Fort Worth Weekly // June 8-14, 2022 by Fort Worth Weekly

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METROPOLIS Parents are not happy with the controversial church now in charge of their kids’ school. BY EDWARD BROWN

EATS & DRINKS Thanks to a viral pie, Pizza Buzz is buzzing. BY MADISON SIMMONS

Snowball’s Chance in Hillsboro

The Hill County town finally acknowledges a racial atrocity, thanks to the work of one Fort Worth family. B Y

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EATS & DRINKS Ober Here’s protein-packed power bowls are perfect for breakfast, lunch, second lunch, dinner, and breakfast again. BY LAURIE JAMES

MUSIC Teal Stripe sets out to answer if hair metal had a heart. BY PAT R I C K H I G G I N S

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INSIDE Friends in High Places

Among other things, it seems county judges get to handpick their replacements, who may or may not even be qualified.

Hurry Ober Here

This former food truck is slinging some serious Filipino-ish fare. By Laurie James

Bob Niehoff, General Manager Ryan Burger, Art Director Jim Erickson, Circulation Director CONTRIBUTORS

Dads, Grads, Glads

Just in time for Father’s Day and graduation, North Texas abounds in fun foodie stuff to do.

By Jennifer Bovee

Mammal on Trial

There are concerts, sure, but finding out the orange, rape-y source of the insurrection should not be missed. By Steve Steward

Anthony Mariani, Editor Lee Newquist, Publisher

Cour tesy Facebook

By Edward Brown

STAFF

J un e 8-1 4, 2022

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METROPOLIS

Grooming Christian Nationalists? A parent and student allege that spiritual and emotional abuse are rampant at Mercy Culture’s private school.

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JUNE 8-14, 2022

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Three years ago, Jessica was excited about the change in ownership at her kids’ school. There would be new resources and equipment for her children, she thought. We are concealing Jessica’s true identity to protect her from retaliation. But that was three years ago. Last month, Jessica decided that her remaining two children would not return to the private school in the fall. She blames the horrendous experience on Mercy Culture Church. The charismatic congregation that initially came from North Texas-based Gateway Church and that is located on the North Side had purchased the K-12 school, Calvary Christian Academy, and rebranded it as Mercy Culture Preparatory around 2019. Jessica alleges that Mercy Prep’s fundamentalist instruction and rigid enforcement of rules caused her teenage son to have panic attacks that led to uncontrolled bouts of vomiting. Jessica also claims school leaders emotionally and spiritually abused her fifthgrade daughter. Now that her children are safely out of the private school, Jessica worries about the direction of Mercy Culture Preparatory and whether future instances of abuse will be reported or even taken seriously. School leaders recently instituted a reenrollment program, meaning that current students are not guaranteed a spot with each new school year. The mother believes that move is intended to push out non-Mercy Culture Church members. School head Esther Penate — wife of Mercy Culture elder and failed Fort Worth mayoral candidate Steve Penate — did not respond to requests for comment on this story. Jessica shared the following account that was relayed from her children. In December, the school’s spiritual advisor ordered middle and high school students to place their noses on a blue circle in the middle of the gym’s floor. Around a

Calvary Christian Academy is undergoing a rebranding that includes booting non-Mercy Culture members, one former Calvary Christian mother alleges.

third of the children complied. Even more disturbing to Jessica than the order was the instruction that the spiritual leader gave the children who planted their faces near her feet. “She said they were blessed for being obedient to God and they should pray for mercy for their friends who didn’t come down,” Jessica said. “That is some psycho Handmaid’s Tale-type environment. That is disturbing and spiritual abuse.” One incoming senior at Mercy Culture Preparatory who asked that we conceal their name and gender said the school’s founding organization, Mercy Culture Church, needs to be seen for what it is. “I do think they’re a cult,” the student told me. “Maybe not everyone sees it because they have bad discernment, but there’s clearly some pastor worship and spiritual abuse that has made its way into our school.” The student also expressed alarm at how the school’s spiritual leader coerced students to plant their faces on the gym floor as a supposed sign of obedience to God. “If it was a vision from God, why manipulate a bunch of children to fulfill it and not let it just happen?” the student said. “I went back to class crying because I was afraid I was going to hell for not bowing down to these people’s commands. We refer to this as the ‘Blue Line Chapel,’ and everyone knows what we’re talking about. The spiritual abuse is real.” The student said the spiritual advisor sometimes invites up her husband, who openly mocks Baptists and yells at the children for having the “fear of man,” a possible term for spiritual doubt. Jessica said that around half of the school’s several hundred students are not reenrolling next year, based on feedback she is receiving from fellow parents. That may be part of Mercy Prep’s plan. “Almost 50% of the parents there are true believers” in Mercy Culture’s vision, Jessica said, adding that a growing portion of the parents attend the church. If Mercy Culture Pastor Landon Schott “says to send

their kids to the school, they are going to do it. Mercy Culture members get a 10% tuition discount. [School leaders] are combing through each current family” for any sign of disloyalty to Mercy Culture doctrine. The Mercy Prep student said the vast majority of the upcoming senior class has decided to not reenroll this fall, meaning the school may see a drastic drop in upper-class enrollment in a few months. The school leaders “have become less welcoming,” the student told me. “If you don’t believe exactly the way they do, they say you aren’t partnering with them and then tie your lack of partnership to some sort of spirit. They don’t want you if you’re Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist — literally anything other than them. I think that as Christians, we should open our arms to everyone because we’re supposed to love, right? If you’re actually trying to act like Jesus, you don’t manipulate and push your own agendas on other people. Calvary was a great home. I’m actually glad that Mercy Culture is taking over and owning up to their nonsense. Calvary shouldn’t have its name tied to that.” The accounts from the Mercy Prep parent and student mirror allegations by two former Mercy Culture Church members who recently told me that church leaders follow a narrow interpretation of Christianity. There is no room for denominational Christians or members of the LGBTQ+ community that Schott verbally attacks on a regularly basis. The former church members said Mercy Culture is a powerful local leader in a broader Christian Nationalist movement that seeks to end this country’s long tradition of separating church and state. Schott uses church services to call on worshipers to vote for right-wing candidates who hold bigoted beliefs about anyone who is not cisgender and heterosexual. Jessica said that teaching children that only nondenominational charismatic churches are truly Christian is damaging to the emotional and spiritual development of children. “It is dangerous when you tell children that there is one way to worship and anyone who does it different is wrong,” Jessica said. “You are alienating those children. They start to look at the world like it’s scary and bad. It is abusive because you are raising children to think the outside world is bad and evil instead of teaching them to have an open mind where you can love everyone, which is what kids should be able to do.” Jessica said she was motivated to contact our magazine because parents need to be warned about what is happening inside Mercy Culture Preparatory. “Children shouldn’t be crying because they can’t speak in tongues at elementary,” Jessica said. “My daughter’s best friend is leaving because she cries because she can’t speak in tongues. That is abusive.” l

S T A T I C

The rulings of Texas’ criminal court judges are above reproach — unless, of course, defendants have the time and money to appeal those decisions to a higher court that typically doesn’t reverse them. Protections for criminal judges go far beyond favorable appellate rulings. Our magazine’s ongoing investigation of potential misconduct by several active and visiting retired Tarrant County judges has uncovered a statewide system that works to shield them from meaningful scrutiny or accountability. Judge David Evans erroneously assigned one longtime misdemeanor criminal judge to several dozen criminal cases that included felony charges between 2015 and June 2022. Though Judge Daryl Coffey presided as a senior judge, he is only a visiting retired judge, not a senior judge — a title that can be bestowed only by Texas Chief Justice Nathan Hecht or by the Texas Supreme Court through petition. Hecht’s spokesperson confirmed that Coffey never sought senior judge status. Administrative judges, who each oversee one of 11 judicial regions in the state, maintain lists of eligible visiting retired judges, who, if they wish to be assigned to criminal cases, must elect to become a type of judicial officer known as a senior judge. They can do this by sending the state chief justice, Hecht, a letter requesting that status within 90 days after retiring. Based on court documents, Coffey never completed the steps required to preside over any cases after his retirement, and Evans has ignored that reality for the past seven years. Evans, who oversees the Eighth Administrative Judicial Region that includes Tarrant County, has also ignored our requests for comment. The public deserves answers to another potential scandal we are uncovering. Several visiting retired judges in Tarrant County

This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly. com. Submissions will be edited for factuality, clarity, and concision.

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“Compliance with the nineteen requests you have sent between March 8 and April 20 has substantially and unreasonably impeded the routine operations of the Eighth Administrative Judicial Region and will continue to do so,” Evans wrote. Evans then went on to write that the records we are requesting are considered “closed and stored in bulk.” Fort Worth Weekly, another Evans letter read, “still sends requests that do not reasonably identify the documents sought or which require clarification.” One of many clearly worded requests from us reads, “Please find by this email my request under Rule 12 for copies of all sworn oaths filed by Judge Coffey with your office between Jan. 1, 2018, and March 8, 2022.” Releases of documents from Evans’ office through what is known as Rule 12 requests have slowed. Multiple requests have been answered with large bills. Evans appears to be delaying and possibly denying our media requests even though the documents we seek should be readily accessible. If they are not easy to access, that may be by design. With few exceptions, each Rule 12 release from Evans’ office has only further entangled the Eighth Administrative Region in definitely questionable and potentially unethical dealings. Our readers have learned from the scant documents that have been released so far that there is a loophole in the system of randomly assigning visiting retired judges to felony cases. Felony-level judges are assigned randomly in Tarrant County, but a little-known form that we discovered via Rule 12 shows that active judges can personally request visiting retired judges to cover cases for any number of reasons. Defendants would be horrified to learn that, based on our findings, many judges choose their replacements for personal reasons. On Jan. 31, County Judge Chuck Vanover requested that he be replaced by Coffey for a mid-February two-day misdemeanor case. Vanover and Coffey are known to be friends. The documents released by Evans do not disclose what the charges were or the verdict. Judges are expected to miss court dates only for emergencies or mandatory continuing education courses. Vanover wrote on the Request for Assignment form that he would be “speaking at a police officer’s 25th-anniversary memorial,” a personal choice that does not qualify as a reason

JUNE 8-14, 2022

Texas offers scant resources for answering basic questions about judicial misconduct, and that’s likely by design.

