Back Talk East Dallas

Students working to raise your 'hotel soap' awareness

Christina Hughes Babb — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:51:45 GMT

The Advocate received an e-mail recently from a publicist pushing a good cause — we get a lot of these, but this one was from an eighth grader.

Abigail Cartwright, a student at William B. Travis, is participating in the Destination Imagination competition wherein contestants are challenged to garner some media attention for a cause. Her team's is the salvation of hotel soap, which has both environmental and financial implications.

I plan to respond to Abigail with a few tips about outrageous publicity stunts and the like (think PETA ), but meanwhile, watch this cool video she and her teammates created, and learn a thing or two about soap’s effect on the environment and how you can make a difference.

Video: Andrea Davis lays down canvases on her therapy couch

Can Turkyilmaz — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:12:06 GMT

I met Andrea coming out of an elevator. She was pulling boxes of art supply out. I thought she was too clean and neatly dressed to be an artist and i was right. She is a licensed professional counselor and those supplies are for her clients. She told me all about it. You can reach her by email at adavisart@gmail.com

Music with benefits

Can Turkyilmaz — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:15:03 GMT

Local Musician Salim Nourallah is briefly leaving his chair at the control room only to pick up his own guitar and sing it out. After 17 years of making records for other musicians, Nourallah wants to have his own record and reaches out to his fans for help. The pledge drive he started 7 weeks ago is now in its last week and things are looking up.

Southbound Skillman closed Sunday morning

Rick Wamre — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:24:21 GMT

Don't even think about driving south on Skillman from Mockingbird to Live Oak/Swiss Sunday, March 14, from about 7 a.m.-1 p.m. The Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 Marathon's 12,000 runners will be taking over the street that day, and the southbound lanes will be closed for booths and water stations, according to the city's Special Events office. One northbound lane will remain open throughout the morning. If you have any questions, call the Special Events office at 214-939-2701. Something else to remember that day: Clocks "spring forward" one hour beginning at midnight Saturday, March 13.

Wine review: Villa Maria Riesling Private Bin 2008

Jeff Siegel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:16:16 GMT

New Zealand is best known for it sauvignon blanc, and deservedly so, for they are among the best in the world. What the Kiwis get much less attention for is riesling -- which is too bad, since they make some very, very nice ones.

The Villa Maria riesling (about $14, purchased, widely available) is a lovely wine, with riesling oiliness (which is a very good thing), some lime zest citrus, stone fruit, and a long finish. Also, it's not especially sweet considering how much residual sugar is in the wine. In this, it's a finely crafted effort, in which the winmaker aimed at balance between the various components -- fruit, sweetness, and acid. Would that more winemakers tried to do this. And, of course, it has a screwcap.

The only drawback to this wine is that it's kind of picky with food. In this, it's a good example of why some wine is better with some food -- though everyone is free to drink whatever wine with whatever food they like, of course. If you're not going to drink the Villa Maria on its own, it really does need to be paired with a dish that complements it. Think salads or a lighter style seafood. I drank it with potato pancakes and braised red cabbage, and that didn't do much for the wine.

More school gardens crop up

Christina Hughes Babb — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:45:06 GMT

Hopefully you got a chance this month to read the Advocate story about school learning gardens — wish they were so popular when I was a kid, then maybe I’d understand how to grow something without killing it. Anyway, the emergence of gardens as classrooms is thanks in part to groups such as REAL School Gardens who help fund learning gardens (more about them in the aforementioned story).

One school here in East Dallas getting help from the foundation to build a learning garden is Robert E. Lee Elementary. The school will hold its community garden installation, where neighborhood volunteers are invited to help transform part of the schoolyard into a garden, Friday, March 12 at 9 a.m.-3 p.m., 2911 Delmar Ave.

Central Market to sell Oak Cliff Coffee

Rachel Stone — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:39:35 GMT

Oak Cliff Coffee will soon be available in East Dallas every day. Central Market on Thursday will begin stocking coffee from the family owned roaster that's based in Oak Cliff.

Central Market will carry several blends of freshly roasted whole bean coffee. The grocer has promised to honor the coffee roaster's freshness date and not carry months old coffee, according to the announcement on Facebook.

"To have a large grocer understand our passion for a great and fresh product is thrilling for us," it states.

Preservation Dallas seeks endangered building nominations

Rachel Stone — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:30:14 GMT

Hopefully, the facade of the lovely old building that housed Terilli's will be restored. Preservation Dallas points to that as a reminder that "historic places matter."

The preservation group is accepting nominations for its annual list of the most endangered buildings in Dallas. Lots of East Dallas sites have been on past lists, including trolley car stops like the one at Swiss and Haskell.

