13 points, the same margin the Huskies held at halftime.

As much as ESPN tried to spin a historic championship contest while the Aztecs appeared for the first time, a sleepily comfortable margin was taken by the Huskies early on and never relinquished. UConn carried a 12-point lead into halftime and widened that margin to 17 by the final buzzer to cement their fifth title in a quar-

ter century, marking them as an almostblue-blood program along with North Carolina, Duke, and Kentucky.

This year’s NCAA tournament, outside of the opening round, was and has been about the women’s side. The ladies carried better stories, more outstanding individual performances, and more contentious on-court behavior than their counterparts. Numbers don’t lie. Audiences loved the ladies this season, and the women’s Final Four viewership was up 43% from last year. I refuse to lie by omission. Their raw numbers weren’t as high as the men’s tourney, but it’s a stark uptick if nothing else. You’d have to be buried in a deep sports-avoidance hole not to have heard the name Caitlin Clark this week thanks to her unapologetic nature and incredible individual performances. Clark scored 191 points in the tournament, which is the most by a player — man or woman — ever. She recorded 60 assists, which is a new women’s record, only one shy of tying the most in either gender’s tournament. She was arrogant. I wouldn’t call it over the top but very un-Iowan about reminding opponents of her prowess after drilling a three-pointer from what seemed like half court. Clark and the Hawkeyes, who were still a dominant two-seed, did the unthinkable by downing the unbeaten South Carolina Gamecocks during the Final Four — Clark had 41 points in that game, more than the rest of her team combined.

On the other side of the bracket were the third-seeded and only twice-beaten LSU Tigers. It’s hard to fathom how such a deep and dynamic squad led by a hall of fame coach was a three seed after losing only to South Carolina and Tennessee. Their leader, Kim Mulkey, is basketball royalty and continues to prove she’s just going to win everywhere doing anything she decides to. Despite Clark’s tournament domination, the Tigers proved themselves the superior top-to-bottom team and wrangled Mulkey her seventh NCAA championship ring (two playing, one as an assistant coach, and four — three with Baylor — as a head coach). The legend should really consider appearing in a hip-hop video wearing all of her bling in addition to her Olympic and Pan-American gold medals, then just throw in her honor cords for being her high school’s valedictorian to boot, and she’ll ice everyone else out of the shot. The native of Louisiana is now also the only women’s head coach to win a title at multiple schools and only one of two coaches (Rick Pitino) to do so in college basketball at large.

Despite the LSU-versus-Iowa national championship game failing to be nail-biting on the scoreboard, the personality clashes between Clark and LSU’s headliner Angel Reese provided the drama that the game and their sport needed to remain captivating at the conclusion of a tournament that had already categorically outshined their male counterparts. Reese waving her hand in front of her own face — in Clarklike fashion — before pointing to her empty ring finger which would soon be weighed down was a beautiful and brazen gesture needed to bring Cajun spice to a sport which is too often perceived as blander than Heartland soul food. l

Is anyone truly surprised that the women’s tourney was more electric than the men’s?

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NIGHT & DAY

It’s almost Easter weekend. What, you didn’t know? The Fort is currently draped in all sorts of pastels, including everyone’s favorite shades of pink — blush and bashful a la Steel Magnolias — and egg hunts are everywhere. Whether you’re celebrating “religulously” with the Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Pagans, or the unaffiliated group of your choosing or just enjoying the kitschiness of the spring season, there are a lot of events to check out in North Texas.

There’s still time to drag your

happy at the same time by hitting the in Fort Worth (12901 Cabela Dr, 817-337-2400) or the Bass Pro Shop Dr, 972-724-2018). He or she can shop for sport ing goods at the same time. Plus, there is a giant aquarium that takes up the whole front of the store at the Grapevine location. Bonus! Packages start at $15 and include one complimentary print. Reserve a timeslot now at Cabelas.com/Easter.