The Tom Vandergriff Civil Courts Building, where the Eighth Administrative Region is headquartered, is at the center of an unfolding scandal that likely sent dozens of defendants to prison — possibly as a favor to an unqualified visiting retired judge who made around $500 a day overseeing those cases.

for requesting to be replaced by a visiting retired judge who is paid upwards of $500 a day by the county. Coffey’s false title of senior judge raises serious questions about whether he was statutorily qualified to be assigned by Evans to cases that likely led to dozens of criminal convictions. The absence of any oath of office filed by Coffey since his retirement in 2015 raises doubts about his constitutional qualification to rule in court cases since then. Coffey, who is far from the only retired judge who routinely fails to file oaths, did file an oath as part of his choice to continue serving as a visiting retired judge, but that sworn statement simply verified that he met the requirements to be considered for approval as a senior judge. Judges are unforgiving when it comes to enforcing paperwork for appeals and other legal actions. A missed filing deadline or improperly submitted form can mean a lost opportunity to overturn a wrongful conviction. These same judges, though, give great leeway to colleagues who file botched judicial paperwork. Sloppy, incomplete, and missing legal documents abound in the Eighth Administrative Region. In February, based on court documents, Judge David Hagerman, citing an upcoming judicial conference, requested to be replaced by a retired judge who is not eligible for assignment. Judge Lena Levario is not on the public list of eligible judges which Hagerman clearly ignored or forgot about. The assignment was later canceled. There’s also Judge Robert Brotherton, who has filed only one of two constitutionally required oaths, the anti-bribery one, since 2018, the scope of our request with the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Missing from Brotherton’s filings is the required oath of office that all visiting retired judges must sign and file as part of their choice to be a visiting retired judge. Brotherton also failed to follow Chapter 75 of the Texas Government Code by requesting senior status while still serving as an active judge. Retiring judges have a 90-day window after retirement to request senior status from Chief Justice Hecht, who may have disregarded state law when awarding Brotherton the title of senior judge regardless. Brotherton recently presided over the case of James Floyd Jr., a Black Fort Worthian subsequently sentenced to life in prison by a jury for aggravated robbery. The legal and moral implications for the men and women who placed trust in a criminal justice system that willingly assigns disqualified judges to dozens of cases cannot be overstated. Evans owes answers to the public and every defendant he has assigned Coffey to since 2015. We asked a spokesperson at the district attorney’s office about the potential ramifications for the cases Coffey has overseen since 2015 and whether prosecutors knew about his false title and lack of oaths. Our questions were ignored. l

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Giving Judges a Free Pass?

C o u r t e s y o f Ta r r a n t C o u n t y

METRO

appointed on a case-by-case basis by Evans have neglected to take their oath of office on the first day of each trial as they are supposed to. The oath empowers judges to deprive defendants of liberty and property, and judges who fail to take that oath have had their rulings overturned. The concerted effort of visiting retired judges in Tarrant County and across the state to skirt this obligation connotes coordination among them and a mentality that “if everyone does it, then none of us can be held accountable.” While active judges take their oaths at the beginning of their term of office and renew them with each reelection, retired judges do not have a home court, so they must take the oath on the first day of each new assignment. Visiting retired judges here and across the Lone Star State routinely dodge this constitutional requirement even though an oft-cited 1999 case from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Prieto Bail Bonds v. State, reversed the ruling of a retired visiting retired judge because he had failed to renew his oath of office before presiding over the case. “We can see no logic whereby a senior judge’s oath would survive an expired term of office,” the court’s final ruling read. Since felony-level criminal judges, as opposed to misdemeanor criminal judges, must maintain an active law license, we reached out to the State Bar of Texas with questions about what disciplinary actions can be taken against active and visiting retired judges who commit unethical or potentially illegal acts. A spokesperson said the Bar does not comment on matters tied to judges because the Bar deals only with certifying and disciplining attorneys. The Bar referred us to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, the only state agency focused on investigating and disciplining judges. The Texas Constitution created the commission in 1876 as a 13-member panel that proactively investigates judicial misconduct throughout the state. A spokesperson with the commission told us that answering questions about judicial misconduct would amount to giving legal advice, a service the commission does not provide. One of our reporters also unsuccessfully attempted to ask the commission basic questions about Coffey’s apparently false senior title. Every question was met politely but firmly with a response that the commission does not give legal advice. The commission rarely takes disciplinary action against judges. Although the commission has the authority to request the Supreme Court of Texas to suspend a judge from office, that step is also exceedingly rare. The vast majority of suspensions result from criminal indictments or convictions. Public sanctions — another way to discipline judges — are just slaps on the wrist. The commission issues an average of two per month. The names of judges given private sanctions are never publicly disclosed. A spokesperson for Texas Chief Justice Hecht also declined to comment on our findings, saying that commenting would constitute giving “legal analysis.” On two occasions, Judge Evans issued our magazine a long letter in which he scolded us for making inquiries into judicial misconduct.

Snowball’s Chance in Hillsboro

Finding both mother and child dead, the negro drug both into the sitting room and piling cotton between them, set it on fire. He then went into the garage, which was built onto the house and to make sure of the burning of the building and thus destroying the evidence of his crime.

The Hill County town finally acknowledges a racial atrocity, thanks to the work of one Fort Worth family. B Y

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JUNE 8-14, 2022

It all started in early January of this year when a 68-year-old Black woman named Crady Johnson contacted me about a piece I’d written in the Fort Worth Weekly three years earlier. “Dull in the Heart” is about Bragg Williams, an intellectually disabled Black man who was burned at the stake in Hillsboro, the Hill County seat, in 1919. My story had run close to the centennial of the incident, and Crady had just stumbled onto it. A lifelong resident of Fort Worth, Crady is Williams’ niece. She wanted to know more about me and more about what I knew regarding Williams. She and her 57-year-old sister, Tonya Camel, also a resident of Fort Worth all her life, had heard their Uncle Bragg was lynched, but their mother never talked about it much. My narrative of the events shocked them. Crady invited me to meet with her family at a restaurant in the Mid-Cities, and I accepted her invitation. By the time we got together, Crady and some of Williams’ other relatives had done their homework. They knew I was the author of The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas (History Press 2014) and Black Holocaust: The Paris Horror and a Legacy of Texas Terror (Eakin Press 2015). They also knew I had worked with descendants of victims of the Slocum Massacre to attain the first state historical marker specifically acknowledging racial violence against African Americans in Texas. The meeting was somber but congenial. I shared what I knew, and they shared what they were aware of. I told them the “Dull in

E.R. Bills

f you live in a place long enough, you begin to think you know it. Or that it defines you or becomes part of your DNA. And if you were born there, its role in your identity is official. But that certainly wasn’t how I felt at the March 8, 2022 regular meeting of the Hill County Commissioners Court in Central Texas, particularly when, after a pledge of allegiance to the American flag, we were expected to pledge our allegiance to the Texas flag. I didn’t even know Texas had a pledge of allegiance, and I certainly was never asked to perform one when I was in school. I didn’t even know the words. I just kept my right hand over my heart and mumbled through it. It was off-putting, and I looked it up when I got home that evening. A pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag didn’t become official until two conservative lawmakers co-sponsored a bill requiring schoolchildren to recite it along with the national pledge in 2003. This surprised me. I’d lived my whole life in Texas and had no clue. So, there I’d been, standing in the galley of the Hill County Commissioners Court pretending to make the pledge with three Black women and two young Black boys.

(From left to right) Letha Young, Tonya Camel, and Crady Johnson, standing at the spot where Bragg Williams was burned at the stake in 1919, began the fight for a historical marker not long after reading a Weekly story about the incident.

the Heart” piece was an expansion of an excerpt from Black Holocaust. We had a nice conversation about a dark subject, and we all learned some things. Then, they popped the question. They wanted to know what I thought about trying to erect a historical marker acknowledging Williams’ ghastly, extralegal execution in Hillsboro. “We needed to do something,” Tonya said last week at our meeting, “because justice was never done, and Uncle Bragg never received due process, and nobody had to answer for it.” “We don’t know what happened or whether Bragg was guilty or not,” added Letha Young, Crady and Tonya’s 81-one-year-old mother and a fan of TV Westerns. “The whole thing makes me think of Hang ’Em High with Clint Eastwood. He gets hung by some vigilantes for something he didn’t do, but the sheriff comes along and cuts the hanging rope loose before Eastwood’s character dies. Where was the sheriff or the police when Bragg was being burned alive on the courthouse square?” I didn’t sugarcoat things. I told Crady and the others that it would probably be a long, difficult, uphill slog. What I didn’t tell them was that I wasn’t sure if I was really up for another contentious, time-consuming marker effort, but in a way, I felt obliged. I was the one who dug up a lot of this stuff. How could I not stand by it, defend it, and pursue the justice that my book Black Holocaust had called for? How could I turn my back on them or this history? Why were so many white Texans bent on turning their backs on this kind of history?