To submit a nomination, click here, or call Sara Junkin at 214.821.3290.

DallasCityHall.com: A missed opportunity

Jeff Siegel — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:46:51 GMT

I owe every resident of Dallas an apology. I could have solved the city's budget woes and fixed the long-term problems facing the city, but I choked. I did not display grace under pressure. What didn't I do? I didn't buy Dallas' Internet domain name when it expired yesterday morning -- because then I would have held it hostage until the city met my demands (non-negotiable, of course) to reform how Dallas is run.

More, after the jump:

City wants to hire fewer cops this year

Rick Wamre — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:29:05 GMT

As the DMN points out, no matter what other priorities have come and gone these past few years, the city council and city manager have found the money to hire 200 more police officers per year. It was Mayor Tom Leppert's election battle cry, as I recall, and the initiative to hire more officers each year appears to have been effective in helping reduce crime. Now that the city budget is bleeding red ink, though, city manager Mary Suhm told the DMN she's recommending that about 120 officers be hired this year instead of the budgeted-for 191. She cites the budget woes, but she also offers up the excuse that cutting back on the hiring is a good thing because the police department needs more time to integrate the rookies on the force hired the past couple of years during the 200-cops-per-year push.

I don't have a problem with cutting back the hiring for a year; almost everything else is being cut downtown, so it only makes sense to dial back hiring cops for a bit. But to say that we need more time to integrate rookies seems suspect; after all, weren't the number of rookies on the force taken into account when the budget was put together in the first place?

There are going to be plenty of tough budget decisions made downtown in the upcoming six months. Why not just play it straight — say that we simply don't have enough money for this or that — rather than look for excuses to try and save face?

Dallascityhall.com where are you?

Christina Hughes Babb — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:52:43 GMT

As you can imagine, us Advocate reporters rely quite a bit on the city's official website, Dallascityhall.com for phone numbers, e-mailing city council members, reading meeting agendas, etc. But when I logged on this morning in hopes of locating a number for someone in the Water Utilities department, I found, well, see for yourself. According to Robert Wilonsky at the Observer, who apparently tried to connect earlier than me, the domain registration expired over the weekend. Doh! The site has reportedly been up and down all morning, so by the time you read this, it might be back. But, as Wilonsky notes, it forces the question, "are budget problems that bad?" — a question we addressed here last week (spoiler alert — the answer is "yes").

Documentary about East Dallas girl screens tonight

Rachel Stone — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:51:21 GMT

"Torey's Distraction" is a movie about 17-year-old Woodrow Wilson High School junior Torey Harrah and her lifelong struggle with a rare, genentic craniofacial abnormality called Apert Syndrome.

Casting director and documentarian Tisha Blood spent 10 years shooting footage and producing the film, which includes the story of two other girls with craniofacial abnormalities.

The film is screening at the Magnolia Theater Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $10, and you can buy them online here.

By the way, look for our story about Torey in the April Advocate.

Bob makes it to the big screen

Christina Hughes Babb — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:40:34 GMT

“His Name is Bob”, a movie based on the life of neighborhood resident Robert Crawford, whom we wrote about last year around this time, has been selected for the 40th Annual USA Film Festival, which will be held at the Angelika beginning April 30. The brilliant and tenacious folks responsible for the movie — Lakewood residents Sebastian and Heather Lee and Lisa Johnson — don’t have details yet on the screening but promise to get them to us as soon as they do.

I got an opportunity last year to see a few minutes of the feature documentary (as it looked ast year, anyway) and I am so psyched to hear it was chosen for the festival — can't wait to see the final product.

Police, politicians clamping down on Greenville Avenue partying?

Rick Wamre — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:28:06 GMT

Jim Schutze with the Observer wrote about it last week; this week, it's the DMN. So it must be true: The city is looking to gain control of the bar scene on Lowest Greenville, that area of the street between Belmont and Ross. The plan being set in motion by Angela Hunt and Pauline Medrano won't have much of an impact on this year's St. Patrick's Day celebration, not that it's actually needed any more on the area's biggest payday of the year. But the plan that Hunt and Medrano are working on — requiring businesses that want to stay open past 11:30 p.m. or so to apply for special use permits, which would allow the city to control the number of actual "bars" in operation late at night, when most of the problems occur — could have a big impact on the future of a part of our neighborhood that needs a little order.