With Resurrection Day upon us, think about catching up with your mom and them at the Easter services at their church. Be a good kid for once. Afterward (or instead), head to Easter brunch somewhere fancy. We have some suggestions, eight of them in fact, in our ATE DAY8 a Week column in this issue.

With nothing else to do and another Monday workday under my belt, I’m going to check

of gangsters. Our review of its theatrical release in 2021 was not favorable, but I’m still game. I will simply drink a lot of wine during my home screening via the Roku channel, and it will make it all better. Happy Day After!

If you don’t make it out to an Easter egg hunt this weekend, you can still get out there and ramp up those allergies at another spring event. The East Berry Branch of the Fort Worth Public Library (4300 E Berry St, 817-

8pm for an with games and music, enjoy hunting for eggs filled with tickets and prizes especially for the grown folk. This event is free to attend, but let them know you’re coming at Form.JotForm. com/230805092824050. It’s also BYOB, as in bringing your own booze and baskets.

744-8630), features 70 local retailers. This is the perfect spot to do any last-minute shopping for Easter basket filler. If you’re there from 4pm to 6pm today, you can update your profile pic with an #EasterBunnySelfie. There is no cost to pose with the fun fella. There is also a Dolly Parton mural you should check out.

Owner Amanda Pastusek and her sister Kathryn Longbot

tom make up the two-woman food display outfit called The Art of Grazing (2740 Lipscomb St, 817-9189900). Known for catering events all around Fort Worth, they also host classes occasionally. At 10am, there is an hour-long Kids’ Easter Class costing $30 per child (6 and up). The class is hands-on, and attendees will make Eas ter charcuterie boxes with dipped Strawberry “carrots,” edible candy egg nests, bunny brie, and more. “Things might get a tiny bit messy, so save those pretty Easter clothes for the next day.” There are only a few spots left, so register ASAP at TheArtofGrazingFW.com.

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Fort Worth, the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall is a Texas icon and nationally distinguished performing arts venue. Celebrating 25 years of operation, Bass Performance Hall is the permanent home to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Texas Ballet Theater, Fort Worth Opera, Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and the Cliburn.

Performing Arts Fort Worth, the nonprofit organization that owns and operates Bass Hall, also presents touring productions, including the Broadway at the Bass Series presented by PNC Bank and the BNSF Popular Entertainment Series.

For the last 25 years, Bass Hall has enhanced the range, quality and accessibility of cultural fare available to the public; promulgated arts education; and contributed to the cultural life of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, and North Texas.

Join us in Fort Worth on Saturday, April 8th as we celebrate 25 years with a free community event: a Resident Company Showcase featuring the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Texas Ballet Theater, Fort Worth Opera, and the Cliburn.

RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKET TODAY!

Resident Company Showcase

Saturday, April 8 at 6:30 PM

www.basshall.com/25

Second Thursdays at the Carter is generously supported by the Louella Martin Foundation.

Easter Sweets & Treats

While Blue Bonnet Bakery (4705 Camp Bowie Blvd, 817-731-4233) isn’t the only sweet shop in town, it definitely occupies the most interesting space.

Originally called Harper’s Blue Bonnet Bakery, it has been serving handmade treats

from the same recipes since 1934. In 2010, the Hart family, who had purchased the business from the Harpers in 1993, wanted to expand into a larger cake-baking operation, and a former 1920s-era church was available.

The space that once held the Sunday school rooms is now the kitchen/production area. When you walk in the front door, you’re in the old sanctuary, which now houses the baked goods case on the left and tables on the right. The old church pews were converted to booth benches for dine-in service for breakfast and lunch.

Beyond the wedding and special occasion cakes that the 7,700-square-foot space

helped allow, Blue Bonnet is known for its chicken salad sandwiches, double-fudge cake, monkey bread, petit fours, and handcut cookies. As for Easter goodies, a variety of items are available in the bakery case for walk-in purchases, but for larger orders, you need to call ahead.