In the early afternoon of Dec. 2, 1918, Annie Wells and her son Curtis, who was almost 5 years

old, were beaten to death at their home near Itasca. The husband and father, George Wells, had gone to Hillsboro, and the older Wells children were in school not far away. Annie and Curtis’ attacker killed them and then carried their bodies into the Wells residence, setting it aflame presumably to destroy any evidence. Neighbors and the older Wells children, who were on their way home from school, saw smoke from the fire and retrieved the mother and son’s remains before they were badly burned. The details of the case according to the Jan. 18, 1919 edition of the Hillsboro Mirror are noted here: Along the latter part of November, the Wells family was preparing to use their automobile, and a negro [Bragg Williams] working for them was starting the car, when he charged [accused] Mr. Well’s [sic] little boy [Curtis] with stopping the engine and the boy kicked him. The negro kicked him back and was discharged. On the second of December, while Mr. Wells was in Hillsboro the negro returned to the Wels [sic] home, and, according to the negro’s story, Mrs. Wells asked him what he wanted and he told her work. She asked him why he kicked her son and began abusing him and struck him in the head with a broom she held in her hand. He grabbed the broom and she reached for a gun standing on the gallery. The negro beat her over the head, knocking her down and then hit her over the head twice more. Mrs. Wells [sic] little four-year-old son then started for the school house which was only a few hundred yards away, and the negro started after him and hitting him over the head with the gun.

The Mirror reported that, afterward, Williams went home, picked some cotton, and was arrested by “Sheriff J.W. Martin” later while chopping wood. The Mirror’s report then stated that Martin and his wife (and someone named “Earl Pruitt and his wife”) transported Williams to Hillsboro to turn him over to the local police. The tale of the transport reads more like a Sunday drive than the conveyance of a cold-blooded murderer to jail. Accounts, however, vary. Described by the Waco News-Tribune as “tall and ungainly, and seemingly of low mentality,” Bragg Williams was apparently taken into custody from the home he shared with his parents approximately three miles from the Wells residence, but before there had even been an official accusation made, a group of Hill County citizens attempted to lynch him, and Martin (with or without his wife and Earl Pruitt and his wife) had delivered the suspect to the home of a local attorney named W.C. Wear instead of directly to the county jail. Martin solicited Wear’s opinion as to whether or not Williams could have been the perpetrator of the crime and asked Wear to prepare a written statement for Williams to sign. Wear went to Martin’s patrol car and asked Williams to make a statement, and the suspect reportedly complied. After hearing Williams out, Wear made remarks to Sheriff Martin that were disturbing. Based on his writings, he told Martin that “the people of Itasca community would come down before morning and kill the son of a bitch and they ought to kill him.” Wear insisted that “there was probably nobody in Texas more opposed to mob law than he, yet the facts as detailed by the defendant was [sic] so horrible that in this instance he felt an impulse himself to mete out speedy punishment.” Martin asked Wear what he should do with Williams, and the attorney was unequivocal. He said if Williams was placed in the Hill County jail, “he would be killed before morning” and others may be as well. Wear advised Martin to take Williams to Waco. In early January 1919, Wear was asked by the Hill County District Court to defend Williams, but on Jan. 11, Wear formally recused himself. The lawyer’s recusal was appropriate and necessary, especially, perhaps, due to his expressed personal feelings of the incident as communicated to Martin, but Wear had also complicated the task of defending Williams by sharing the details of Williams’ pre-Miranda, reportedly incriminating statement to others in Hill County. And this fact is recorded in Wear’s official recusal request, the writings referenced above. He said the incident was so “unusual” that he referred “to the matter and made statements to various and sundry people as to what occurred.” On Jan. 13, 1919, Texas Governor William P. Hobby received an urgent communication requesting Texas Rangers to protect Williams. The message stated that “the prisoner was in imminent danger of being lynched,” and the local sheriff (who was apparently named James continued on page 7

Feature

As this postcard (front and back) of the 1915 Will Stanley lynching in Temple proves, Central Texas was pretty near inhospitable to African Americans.

continued on page 8

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JUNE 8-14, 2022

were familiar with Williams’ “low mentality” and anticipated the defense team’s plea. The prosecution prepared a professional refutation. They brought in a Fort Worth alienist (the term for a psychiatrist or psychologist in those days) named W.B. Allison. A practitioner at the Arlington Sanitarium in Tarrant County, Allison was born in 1879 in Falls County, a hotbed of racial violence during Reconstruction and well into the 1890s. He undermined the defense team’s insanity plea before the all-white, allmale jury. Williams never testified in court, but a sizable portion of the community must have been aware of his statement to Wear and he did apparently return to Hillsboro in the same khaki coveralls that he had left in — the coveralls that identified him as “Snowball.” The prosecution subsequently produced two white female witnesses who said they saw a Black man in “yellow” coveralls heading in the direction of the Wells residence before the murder and a young Black girl, Smithy McDuffy, who claimed she saw a Black man in “yellow” coveralls running from the direction of the residence after she had heard the screams of Annie Wells. A white jailer named Jess Vanoy testified that Williams had blood on his coveralls and shoes (presumably after Williams was apprehended). Williams’ brother Natural was then summoned, and he testified that Bragg had blood on his shoes the day he was captured — but didn’t mention anything about blood being on his coveralls. All of which, of course, begged important questions. If the Hillsboro Mirror account of the crime was even remotely accurate, why wouldn’t Sheriff Martin, Mrs. Martin, attorney Wear, and Earl Pruitt and/or Mrs. Pruitt have been subpoenaed to confirm reports of blood on Williams’ person — especially if he was wearing khaki coveralls, which would have made any amount of blood obvious? Also, the details of the murder weapons were contradictory. The Mirror reported that Williams dispatched Annie Wells and her son Curtis with the butt of a shotgun. The court files indicate the weapons used to murder Annie Wells were the butt of a shotgun and a sharp instrument. The sharp instrument was never

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Yancy McDaniel, not “J.W. Martin”) had declared that not only would he not stop white citizens from lynching Williams, but he also opposed any attempt by Texas Rangers to protect the suspect. Governor Hobby sent Texas Rangers and they transferred Williams from Waco to Dallas, where he remained until his trial date. On Jan. 16, 1919, Williams was escorted back to Hillsboro by the Texas Rangers and his trial began. After Wear’s recusal due to an arguably unconstitutionally procured confession and the irresponsible dissemination of the details of the reported confession, two highly regarded Hill County attorneys — Walter Collins and Albion M. Frazier — were appointed by District Court Judge H.B. Porter to defend Williams, and they did so under protest. They requested a change of venue for the case (in light of the certainty that the information that Wear shared rapidly spread through the county), but it was denied. As the prosecution and defense seated a jury, Williams sat in the courtroom under the constant guard of six Texas Rangers. Collins and Frazier entered a plea of “not guilty” for Williams by reason of insanity and, interestingly, protested the nomenclature of the case, The State of Texas vs. Bragg Williams, alias Snowball. Williams apparently regularly wore faded khaki coveralls, and locals reportedly referred to him as “Snowball.” In many settings, this alias arguably would have constituted a term of scorn or derision, perhaps especially to adult Black men of the period. The court’s insistence on using it suggests a broad local familiarity with Williams, a possible pet nickname, and arguably the kind of label a Black man of “low mentality” may not have minded, but for Collins and Frazier, it was at least a passive-aggressive form of denigration and had no reasonable bearing on the case. In terms of the defendant’s plea, not guilty by reason of insanity, Collins and Frazier specifically noted that “malice aforethought, which is absolutely essential to constitute murder, is where one with sedate, deliberate mind and formed design unlawfully kills another.” Collins and Frazier argued that Williams was intellectually disabled and that the evidence presented in the case would not rise above the threshold of reasonable doubt. They suggested that Williams’ stunted intellectual capacity made him incapable of murdering someone with a “sedate, deliberate mind” and “preformed design” and pointed out that — considering the defendant’s intellectual disability — if Williams had, as accused, slain Mrs. Wells, it could have been only due to a perceived threat as interpreted from his limited, cognitively impaired perspective. This technically qualified the acts Williams was accused of as self-defense. This exact narrative was conveyed in the Hillsboro Mirror. The afore-noted excerpts from the Jan. 18 edition of the Mirror, which were based on the confession that defendant Williams allegedly gave Wear (and which Wear admittedly spread), state that Mrs. Wells attacked Williams with a broom, which, in a cognitively impaired person’s mind, may have constituted an imminent threat or have compelled a defensive response. County Attorney Earl E. Carter and Assistant County Attorney H.P. Shead, however,

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discovered or produced. On Friday, Jan. 17, Williams was convicted of murder, and the Texas Rangers were abruptly and surprisingly instructed to depart. Williams — arguably because he did not fully grasp the implication or the gravity of the court’s verdict or sentence — laughed. The defense team’s argument that Williams was intellectually disabled is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than with this laugh. The year was 1919, and the white-owned, white-run, and white-staffed newspapers at the time would have focused on Williams’ laugh if it had been in any way malicious, ill-intended, or otherwise contemptuous or defiant, but no such reporting exists.

On the morning of Monday, Jan. 20, the court reconvened for sentencing, and Judge Horton B. Porter condemned Williams to be hanged by the neck until dead on Feb. 21. What happened next was completely unexpected. Collins and Frazier had defended Williams under protest, and his guilty verdict was not an unpopular result. Once it was handed down and the death sentence was imposed, however, the two attorneys deemed it unjust due to the defendant’s limited intellectual capacity and promptly requested a retrial. And when their petition for a new trial was denied, they immediately filed a notice of appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. At approximately 11:45 a.m., a mob — upset by the appeal and no longer in the mood for due process — assembled at the Hill County

Jail and demanded Williams be handed over. The jailers refused to give him up, so the mob battered the jail door down, stormed the facility, and seized Williams from his cell. The mob then dragged him to a concrete “safety first” post at the intersection of Elm and Covington streets on the southwest corner of the courthouse square. A cadre of enthusiastic vigilantes quickly collected hay, wood, and coal and piled them around Williams, dousing the combustibles in coal oil. A match was then applied, and the conflagration killed Williams in a matter of minutes. Though he put up no resistance, he was heard to exclaim, “Help me, Cap” three times before the flames consumed him. Williams’ body was reportedly left in the embers of the fire for hours. Photographs were taken of the atrocity, and one Hill County lawyer is said to

have kept one of the images framed in his office for decades.