Sharing our stuff (instead of buying more)

Keri Mitchell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:20:18 GMT

I was intrigued by the featured opinion piece in Sunday morning's DMN, which asks the question: "Why own anything?" The premise of the piece is the possibility of shifting from a consumption-based society to "product service systems" — as in,opting to lease instead of own a wheelbarrow, ladder, chainsaw, etc. The piece gives examples of companies beginning to embrace this model with items like cars and bicycles, but talks about how it would require a mindset shift on the part of companies to switch from selling us stuff to selling us services.

"The essential insight is that in many purchases, we don't want the thing per se — we want what it can do for us. You don't crave a lawn mower, you want shorter grass; the desire is not for a refrigerator but for cold, unspoiled milk. And according to an emerging line of thinking, there are great benefits in meeting the customer's needs in creative ways that don't necessarily entail ownership."

Of course, many factors could lead to this shift — the recession, the desire to be "green", the fact that we do, indeed, have too much stuff, and as we realize this, our purchases are starting to slow down. (If you don't think we have too much stuff, read this New York Times story on our obsession with storage. It's long, but incredibly interesting.) As a result, companies are trying to think of new ways to make money, and perhaps this method will be an answer.

I also wondered if any neighbors still do it the old-fashioned way — a neighborhood pool of stuff, or just lending out and borrowing to and from each other on a regular basis. The piece opened with a man who had borrowed his neighbor's wheelbarrow the previous weekend, and wanted to use it again, but felt bad asking. He thought about offering a small fee to borrow it, and then thought it would be great to have an entire network of lending and borrowing between neighbors, so created Rentalic. No Dallas residents have posted their "for rent" items on the site yet, but you can rent a wet/dry vac from Richardson and a chipper/mulcher from Carrollton. Other sites along these lines mentioned in the story are: GoGoVerde, Neighborrow, Bright Neighbor, WeCommune and NeighborGoods. It's a great idea, and one that I hope takes off here.

Another stake in the Trinity toll road

Jeff Siegel — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:49:20 GMT

More bad news for the Trinity toll road, and this time it comes from two of the highway's biggest supporters: Dallas' Only Daily Newspaper and the mayor.

This story details the woes (which, of course, have been detailed many times elsewhere and long before this, and most recently here): There's no money. And it's not safe. And there's no money. Shock and surprise -- Mayor Park Cities finally acknowledges there's a good chance the toll road will never be built.

Now, perhaps, given the city's budget problems, we can stop spending $1.25 million for the Trinity River Corridor project.

Advocate radio: parade talk

Christina Hughes Babb — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:33:07 GMT

Everybody loves a parade ... right? Or maybe, they are more trouble than they are worth. With the city's biggest parade event fast approaching, the Advocate editors sit down to discuss this oh-so vital topic. LISTEN HERE .

Preservation Texas honors two neighborhood buildings

Rick Wamre — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:27:26 GMT

Several neighborhood renovation projects that preserved local history will be honored next month by Preservation Texas at its annual awards dinner in Houston next month. Among the winners are the Filter Building at White Rock Lake, which won the Historic Rehabilitation Award for successful rehabilitation of a historic residential, commercial or institutional building or structure. Among the winners of the Historic Restoration Award for historic residential, commercial or institutional buildings or structures that have been restored to a specific period was the Parks Estate (click here to read our Aug. 2008 story about the YMCA building). Passing along this news to Back Talk was neighborhood resident and arts district director Veletta Lill, a former city council rep who was instrumental in saving the Parks Estate and who is an ex-officio board member of Preservation Texas.

Restaurant Talk: Which Which

Marlena Chavira Medford — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:56:58 GMT

There aren’t many establishments where you can order a SPAM and Cheez Whiz sandwich — but should you have the hankering, Which Wich? has you covered. This sandwich shop has more than 50 varieties, everything from meatloaf to peanut butter and banana.

What I like about this place most is how you order: Just grab one of the paper sacks and use the checklist printed on it to customize your order. On a recent visit there I kept it simple with turkey and avocado on wheat. The service was quick, and the sandwich was delightful — no skimping on the meat, and the hoagie was perfectly toasted. And in fact, all sandwiches come toasted unless you request otherwise.

If you’re in a hurry, you can order online for pickup. And there’s also a handful of shakes, cookies, and breakfast sandwiches, too.

Productivity Killer: make yourself a Na’vi Avatar

Marlena Chavira Medford — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:27:25 GMT

James Cameron’s Avatar is up for a whopping nine Academy Awards, though I’m predicting Best Picture will go to The Hurt Locker. If you’ve seen the 3D film, then you can appreciate the technology behind it. And if you’ve ever wondered how you’d look as one of the blue Na’vi creatures, you can find out here. Just upload your photo and get ready for the wonderfully creepy results. Oh, and you can see what some celebrities would look like here, too.