Local cottage businesses are also focused on Easter this week. Fort Worth

Cookie Gal (@FortWorthCookieGal, 281725-2441) and Shane’s Cookie Corner (@ ShanesCookieCorner, 516-369-0107) both have sweets worthy of your attention. Fort Worth Cookie Gal has small and large Easter dessert boxes available, and Shane’s specializes in custom-decorated sugar cookies specifically.

One home baker who lives in the eastern quadrant of our circulation is having an Easter pop-up event. Head to Sweet Lizzie’s Bakery (4217 Claremont Dr, Grand Prairie, @SweetLizziesBaker) 2pm-7pm Sat, where she will offer themed mini cookies, sweet breads, cinnamon rolls, and more. There will even be allergy-friendly treats available.

Before arriving, check the Facebook page for updates on what’s available. “Just knock if I’m not outside.” Sounds like a culinary adventure to me.

By Jennifer Bovee

Fort Worth Cookie Gal has small and large Easter Boxes available.

Courtesy Facebook

Easter goodies are in the case this week at Blue Bonnet Bakery, but you may want to order ahead.

Courtesy Facebook

The 89-year-old Blue Bonnet Bakery is still slinging cakes, cookies, and savory lunch bites in a 1920s-era church.

Courtesy Blue Bonnet Bakery

EATS & drinks

Working, Class

In a world of “Joe’s” joints, this hangout is a well-placed and wellstocked pizzeria for teens and journalists alike.

Joe’s Hangout, 3020 E Rosedale St, FW. 817-8879557. 11am-9pm Mon-Thu, 11am-10pm Fri-Sat.

STORY AND PHOTOS

BY LAURIE JAMES

A writer buddy of mine who works at a different paper mentioned that he likes Joe’s Hangout, a pizzeria that went into the space vacated by Ben’s Triple B last November. Any restaurant in that corner lot across from Texas Wesleyan University and up the street from Polytechnic High School ought to have no problem generating ka-ching, especially during lunchtime. Ben Merritt’s restaurant closed unceremoniously last year

due to what the chef called the rising cost of doing business post-COVID, but it seems that what would be useful in the neighborhood is a place where you can enjoy a filling meal for a minimum amount of change. College students and writers agree on that point. My buddy sold me on the generous portions

and also on the promise that beverages are delightfully inexpensive during happy hour.

Drink specials vary by the weekday, and since my dining companion and I visited on a Wednesday, my choices of cheap booze included a Long Island Iced Tea or a margarita. Mondays and Tuesday are the days well

drinks are on offer, and apparently Friday is shots night.

Pizzas by the pie come with one topping included. Upgrade to more toppings for an additional charge. This is the real deal — thick-edged, floppy-in-the-middle NY-style continued on page 20

A medium two-topping pizza (heavy on the oregano and mozzarella) made for a filling meal — and some leftovers.

Eats & Drinks

continued from page 18

pie — and it’s served lightly sauced. You’ll probably consume less pizza than you think because the thick edge of crust is almost like a second serving of bread. Maybe Mama’s Pizza has spoiled us these many years, but there was no creamy Italian dressing to dip the crust in, so a side of ranch and an extra side of Joe’s delightfully spicy, red pepper-infused arrabbiata sufficed.

The scrumptious sauce actually kicked off our meal. It arrived with the rather standard garlic knots. Make sure you have enough handy for anything else on the menu primed for dipping. On top of the plastic counter where you order are displays of a few of the other specialty appetizers, like pepperoni or spinach pinwheels.

A saffron-colored Jamaican meat pie under glass looked unusual among the tra-

ditional Mediterranean nibbles, so we tried it. Not as flaky as an empanada, the pie was tasty but not filled with the authentic spices that I miss from the dearly departed Angie’s Bikkles (the one and only Jamaican restaurant I’ve ever reviewed, and I still remember the meat pies there with nostalgic love).