On Jan. 21, Gov. Hobby denounced the lynching and initiated steps to investigate it. The next day, he sent a message to the Texas Legislature requesting a law that would put an end to mob violence and correct the assumption that members of white lynch mobs are not prosecutable. Hobby’s request was echoed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who sent a telegram to Hillsboro officials demanding punitive measures against participants in Williams’ lynch mob. On the same day, the San Antonio Express published a condemnation of the Hill County court’s decision to dismiss the Texas Rangers after the conviction. “If ever there was a fatal error of official judgment — whoever was responsible therefore — it was in this case. If ever there was a warning of lynching attempts, it was in this case.” On Jan. 23, Hobby instructed Texas Attorney General Calvin M. Cureton, First Assistant Attorney General W. A. Keeling, and E.A. Berry, Assistant Attorney General to the Court of Criminal Appeals, to initiate an investigation into the lynching of Bragg Williams. A Hill County grand jury subsequently examined charges against members of the lynch mob but adjourned without returning bills of indictment. After the state investigation initiated by First Assistant Attorney General Keeling, Attorney General Cureton and Assistant Attorney General Berry filed a motion to cite 12 members of the lynch mob (Jud Rufus Beavers, Will Browning, Joe Ferguson, Cole Hammer, Earl Hobbs, Jim Hobbs, William Pinckney Hightower, E.L. Stroud, George Wells, William R. Wells, Poly Wilson, and Wiley Wilson) for contempt of court in regard to the Court of Criminal Appeals motion, because the vigilantes had lynched Williams after his appeal had been filed and was technically pending. The effort was a well-conceived attempt to prosecute members of the lynch mob in a higher court, especially as it was obvious that they would not face prosecution in Hill County. The motion was described as the first of its kind in Texas, but it, too, fell short. No action was taken on the motion in March or April, and the attempt quickly faded into obscurity.

When I spoke to Crady, Tonya, their mother Letha, and several other family members in late January, they hadn’t even been aware that Bragg Williams was intellectually disabled. Their family had fled Hill County after his horrific lynching, and no one talked about it a lot after. One story that survived was of Williams’ mother walking several miles with one of his infant siblings on her hip to visit him at the Hill County Jail. Upon arrival, she learned that he’d been transferred to Dallas. The Hill County authorities hadn’t even notified his family. Crady, Tonya, and Letha didn’t procrastinate. They quickly decided to pursue a historical marker acknowledging the lynching and enlisted me to help write the marker application. When we first appeared at the Hill County Commissioners Court a little early on March 8, one of the commissioners asked us why we continued on page 9

This “General Entry” citation contains mistakes and leaves a lot of the story out. First, Hill County’s “tolerance of criminals” especially favored acts of violence against persons of color. Second, the December double murder didn’t befall “a freedman and his wife.” It was Joe Willingham and the wife of Lewis Willingham, both longtime, peaceable residents of Meridian, Texas. Third, on June 18, 1870, a Black man named Thomas Tanner was murdered in Hill County, and six other African Americans — Tanner’s neighbors — fled to McLennan County, declaring “that no protection was afforded to blacks” in Hill County and that they were afraid to stay there. And, fourth, after whites burned down a Black school near Towash on Oct. 21, 1871, Hill County could no longer hire or retain qualified instructors. During the same period, whitecappers (terrorist precursors to the Ku Klux Klan) actually ran a Black man out of Hill County for engaging in a dispute with a white man. And it was not uncommon for whites in some Central Texas counties to try to expel all Blacks from county boundaries altogether. Hill County never officially went so far as that, but the lawlessness it permitted against its Black citizenry was as effective as doing so. As Barry Crouch and

Donaly Brice state in The Governor’s Hounds: The Texas State Police, 1870-1973, “Hill County blacks, although they composed but a fraction of the total population, found themselves on the receiving end of outrageous acts” of murder and terrorism — and the perpetrators of those acts were never held responsible or punished. The burning of Bragg Williams at the stake didn’t happen in a vacuum. As the frontpage headline in the Dallas Express on Jan. 25, 1919, put it, the Bragg Williams lynching simply allowed Hillsboro to step “into the Limelight” of white primacy. The burning of Bragg Williams at the stake was the first major racial incident in Texas in 1919, and it was the first lynching mentioned in the NAACP’s historic 15-page pamphlet An Appeal to the Conscience of the Civilized World (February 1920).

On April 28, Crady, Tonya, Letha, and I resubmitted the application and then got back on the schedule to meet with the Hill County Commissioners Court for their permission to place the marker on the courthouse square (so our marker application could be forwarded to the state). In the interim between our appearances, a white woman named Katie Schatzlein reached out to me after reading Black Holocaust and shared a story. Schatzlein said that when the Hill County Courthouse burned on New Year’s Day in 1993, she telephoned her mother to express what a shame it was, because she thought the Hill County Courthouse was one of the most beautiful buildings of its kind in Texas. “Knowing nothing of the history of the Bragg Williams lynching,” Schatzlein says, “I expressed sadness at the courthouse’s loss.” Her mother’s response was shocking. “That’s when [my mother] said, ‘Perhaps it’s poetic justice or karma.’ ” And then the mother broke down and shared the whole story. Schatzlein’s mother told her that her grandfather had participated in the Bragg Williams lynching and drank himself to death at 51 years of age, perhaps because of his guilt. Schatzlein asked her mother why she

Fort Worth native E.R. Bills is the award-winning author of the aforementioned books and several others, including Texas Obscurities: Stories of the Peculiar, Exceptional and Nefarious (History Press 2013) and Texas Far and Wide: The Tornado with Eyes, Gettysburg’s Last Casualty, the Celestial Skipping Stone and Other Tales (History Press 2017).

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For a discussion regarding the context of the Hillsboro lynching of Bragg Williams, it is necessary to examine the history of lynching in the region and, perhaps specifically, burnings at the stake. On July 22, 1910, Henry Gentry, an 18-year-old Black suspect accused of “peeping” at a white woman through a window in her home and killing a constable, was stripped naked, dragged around the Bell County courthouse square by a horse at full gallop, and then burned at the stake on the courthouse grounds. On July 31, 1915, Will Stanley, a 31-year-old Black suspect accused of murdering three white children, was shot and dragged through a fire repeatedly until the hellish flames silenced his cries and moans. And on Monday, May 9, 1916, Jessie Washington, another reportedly intellectually disabled 18-year-old African American man accused of bludgeoning a local white woman to death, signed his “X” to a confession he couldn’t even read. Washington was arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted, but, before the presiding judge could even record the speedy guilty verdict, a large man in the rear of the McLennan County court room shouted, “Get the nigger,” and a mob seized Washington. They burned him at the stake as the Waco mayor and chief of police watched on. There were other disturbing incidents in the Hillsboro area as well. A Black suspect named Zeke Hadley was lynched on June 23, 1884, for the suspected rape of a white woman, and Hill County citizens attempted to lynch

HILL COUNTY REBELLION. During Reconstruction Governor E.J. Davis and the Radical Republican-dominated Twelfth Legislature of 1870 attempted to control crime in the state. In October 1870 Davis threatened Hill County with martial law for its tolerance of criminals. Conditions in the county seemed improved by late 1870, but in December a freedman and his wife were murdered in neighboring Bosque County, and State Police Lt. W.T. Pritchett moved into Hill County chasing suspects James J. Gathings, Jr., and Sollola Nicholson. Pritchett raised the ire of James J. Gathings, Sr., by seeking to arrest his son. The elder Gathings, Hill County’s largest landowner, incited a mob that pushed county officials to arrest and detain the State Police troopers in Hillsboro in early January 1871. On January 11 Davis declared martial law in Hill County and dispatched Adjutant General James Davidson and the State Militia to rescue the jailed police. …

On Jan. 25, 1919, the Dallas Express said that, with the lynching, Hillsboro could step “into the Limelight” of white primacy.

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were there. When we told him why, he said we weren’t on the docket and that we wouldn’t be able to address the court. The court clerk we approached to verify this claim informed us that this was incorrect, so we seated ourselves in the courtroom and waited. It was an inauspicious beginning. After the two pledges of allegiance and regular county court business was concluded, I addressed the Commissioners Court and explained our intentions. County Judge Justin Lewis and the commissioners present didn’t seem completely amenable, but they weren’t openly hostile either. And, afterward, Judge Lewis, 45, came over and talked to Crady, Tonya, Letha, and me and admitted that a cruel injustice was committed in Hill County after the Bragg Williams trial and that he didn’t think we would have any problems procuring a marker. I was skeptical, but Lewis seemed amicable and straight shooting, and we appreciated his speaking with us. On April 5, I submitted the preliminary marker application (with Crady Johnson listed as the primary sponsor), and on April 18, the Hill County Marker Chair, Jana Burch, let us know that the marker narrative was missing a context section, that there was no evidence that Williams was intellectually disabled and that the application needed to be better documented. It frustrated us, but we dug deeper, went to some lengths to substantiate claims of Williams’ cognitive impairment, and addressed the documentation issues. The marker application increased from 10 to 21 pages, and we resubmitted it.

never told her, and the mother said it was because of the guilt that she, herself, had always felt. The mother lamented the fact that she had never done anything about it, but she said she was telling Schatzlein now because perhaps she could do something. When Crady, Tonya, Letha, and I appeared in front of the Hill County Commissioners Court again on May 8, I still didn’t know the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag, but I planned to share Schatzlein’s story. We all prepared ourselves to speak, but we never got the chance. When Court Item No. “8. Discuss and/or approve for permission of Property Owner for Historical Marker placement” came up, there was no “discussion” at all. Judge Lewis immediately called for a vote, and the board approved the motion unanimously. Crady, Tonya, Letha, and I were surprised. Each of us, in our own way, had prepared to make compelling remarks before the decision was put to a vote. “I had prayed the night before,” Crady said. “I had prayed that the words that came out of my mouth would be Godly words, words of forgiveness, words of love and compassion. I had prayed that whatever I said would be a reflection of my God.” After the Hill County Commissioners Court’s affirmative vote on the location of the marker, Tonya sensed that something larger was at play. “It was divine intervention.” Crady concurred later in a phone conversation. “Even in the midst of all the anger and bitterness and strife and hatred we see these days, God is working, and not just for Uncle Bragg’s family but for the people of Hillsboro.” In another phone conversation, Tonya added, “I think they needed justice, too. And maybe closure. It was a spiritual, humbling experience.” The work isn’t complete. According to Hill County Marker Chair Burch, the Bragg Williams Lynching historical marker application that we submitted has been sent to the Texas State Historical Commission for review and approval or disapproval. We are cautiously optimistic, and we expect a response later this year. To me, the state of Texas seems no more ready for the truth about acts of white terror than they were when the Slocum Massacre marker was approved and placed on Jan. 16, 2016. The atmosphere in Texas seems more hostile. One indicator is that all the casualties of the Slocum Massacre are still piled up in unmarked mass graves in the Slocum area, but the history of the Slocum Massacre and the burning of Bragg Williams at the stake (and so many others) is not going away. And wishing won’t make it so. And neither will trying to prevent it from being taught in schools or read in libraries. This history is here to stay, and the best way to deal with it is by being on the right side of it. Hillsboro really seems big enough for that. Is Texas? If not, why are we expected to pledge allegiance to its flag? l

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Isaac Bruce, a twentysomething Black man falsely accused of raping a white girl in 1892. Though the attempted lynching of Bruce was unsuccessful, some of the same men who tried to lynch him served on the all-white, all-male jury determining his fate. Bruce’s defense team presented credible witnesses and mounted a strong defense, but the jury found Bruce guilty, and the presiding judge sentenced him to death. An all-white court of criminal appeals subsequently affirmed the conviction, but, in mid-May of 1893, Texas Governor James S. Hogg commuted Bruce’s death sentence to life in prison “to spare his life and await future developments.” Hogg’s instincts were correct. Bruce was later pardoned and released. These incidents and numerous others all have some bearing on the general proclivity for the white citizenry in Central Texas to conduct or condone grotesque lynchings in that era, but the underpinnings of Hill County race history are even darker. For example, examine the page on the Hill County Rebellion in the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas.

P o r t a l t o Te x a s H i s t o r y

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STUFF

Hero Quest Games Looking for a group? A new store on Bryant Irvin aims to fill the social gaming void ravaged by the pandemic.

Wilson and Monday didn’t spend long talking about bringing their dream store to life. They just did it.

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Among the many things affected by the COVID-19 pandemic were hobby gamers and game stores. Plenty of retailers closed up shop or stopped hosting games and

events during lockdown, and players either postponed their Dungeons and Dragons campaigns or moved them online. Now that the curve has flattened and gamers are ready to meet, a new store is opening that aims to fill the void left by the lack of playing spaces and to bring players together. Hero Quest Games first opened three weeks ago at 4620 Bryant Irvin Rd., Ste. 546, just next to the Spec’s Wine, Spirits & Finer Foods. Co-owner Dometry Wilson describes

“Brilliant…fresh, witty and thoughttl… a total triumph."

JUNE 8-14, 2022

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—Montgomery Advertiser

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ETS! K C I T T E G L3 JUN 9-JU

Voice Over Master Class Summer 2022

Each unit offers 2 hours of focused, creative fun, and one-on-one coaching. tinyurl.com/vomaster

stagewest.org | 817-784-9378

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it as “essentially, a board game and RPG store with a focus on space to play and hang out.” He and the other owner, girlfriend Ashley Monday, saw a need for a store like theirs as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the hobby store ecosystem. Wilson explained that, during the pandemic, “A lot of game stores moved away from having a play space and haven’t seemed open to it since.” While plenty of stores are hosting, say, Magic: The Gathering tournaments, Wilson

said, “We felt there was a need for a place to comfortably play board games and bring your D&D group.” Both Wilson and Monday are avid gamers and felt they knew what they wanted to offer. Wilson has been playing D&D since 2018, and Monday has been looking for a place to expand her social circle. “It’s a way for people to re-socialize and good for awkward people like myself,” she said. It’s also affordable for people who want a place to play, as tables for gaming are available for free. The impact of the pandemic had shifted their job goals. Monday said, “I was working at Redfin when it furloughed, and then fired, roughly half its staff, which ended my career.” After meeting Wilson on Bumble and beginning a relationship, they both found themselves working at Target. However, the retail grind soon got to them. They talked about opening a store like many twentysomethings do but actually pushed forward to accomplish it. “Ashley asked, ‘Why are we waiting to do what we want to do?’ ” Wilson recalled. They first opened a small booth at Fanboys Marketplace on Camp Bowie Boulevard in May 2021. Then, after doing some research and acquiring a small business loan, they were ready to expand and found the perfect location on Bryant Irvin. “It has these great stone archways in the back,” Wilson said, “and we want the place to kind of have a tavern feel.” Monday sees it as a step up. “I sort of demoted myself to work here,” she said, continued on page 11

Abortion Ban Protest Sunday Though the initial outrage over the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade has faded from headlines, people are still putting up a fight. A local group affiliated with Planned Parenthood’s Bans Off Our Bodies movement will hold a rally 10am Sun at the Tarrant County Courthouse (100 E Weatherford St). “We’re getting together to voice our support for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy and to educate people on prochoice candidates,” said group member Holly Heart.

Heart and about a dozen others formed the group after meeting at a pro-Roe rally earlier this year. “I’m a big pro-choice advocate,” Heart said. “I’ve been really passionate about this. [Overturning Roe] infringes on human rights, and it really upsets me.” Speakers will go on at 10:30am, and from 11am to noon, the group will march around the block surrounding Sundance Square. Voter registrars will also be on-site. To sign up, visit BansOffFTW.wereclaimpatriotism.com. Texans have had minimal access to abortion since SB8 took effect in September 2021. The law prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks. Should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the state has “trigger laws” that would kick in, immediately banning all abortions. — Madison Simmons

Women Painting Women May 15–September 25

Women Painting Women features 46 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works. This presentation, international in scope, includes evocative portraits that span the late 1960s to the present. All place women—their bodies, gestures, and individuality—at the forefront, conceiving new ways to activate and elaborate on the portrayal of women. Rita Ackermann Njideka Akunyili Crosby Emma Amos María Berrío Louise Bonnet Lisa Brice Joan Brown Jordan Casteel Somaya Critchlow Kim Dingle Marlene Dumas Celeste Dupuy-Spencer Nicole Eisenman Tracey Emin Natalie Frank

Hope Gangloff Eunice Golden Jenna Gribbon Alex Heilbron Ania Hobson Luchita Hurtado Chantal Joffe Hayv Kahraman Maria Lassnig Christiane Lyons Danielle Mckinney Marilyn Minter Alice Neel Elizabeth Peyton Paula Rego Faith Ringgold

Deborah Roberts Susan Rothenberg Jenny Saville Dana Schutz Joan Semmel Amy Sherald Lorna Simpson Arpita Singh Sylvia Sleigh Apolonia Sokol May Stevens Claire Tabouret Mickalene Thomas Nicola Tyson Lisa Yuskavage

MODERN AR T MUSEUM OF FOR T WOR TH 3200 Darnell Street • Fort Worth, Texas 76107 • www.themodern.org Amy Sherald, A Midsummer Afternoon Dream, 2020. Oil on canvas. 106 × 101 inches. Private Collection. © Amy Sherald, Courtesy the Artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Joseph Hyde

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taking a pay cut to pursue a dream job. And it seems to be working out. “My mental health just got better.” At the store, people can find everything, from the big games like Dungeons and Dragons to lesser-known RPGs such as Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and from bigger board games like Settlers of Catan to family-friendly games like the cat-themed Calico. The Hero Quest duo also works with a number of local artists selling things like handmade bags, candles, and scented soaps with gaming dice molded into them, as well as framed art, which lines the walls. And so far, the store seems to be filling the need. A meet-and-greet on Saturday brought in a few dozen customers who could be heard talking about their gaming history and taking the time to make character sheets provided by the staff. Comelia Hinkley of Fort Worth said she came “to meet people to play D&D and board games with. And for a place to Christmas shop.” And another Fort Worthian, Benjamin Palmer, of Adventure Awaits Studios (Ad-

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ventureAwaitsStudios.com), who writes adventure campaigns for D&D’s fifth edition, loves the location. “I like poking around and love seeing new shops. It’s the closest store near me, and they have a better selection than most other stores,” he said as he bought miniatures to round out his pirate crew. For the future, the Hero Quest duo plans to renovate the back of the store into a private gaming area that players can reserve, which Monday believes should be ready in about a month. For now, Monday and Wilson seem content learning more about the games. “D&D has been around since the ’70s,” Monday said. “People have been playing since then and know more than I do, so the main thing is making a welcome environment and a place that doesn’t cost a ton of money, which is why we’re not charging people to play.” Hero Quest is open noon to 9 p.m. Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday. The store is closed Thursday. Visit Hero Quest Games on Facebook or email them at HeroQuestGames@ gmail.com. l

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Stuff

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Cour tesy Ir ving Archives and Museum

Learn how Latinos/Latinas impacted American culture through the lens of baseball at ¡Pleibol! thru Sat in Irving.

Head to Casa Manana (3101 W Lancaster Av, 817-332-2272) for the final Friday performances of Disney’s Newsies 7:30pm Wed-Thu, 8pm tonight, 8pm Sat, and 2pm Sun. “Based on the 1992 motion picture and inspired by a true story, Newsies is the rousing tale of Jack Kelly, a charismatic newsboy and leader of a band of teenaged ‘newsies’ in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. When titans of publishing raise distribution prices at the newsboys’ expense, Jack rallies newsies from across the city to strike against the unfair conditions and fight for what’s right!” Tickets start at $49 at CasaManana.org.