If you follow a gluten-free or grain-free diet, Joe’s serves a couple of salads. The manager also offered to create a crustless pizza in a bowl with cheese and toppings, but the salad option worked fine.

Perhaps time spent in fancier restaurants or my January trip to Little Italy in Manhattan are too fresh in memory, but when I saw antipasti salad on the menu, I assumed that meant that the ham, salami, capicola, and provolone cheese would be in individual slices. Instead, we got a few pinwheel-style meats rolled with something that was provolone-ish. Four preserved artichoke quarters and a large bed of mostly iceberg lettuce studded with black olives

completed the sad little presentation.

The Greek salad was a better choice, with a romaine and iceberg mix and a ton of green olives and cucumbers under a generous blanket of feta cheese, which provided protein plus your daily recommended intake of sodium. The house oil-and-vinegar dressing was just that –– no discernable spices other than the red onion in the salad and the salty olives and cheese.

The pizza had arrived with a heavy sprinkle of oregano, and if the Greek salad had been more seasoned, the whole meal might have devolved into flowery oregano chaos. I love the flavor of oregano on a thick bed of whole milk mozzarella cheese. My dining companion’s Swedish ancestry and daintier tastebuds were assaulted by the herb.

There were so many things that we didn’t have room to try, including a handful of desserts plus the pasta, the chicken or eggplant parmigiana, and the other kinds of

pizzas –– stuffed, Sicilian, or in calzone-like rolls. Two can eat pretty well for two nights on a medium New York-style pizza.

Walking out, I was reminded of dining with a different writer buddy from the Weekly. He was legendary for picking unassuming holes in the wall if you went to lunch with him. His favorite restaurants didn’t serve the fanciest chow, but you left full and happy. Joe’s Hangout seems made for the budgets of both students and journalists, with lunch for between $5 and $10, outlet plugs and built-in USB charging ports at practically every table, a small arcade, and a few large-screen televisions — because we all have to lift our heads up out of our homework. l

The Greek salad was a cornucopia of salty goodness.

Joe’s antipasti wasn’t strictly authentic.

MUSIC

Spring Palace in Bloom

phrase — it’s true that youth might be a salve against the grind of late nights and cramped vans, the stomach-churning sustenance of greasy gas station fare, the endless blows to one’s self-worth brought on by complacent crowds and a general state of abject poverty, but if you’re still trying to give it a go as you approach middle age, it’s likely that none of that shit ever bothered you anyway. Actually being able to pay your bills can be just as much of a liniment to most of those pains, yet for some reason, an “either-or” misconception persists. True art is suffering, supposedly. There must be some necessary baseline of discomfort for true expressionism, one that rarely coincides with a cushy middle-class lifestyle. As Chase Johnson puts it, “It’s hard to be hip and responsible at the same time.”

just really hard to do. I’m really happy to take this project all the way and finally put something out. I feel really lucky to be in a space where we can do music and there’s a community that’s accepting of what we’re doing and other bands who are doing kind of the same thing.”

from the ill-fated Texas Agricultural Exposition building that burned to the ground in 1889 just two years after opening — with drummer Seth Gomez and bassist Jacob Jones, with whom Johnson played in the Noble Chocolatiers, in January 2022. He said he liked the idea of starting a new project syncing with the start of a new year.

BY PATRICK HIGGINS

It should be easy to bristle at the mildewed cliche that “rock ’n’ roll is a young man’s game.” Sure — ignoring for a moment the archaic gender-exclusivity inherent in the

With his new band, Spring Palace, the 39-year-old frontman demonstrates that, although it may be hard, it’s not impossible. While there are no spring chickens in Spring Palace, they’re proving that another tired cliche — “better late than never” — still holds a bit of truth. The melodic indie power trio is releasing its debut EP, Whatever Happens, and the five-song collection of hook-driven, guitar-centric pop is worth the long wait. The group will celebrate the record’s release with a show at Twilite Lounge Saturday. Though he’s played around town and released his share of bedroom recordings, Whatever Happens is Johnson’s first successful attempt at what he calls doing a “real record the ‘right’ way.”