Every second Saturday from 4pm to 6pm thru Dec 10, join Liberty Lounge (515 S JenSaturday nings Av, @LibertyLoungeFWTX) for Lit Liberty Book Club. Today’s discussion will be about Felix Ever After, a young adult novel by LAMBDA Award-win-

Join the local Bans Off Our Bodies Fort Worth movement at 10am in front of the Sunday Tarrant County Courthouse (100 E Weatherford St, 817-884-1111) in protest of the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Go to BansOffFTW.WeReclaimPatriotism.com and read our Big Ticket column in this week’s issue for more information.

A person such as myself, who is experiencing a perpetually closed pool in the Texas Monday heat, trash everywhere, and impromptu illegal towing at their shiny new apartment, might be interested in checking out the virtual Tenant Empowerment Workshop 6:30pm-8pm via Zoom each second Monday of the month at the Center for Transforming Lives (512 W 4th St, 817332-6191). Experts will provide information about the landlord and tenant issues that have arisen in the lives of the people the organization hopes to transform. Please have a

Since Thu, Jun 2, the world’s top 18- to 31-year-old pianists have been in town Tuesday competing with one another in front of live audiences at various championship-styled rounds. “Widely considered one of the preeminent international music contests, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition exists to share excellent classical music with the largest international audience possible and to launch the careers of its winners every four years.” This week, enjoy the final rounds at Bass Performance Hall (525 Commerce St, 817-212-4280). The six finalists will perform two concertos each with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop at 7:30pm TueFri and 3pm Sat. The awards ceremony at 7:30pm follows the last concerto on Saturday. Tickets are $55-$150 at Cliburn.org.

While Latino men faced racial segregation in the 1930s, their Latina counWednesday terparts also faced gender inequality in the neighborhood, at school, and work, plus in the sports and recreation world. “Women in Spanish-speaking enclaves, or barrios, often carved out makeshift spaces for weekend baseball and softball, organizing teams that formed networks for support and solidarity.” Baseball/softball helped them cope. Learn more about the Latino boys and girls of summer at ¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues/En Los Barrios y las Grandes Ligas at Irving Archives and Museum (801 W Irving Blvd, 972-721-3700). The final week of this traveling Smithsonian Institute exhibit is open 10am-4pm Wed-Sat.

By Jennifer Bovee

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ning author Kacen Callender, in which a transgender teen “grapples with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.” I’d also like to highlight two other Saturday events this weekend in honor of Pride Month. Arlington LGBTQ+ Pride — the city’s first-ever event of its kind — is free noon-4pm at Help Center for LGBT Health & Wellness (602 E South St, 817332-7722), featuring drag performances, food and drinks, games, live music, and DJ Al Farb. Then at 10pm, Urban Cowboy (2620 E Lancaster Av, 682-707-5663) hosts the Pride Night Lights Rave with tickets from $10-150 on EventBrite.com.

JUNE 8-14, 2022

Every Thursday from 6:30pm to 8pm thru Jun 30, pack a picnic dinner, Thursday grab a blanket, and head to the lawn of the Denton Courthouse-onthe-Square Museum (110 W Hickory St, 940-349-2850) for Twilight Tunes. This free concert series features live music by Texas Blues Crew tonight, then Sunny Disposition on Jun 16, Lovesick Mary on Jun 23, and Honin on Jun 30. (Note: Twilight Tunes will not take place on Jun 21. Instead, there will be a special concert in honor of National Make Music Day. Keep an eye on Facebook. com/DowntownDenton for the upcoming band announcement.)

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NIGHT&DAY

copy of your lease and any other documents related to your questions or concerns on hand to participate most effectively. There is no charge to attend, but pre-registration is required at Bit.ly/2WVkzp3.

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5.) Have a wild time 6pm-8:30pm Sat, Jun 18, at the exclusive after-hours Father’s Day Cookout at the Fort Worth Zoo (1989 Colonial Pkwy, 817-759-7555). This event includes dinner at The Reserve in the African Savanna area, an open bar with beer and wine, a meet-and-greet with the zoo’s outreach animals, and a giraffe-feeding experience for your whole group, plus one meerkat-adoption package for Dad. Tickets are $85 for adults (ages 13 and older), $30 for kids (ages 3 to 12), and free for younger children (ages 2 and under) at FortWorthZoo. org/Fathers-Day-Cookout. All proceeds benefit the zoo’s adoption program, which supports the care and feeding of the animals.

While North Texas is full of places for Dad the next two weekends, at least eight locales we dig are hosting Father’s Day celebrations. If there’s an upcoming graduate in your life, buy them a gift at these spots while you’re there. Purchase food or tchotchkes for the HS seniors and save the booze for the college grads, of course. (We’re nothing if not responsible blurb publishers!) 1.) Plan ahead and shop for your dads and grads at Wild Acre Brewing (1734 E El Paso St, Ste 190, 817-882-9453) from noon to 5pm Sat as part of the Wandering Roots Father’s Day Market. Along with shopping for the perfect gift(s), enjoy craft beer, food trucks, kids’ crafts, live music, and outdoor games for the whole family. 2.) Jericho Road Baptist Church (5000 Eastland St, 817-585-1293) invites all fathers to stop by for a complimentary breakfast 9am-11am Sat, Jun 18. Fathers will also receive a free car wash 10am-2pm. (The cost for other non-paternal customers is $10.) Lunch, available for $5, features two hotdogs or one hot link, plus chips and a drink. For more info, visit Facebook.com/JerichoRoadBC.

Cour tesy Facebook

Time to Celebrate all the Dads ’n’ Grads

Celebrate Father’s Day at Texas Wine Fest next Sunday.

3.) Nascent Culinary (@NascentCulinary), a North Texas business specializing in popup dining experiences, hosts Father’s Day Beefsteak Buffet Dinner at Neighbor’s House Grocery (501 W 6th St, Ste 175, 817-334-0526) at 2pm and 5pm Sun, Jun 19. Tickets are $45 per person at Buy.Stripe. com/9AQ7vf0TI5AY4aA3cc. 4.) Race Street neighbors Creatively Beaut Goods (@)CreativelyBeautGoodsCBG) and Neutral Ground Brewing Company (2929 Race St, 682-499-6033) are co-hosting a family- and pet-friendly Father’s Day Pop-Up event in the back parking lot 4pm-9pm Sat, Jun 18. Enjoy brews, cigars, and a classic-car hangout from Neutral Ground, grilled foods

6.) Lava Cantina (5805 Grandscape Blvd, The Colony, 214-618-6893) hosts Father’s Day Brunch 9am-2pm Sun, Jun 19, featuring live jazz. Start with the #DadBod Salad Bar, then move to other brunch items, including a smoked prime-rib carving station, Bradshaw Bourbon-glazed chicken, beet-cured deviled eggs, sour cream-and-chive whipped potatoes, a mac ’n’ cheese station, balsamic-grilled broccolini, shrimp cocktail, sliders, and a dessert bar. If breakfast is more your thing, you can also enjoy a breakfast taco station. While you will pay in person — $32 for adults and $15 for kids 12 and under — you will need a free reservation at EventBrite.com to reserve space for your party. 7.) With two locations in our area of North Texas, including Fort Worth (2300 W 7th St, Ste 140, 817-270-2337) and Euless (1200 Chisholm Trl, Bld E1, Ste 101, 817-3542000), Hopdoddy Burger Bar has a Father’s Day deal for you. By mentioning the “Double It for Dad” promotion in person 11am-

Cour tesy For t Wor th Zoo

from Free Smoke BBQ, and music on vinyl spun by DJ Bilal, all while shopping for gift items from a variety of vendors.

Who wouldn’t want a Meerkat Adoption Kit from the Fort Worth Zoo as a gift?

9pm Sun, Jun 19, you’ll receive a second complimentary beef (regular), chicken, or veggie patty on your burger. Hopdoddy also has gift ideas. “If your dad likes burgers, beer, and good puns, Hopdoddy Hop Shop has the perfect gifts for him! What better Father’s Day gift than a ‘Good with Meat’ apron, a pint glass, or grilling accessories to help with his next big cookout? You can check out all of the items available now at Hopdoddy.com/HopShop.” 8.) Based on the image here, the target audience of the Texas Wine Fest is your dad. (I mean, just look at him.) With timed entries at an indoor venue — cool and comfortable and less people-y than ever before — the wine festival is back at Collins Event Center (1010 N Collins St, Arlington, 877-294-6836). On Sun, Jun 19, the festival is admitting 150 people at a time at noon, 2pm, 4pm, and 6pm. Tickets are $49 at TexasWinos.com and include admission, a souvenir wine glass, all wine tastings, and samples from vendors.

By Jennifer Bovee

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The Original FTW

Pizza Buzz Pickle pizza (10 inch) ................................. $12.99 Tandoori chicken pizza (4 square) ............ $16.99 Pepperoni pizza (10 inch) .......................... $12.99 Nutella cheesecake ................................... $4.25

EATS & drinks

Buzzworthy

After its pickle pizza went viral, this little shop in North Fort Worth has been as busy as … a bee. Pizza Buzz, 5418 Basswood Blvd, FW. 817-8492896. 11am-8:45pm Wed-Sun. S T O R Y A N D P H O T O S B Y M A D I S O N S I M M O N S

Let me tell you a little story about a small business owner and the pizza that changed his life. Seven years ago, Jay Hansji and wife Manisha Hansji bought a small takeout pizza operation off Basswood Boulevard in North Fort Worth near Keller/Saginaw. He had just quit a job building machines in post offices, and she was looking for a reason

Pepperoni, tandoori chicken, and pickle pizza share a plate. Pizza Buzz offers inventive pies in addition to the classics.

to stop working at a certain Texas-built fastfood chain when the opportunity came up. The Hansjis decided to not just sling pizza but to really learn the craft. Jay dived into dough theory (settling on a 72-hour fermentation time). He researched the very

best cheeses available (an Italian mozzarella with higher butter fat content). He attended pizza-making conventions. Thanks to hard work and this dedication to the art, the newly christened Pizza Buzz — with one table for customers who

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just can’t wait to dig in — built a stream of regular customers drawn by the high quality, but Jay wanted more. “I wanted to spread my pizza around the Metroplex,” he said. “The only way to do that was something completely mind-blowingly different.” Enter: the pickle pizza. The ingredients are simple: garlic butter (house-made), cheese, and dill pickles, all finished with a drizzle of ranch dressing (also house-made). The result, Hansji believes, tastes just like fried pickles. People really liked it. Then it went viral, gathering popularity on a few local Facebook pages. People did not just want pickle pizza. They demanded it. “We went through five gallons of pickles a day,” Hansji said. “My whole walk-in cooler was full of pickles!” Pizza Buzz sold more than 1,400 dill pickle pizzas in the month of December. Though he tried to discontinue it, customers made petitions asking Jay to keep it on the menu. The craze has died down, but the Hansjis now have a new group of loyal customers. And, Jay said, other area restaurants have begun to make their own versions. I can’t speak to the alleged copycats, but I can tell you about this pickle pizza.

BEST RAMEN WINNER - Fort Worth Weekly Best Of 2021

continued on page 17

IN YOUR CHOICE OF MILD, HOT AND HELLA HOT!

I had every intention of waiting until I got home to break into the boxes. I ended up eating my first slice while stuck in post-storm traffic on 35. “Transcendent” might be a heavy term, but that pizza sure did something to me. The bass note was garlic butter, mingling with the yeasty crust. The sour pickle zinged through the cheese in a combination that should not have worked but did. In fact, it tasted just like fried pickles. I finished the piece in three bites. The rest waited until I got home. I had a suspicion that the longish commute (40 minutes thanks to the fact that no one in Texas can drive in the rain) might impair the quality of the slice. That was unnecessary. Where lesser pizzas might melt into a soggy puddle of cheese grease, these slices held their form.

Jay Hansji, shown here in the lobby of his family’s restaurant, threw himself into the art of pizza-making after buying the business seven years ago.

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Pizza Buzz, whose extensive menu includes thin, hand-tossed, Detroit-style, cauliflower crust, and gluten-free crust, can accommodate vegetarian and vegan versions of almost all options. The place also sells wings and a variety of apps, including a garlic cheesy bread that promises a “half-pound of cheese” per serving. In the face of all these possibilities, I put great thought into my selections. In addition to the pickle, I chose a pepperoni thin crust (my personal barometer for quality pie) and the chicken tandoori pizza (the family’s nod to their Indian heritage). An exercise in contrasts of flavor and texture, the tandoori featured red-hot spiced chicken, red onions, house-made chutney, and fresh cilantro, each contributing their own notes to the symphony in my mouth. I had ordered this pizza Detroit-style. A delicious shell of melted cheese encased the thick, fluffy pie, and the bottom had been fried to a golden brown. That high-end mozzarella cheese really shone here. Though less glamorous than its creative siblings, the pepperoni, in my opinion, truly spoke to Pizza Buzz’s craft. The layer of cheese and pepperoni on top was thicker than the crust. The meat was crispy and had a good bite. This, of all the pies, was the one I kept reaching for throughout the night. The flavor of the crust — that flavor achieved only through yeast, flour, water, and time — sang. The pizzas, I will add, paired well with a six-pack of IPA that I bought from the liquor store conveniently located two doors down from the restaurant. From Pizza Buzz’s small, classic lineup of desserts (cheesecakes, cannoli, cookie pizza), I went for the Nutella cheesecake. There is no photographic evidence of this because I ate it very quickly. Yes, it was that good. Will Pizza Buzz become my go-to spot? Well, it’s about 10 exits farther north than I like to venture in North Texas, and there are plenty of joints closer, but, yes, of course Pizza Buzz will become my go-to spot, and if you have any sense, you’ll get yourself over there, too. l

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Eats & Drinks

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Pizza Buzz’s dill pickle pizza went viral and brought in a ton of new business.

EATS & drinks Adobo No

The “differently Filipino” cuisine of Chef Mark Guatelara transitions from his Ober Here food truck to a mini food hall on the Near Southside. Ober Here, 1229 8th Av, FW. 682-760-3904. 11am-11:45pm Mon-Sat. S T O R Y A N D P H O T O S B Y L A U R I E J A M E S

Ober Here’s late-night Filipino-style comfort food truck caught some buzz over the last year, but I never seemed to be able to find it open. That’s not the fault of Philippines-born Chef Mark Guatelara. It’s my own lack of foundational organization skills. But I finally had a day off, and I’d

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FIRST BLUE ZONES

Vegetarians will love the picadillo: ground meat substitute with peas and carrots, sweetly savory sauce, sunny-side up egg, and rice.

heard Ober Here moved into a mini food hall under Wabi House on the Near Southside. Instead of my usual dining companions (my immediate family), I took some more foodie-adventurous folks (my sister-in-law and her hubs, who have tried to make their own lumpia) to the new location. Your sole experience with the Asian/ Indonesian/Spanish blend that is Filipino cuisine might have come from a co-worker who made chicken adobo or the spaghetti-esque pancit for a potluck. If that’s true,

you’ll end up scratching your head here. Guatelara could probably make those dishes in his sleep, but for his first solo restaurant outing, he went with what he calls “Filipino-style late-night comfort food.” Much of it is easy to make and easy to eat, whether you have a seat at one of the half-dozen tables in the new three-stall “food hall” or you take it to go. Guatelara is a gregarious and generous host. He’ll walk you through the menu if you stand there looking stunned. Spoiler

“Best Thai Food” – FW Weekly Critics Choice 2015, 2017 & 2019 4630 SW Loop 820 | Fort Worth• 817-731-0455 order online for pickup Thaiselectrestaurant.com

alert: You’re ordering rice bowls with a variety of proteins, and your bowl includes yummy fried annatto-tinged garlic, a gooey sunny-side up egg, and a sweetly sour, lightly pickled veg. Is it breakfast? Is it late-night hangover food? Answer: It’s both. For starters, the cigar-shaped lumpia (Filipino versions of eggrolls) were some of the best products of their kind I ever tasted. The secret, Guatelara said, is pureeing the veggies so that they cook at the same rate as the meat. The result: a crispy outside and a lightly spicy inside, without a lot of chunks of vege falling out after a bite. Although the paper bag the lumpia was served in was a little greasy, the actual product was delightfully crunchy. The absolute stunner of our shared meal was the house-made corned beef. Apparently, this dish is common enough that folks who make it stock up on the canned meat, but Guatelara has outdone himself with a fresh, perfectly salty, savory, tender version. The meat and pickled veggies came out with a little cinnamon-kissed sauce, and the gooey over-easy egg blended perfectly with the rice. The barbecue pork butt tocino was a sweet-and-salty taste bonanza. The meat isn’t cured or made with pork belly here as may be more typical. The luscious, melt-inyour-mouth pulled pork could go head-tohead with any other barbecue joint’s in any ’cue challenge in town. If you’re a vegetarian, you’re not out of luck either. Guatelara told us he’s working on a veggie version of lumpia, but in the meantime, either eat a whole side of the continued on page 19

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Eats & Drinks

Ober Here Pork barbecue tocino .................... $12.75 House-made corned beef .............. $13.75 Barbecue chicken .......................... $12.75 Vegan picadillo ............................... $12.50 Lumpia ............................................ $1.75 for two Papaya salad .................................. $5 Filipino iced coffee ........................ $3.50

JUNE 8-14, 2022 FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

absolutely amazing, lightly vinegary papaya-onion-carrot-jalapeno pickled relish or feast on a bowl of the vegetarian picadillo. Traditionally, picadillo is ground meat with potatoes, peas, and carrots. The ground meat substitute came mixed with peas and carrots, with more of the sweetly savory sauce, a sunny-side up egg, and rice. Skip the egg and double down on the pleasantly sour pickled papaya, and you’ve got a great vegan meal. The barbecue chicken proved to be the weak link at Ober Here. The meat was sweet, not savory, and the dish was a little dry. In fairness, we compounded the problem by not opting for the egg, which would have helped the texture if not the taste. It’s no problem –– there’s plenty of good stuff here, including the shrimp and a house-made SPAM that we didn’t try. All the plates managed to be filling, fresh, and bright, thanks to the pickled veggies and generous servings of rice. Add a sweet, strong iced coffee for dessert, and someone might have to roll you out of the place. And at the time of this writing, Ober Here is joined by a hot-chicken joint and a yet-to-be-opened chain bubble tea shop stationed in what’s essentially the bottom lobby of the building. At Ober Here, you won’t find a large range of Filipino cuisine, and you won’t find the novelty spaghetti with hot dogs pioneered by a more notable Dallas-based chain. What is on offer is fresh food that’s simple, generously portioned, and delicious. l

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continued from page 18

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JUNE 8-14, 2022

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H I G G I N S

There’s no more quintessential musical expression of the decade of excess that was the 1980s than the ozone-depleting glut known as hair metal. Ignoring the artistic merit (or lack thereof) of the genre, one of the genre’s biggest intrigues lies in its inherent aesthetic contradictions. Hair bands stole the gender-bending look of the definitively nonbinary sexual experimentation of ’70s glam, pitched singers up into near soprano vocal ranges, softened the mid-scooped blazing guitar of Randy Rhoads and Ritchie Blackmore, and began employing a banal David Foster-esque, Grammy-fodder songwriting style that culminated in a host of earworm power ballads and grotesque singalong odes

THE CLIBURN

P A T R I C K

to sexualizing underage girls that we all still grudgingly know every word to. In essence, it was a concentrated toxic machismo dressed in drag. Somehow, Alex Atchley and Jack Harris, collectively known as the power pop duo Teal Stripe, are perhaps an exact photographic negative of those ’80s tragedies. Instead of the distillation of pure lizard-brain id disguised by eye shadow, Teal Stripe employs a tough hard-rock sound and uses it as a vehicle for introspective songs about heartache. Their debut album, ironically called Heavy Metal, came out last week. A video for the single “Anyway” preceded the release. The hammer-tight riffs are resplendent in metal-esque harmonized guitar lines. “If you have two guitars in a band, why would you not do that?” Atchley said of the use of “dualies.” “It’s so cool. It always sounds good, no matter the context.” Teal Stripe boasts plenty of sonics to pique the interest of even the most mulleted listener. Even the duo’s name is a reference to the signature blue-green band that marked Peavey amplifiers in the 1980s. Yet, with tracks like “Drag Me” and “Immolate My Heart,” vocalist Atchley’s lyrics perhaps belong in the same sad boy oeuvre of Neutral Milk Hotel rather than the realm of “Unskinny Bop.” The Fort Worth songwriter is aware of the irony of the band’s cocky sound versus their heartbroken words, and the duo leans heavily into it. “It’s very funny to us because whenever we play live or have a picture taken of us or something, the thing is to try and look as cool and/or tough as possible,” he said of the band’s contradictory aesthetic, “but, really, we’re just a couple of fucking nerds.” Atchley is long-haired and bespectacled,

Bang your head while you wipe your tears. Teal Stripe put a tough veneer on sad songs.