He added, “It’s really hard to cross the finish line and actually put out a record. It’s

After kicking around in a few bands in the early aughts, most notably a group called the Noble Chocolatiers, which due to “being caught in a perfectionist trap” never ended up releasing any material, Johnson took an extended hiatus from music altogether. He focused on his career and raising his now 7-year-old son, Harvey. Now, with his career on track and his son a little older, he feels like he is finally in a position to be able to pursue music again.

“At some point, I realized I’m really happiest when I’m doing music,” he said. “If I had to put one hat on, I’d say that I’m a creator. I’m a person that creates things. That’s when I’m most happy, when I’m creating things, so I figured I needed to start something up.”

Though Johnson dismisses the idea of Spring Palace as “another pandemic project,” he admits that the lockdown did afford him some extra time to begin writing again. He started the trio — which takes its name

“It’s a little bit of feeling two things at the same time,” he said of trying to start a band from scratch again after such a long layoff. “Part of me feels like I’m probably a little bit behind. There’s like 10 years of work that would have been great to have [behind me]. The other part is just kind of accepting the reality of the present-day music scene, that the best time to start something is right now.”

After the trio played a handful of shows, they set out to track what would become Whatever Happens at an Arlington studio called The Cove in June of last year. Producer/engineer Peter Weirenga (Sur Duda, Siberian Traps) was tapped to run the sessions. After one weekend of tracking, however, The Cove shut its doors to the public, and Spring Palace was left to find another studio to try to finish the EP. Through a connection with his wife, Johnson reached out to Midlake’s McKenzie Smith about his Redwood Studios in Denton. Smith agreed but originally wanted Spring Palace to use a Redwood in-house engineer. However, the band was determined to have Wierenga finish what he’d started with the group, and they successfully negotiated having him do so.

continued on page 22

It’s been a minute, but Chase Johnson finally drags an album of his studied melodic indie ‘over the finish line.’

Spring Palace EP Release Show 8pm Sat w/Cool Jacket and Black Market Garden at Twilite Lounge, 212 Lipscomb, FW. Free. 817-720-5483.

Music

continued from page 21

“Peter is our guy,” Johnson said. “You’ve got to stick with your guy,”

The final result of Palace’s and Weirenga’s work is a breezy collection of infectious indie pop. Over his clever Malkmus-ian guitar antics and via earworm melodies and drum-tight harmonies, Johnson tackles lyrical themes appropriate for a man of his station, things like nostalgia and fatherhood — though he shrugs at the possibility of the latter being a little on-the-nose.

“It’s a weird thing to tackle as a theme,” he said of writing about being a dad like he does on the track “Only Son.” “I feel like I did it from a very authentic place, of being

not perfect but still trying to be loving and supportive. It’s not something that people really write about often. I mean, I get it. No one wants to be called ‘dad rock.’ ”

With the band’s first effort brought officially “over the finish line,” Johnson is looking forward to what comes next, the current musical climate around town and the trio’s place within it.

“When you finish an album, you get to have it out and people are going to react to it however they react to it,” he said, “and you don’t have a whole lot of control over how that is, but everyone has been so nice! Within our own little community, I feel really lucky to have people on the same wavelength as us. When I was trying to do music 10, 15 years ago, it felt like there wasn’t anyone doing [similar things]. Now, it’s really nice because I feel like there’s a lot of people in Fort Worth who are on the same page.” l

Chase Johnson (left): “It’s kind of accepting the reality of the present-day music scene, that the best time to start something is right now.”

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Happy Easter Weekend!

For events, eats, and treats to check out this Easter Weekend, see Night & Day on Page 13, Big Ticket on Page 16, and Ate Day8 of Easter Brunch at FWWeekly.com in the Calendar drop-down.

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