Music

continued from page 20

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RIDGLE A LOUNGE

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

resembling a sort of hesher Mark Mothersbaugh. Vocally, he is also reminiscent of the former Devo frontman. Teal Stripe’s sound may have you wanting to pound your fists, but if you pay attention, Atchley’s words can have you wanting to cry. There are times, he said, when “I’m maybe writing about something that I’m angry about, but mostly it’s just whatever’s around me, which usually ends up being a bunch of melancholy shit.” Despite being just a two-piece, with Atchley and Harris both playing guitar to backing tracks, Teal Stripe delivers all the energy contained on Heavy Metal to a live crowd, too. “I would say we’re both really strong performers,” he said. “Running around and throwing our instruments and busting our knees, so missing the feel of a quote-unquote ‘real band’ just kind of goes away because of how we perform.” As an aside, he added, “I actually really messed up my knee at [our last] show. It took weeks for the bruising under the scabbing to go away. It was very gross. Don’t land on your knees, kids.” Atchley said it’s purely for efficiency that the group remains just the two of them. “We had some other people join [at one time], but basically scheduling wasn’t working out, so we cut them loose, and it’s just been us two since,” he said. “Since we’re not having to schedule with two other people, we were able to fast track finishing the album and getting shows booked and all that.” The general concept of what became Teal Stripe was a musical itch Atchley had been wanting to scratch for years. A prolific songwriter with interests in many different genres, Atchley seems to begin new bands and musical projects with the same frequency other artists release albums from the same band. In just the last few years, he’s had Teal Stripe, angular punk outfit Born Snapped, and electronic groups Mirage Music Club and Service Model, to name a few. His next venture is a planned country album that should keep him occupied while Harris joins his industrial band Chant on tour supporting the legendary KMFDM. Atchley hopes Teal Stripe will be a focus for a good long while, however. Once Harris returns from tour, the plan is for the duo to continue the momentum they’ve been recently building. “We are definitely a band who is not content to just sit around,” Atchley said, “which is why we went down to a two-piece. Once [Harris] is more free, we will be playing a lot more. We definitely want to hit the road next year and hopefully go overseas sometime in 2024.” l

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Hearsay You Say You Want a Revolution

and C-SPAN. Fox News has relegated the hearing’s broadcast to its business network rather than preempt noted white supremacist Tucker Carlson. Other notable upcoming shows: June 8 is another edition of Weird & Wild Waynesday at MASS (1002 S Main, 817707-7774), in which singer-songwriter Wayne Floyd hosts a cavalcade of local performers doing, well, wild and weird things. And at MASS on Friday, Chicago-based blues-rockers Daisychain are the main attraction of a bill that also includes Denton psychedelic band Sunbuzzed and Dallas’ King Clam. Also on Friday, Downtown Cowtown at the Isis (2401 N Main, 817808-6390) hosts Lisa Irion as Cher. Irion, backed by the Edge of Reality Band, will perform the cultural icon’s hits from the ’60s through the ’90s. On Saturday, hard rockers The Royal Sons headline the bill at Tulips FTW (112 St. Louis Av, 817-3679798) with local alternative openers the No-Where Jets and Siamese Hips. Doors are at 7pm. And, finally, if you are one of those “plan ahead” types, ordained Knight of the Booty-ish Empire Sir Mix-a-Lot will play his hit at Fort Brewery and Pizza (2737 Tillar St, 817-923-8000) on Sun, Jun 19, with local turntable legend DJ Databass opening the show. — Steve Steward Contact HearSay at Anthony@FWWeekly.com.

Cour tesy Facebook

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

JUNE 8-14, 2022

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Before you read any further, remember that these HearSay pieces are all opinion and do not, by de facto, represent the views of this paper and its publisher/owner. I mean, sometimes they do. Probably. But I never know ahead of time and never ask after the fact. But since the Weekly’s launch 27 years ago, the other authors and I showcased in this space have likely offered, on occasion, concert recommendations that large swaths of this city and this paper’s readers might either disregard completely or, upon perusing, cause them to think we are out of touch and off our rockers, that we don’t even listen to music at all. Regardless, there are still events that merit being heralded, even if they feature artists whom lots of people despise. I am not sorry for promoting them, which is why you will read a sentence about Sir Mix-a-Lot down toward the bottom of this space. So, with that reminder/caveat, I invite you to consider giving your attention to and/or spending money at the following upcoming performances. Of all the things booked this month, I think the biggest, can’t-miss, on-par-withHendrix-playing-the-National-Anthemat-Woodstock-for-its-historical-importance is at 7pm Thu, when the congressional panel co-fronted by Mississippi’s

Bennie Thompson and Wyoming’s Liz Cheney presents to the American public the mountain of evidence of the GOP conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election on behalf of twotime popular vote loser, credibly accused rapist, and avowed racist Donald Trump. Even if you think this “band” and its “music” are total bullshit, I implore you to give them a chance. I seriously doubt that their findings will cause anyone to peel the Punisher sticker off the rear windshield of his or her dumb, unnecessary dualie, but if you have yet to despoil your vehicle with similarly MAGA-lignant decor — maybe you vote Republican but are uncomfortable about how your team behaved between November 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021 — please watch this show with an open mind and then reconsider voting for anyone who doesn’t explicitly denounce the actions of the insurrectionists and the politicians and operatives who directed their participation in trying to nullify the will of millions of people. The survival of America’s democratic norms and the meaning and power of all our votes — yes, even yours, drivers of Punisher-stickered pickups — depend on us all absorbing the actual facts and rejecting the distortions and omissions promulgated by Republican extremists and their legion of apparatchiks. The show is free and will be broadcasted live on ABC, CBS, NBC,

After watching the band of the year on Thursday on C-SPAN, surf to Daiseychain Friday at MASS.

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EAGLE’S POINT Now Hiring For Saginaw Location Upscale, chef-driven dive bar seeks fun, energetic Cooks. Pays $13-$18/hr depending on experience. Apply in person at 1029 N Saginaw Blvd or online at: EaglesPointTexas.com/Jobs Hysen’s Nizza Pizza is Now Hiring! Nizza is seeking a counter person, delivery drivers, and wait staff. Apply in person at 401 University Drive, FWTX, 817-877-3900. (Open Sun-Thu 11am-10pm and Fri-Sat 10:30am-11pm.) HysensNizzaPizza.com HEALTH & WELLNESS Cardiovascular Disease & Stroke These are leading causes of death, according to the American Heart Association. Screenings can provide peace of mind or early detection! Contact Life Line Screening to schedule your screening. Special Offer: 5 Screenings for $149! Call today! 1-833-636-1757 DENTAL INSURANCE 1-888-361-7095 Physicians Mutual Insurance Company covers 350 plus procedures. Real dental insurance - NOT just a discount plan. Do not wait! Call now! Get your FREE Dental Information Kit with all the details! Call or visit Dental50plus.com/fortworth (#6258). Inogen One Portable Oxygen Concentrator 866-970-7551 May Be Covered by Medicare! Reclaim independence and mobility with the compact design and long-lasting battery of Inogen One. Call for free information kit! Planned Parenthood Available Via Chat! Along with advice, eligible patients are also able to receive birth control, UTI treatments, and other healthcare appointments via the smartphone app and telehealth appointments. To chat, you can text PPNOW to 774-636.

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MIND / BODY / SPIRIT Gateway Church Church time is the BEST time! Join us for online church each weekend. Online services start at 4 pm on Saturdays and are available to watch any time after at https:// gway.ch/GatewayPeople.

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LEGAL NOTICE

In the circuit court of Baxter County Arkansas Dom. Rel. Division Wanda Powada Plaintiff vs. Eugene Powada Defendant No. 03DR-20-359 Affidavit for Service By Warning Order State of Arkansas County of Baxter Wanda Powada, plaintiff, being duly sworn states on oath that diligent inquiry has been made to the whereabouts of the defendant, Eugene Powada, and from the information obtained, the whereabouts of the defendant are unknown and his/her last known address was 1412 Signet Dr. Euless, Tx. 76040. This affidavit is made to the end that a warning order may be issued and published against the defendant, Eugene Powada. Subscribed and sworn on this 3rd day of January, 2021 before commissioned Notary Public Kimberly Murphy.

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THE RIDGLEA is three great venues within one historic Fort Worth landmark. RIDGLEA THEATER has been restored to its authentic allure, recovering unique Spanish-Mediterranean elements. It is ideal for large audiences and special events. RIDGLEA ROOM and RIDGLEA LOUNGE have been making some of their own history, as connected adjuncts to RIDGLEA THEATER, or hosting their own smaller shows and gatherings. More at theRidglea.com

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