The Library, at Hibiscus and Beck, behind White Rock Church of Christ on Ferguson, is silver LEED certified. It features meeting spaces, classrooms and computer work stations. The Ferguson Road Initiative pushed the city to build the library, using 2003 and 2006 bond money, as part of the initiative’s commitment to improving the far East Dallas area.

© Rachel Stone for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Puppies like Justice still needs help. Photo courtesy DFW Rescue Me

Who could forget the widely covered story of Justice, the dog who survived several days following torture and incineration at the hands of a soulless human?

In case you missed it, DFWrescueme.com has the whole story of the puppy’s abuse and rescue.

Neighborhood eatery Café Lago, which allows pets and the patio and even has a special menu for dogs, has always shown a soft spot for our furred friends, so it’s no surprise that owner Gabriela Kovacic is hosting a benefit for the organization that helped Justice, in Justice’s memory. Justice’s accused torturer/killer is on house arrest.

The dinner, Saturday, June 2, will feature a three-course meal with wine pairings for $50 per person. $30 of each purchase will go to DFW Rescue Me.

Entertainers will include emcee Sybil Summers from 105.3 FM and the Tri-Tones of Arts magnet High School. A silent auction and raffle will also benefit DFW Rescue. Purchase advanced tickets here. Space will be limited.

Cafe Lago is located at 9219 Garland Road, near White Rock Lake.

© Christina Hughes Babb for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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White Rock YMCA site plan

The plan commission’s vote was unanimous, and yesterday, the Dallas City Council’s vote was unanimous to change the zoning for land at Gaston and Loving and allow the White Rock YMCA to construct a new center on property where Trinity Lutheran Church sits vacant.

During the meeting, Councilwoman Angela Hunt said twice how “thrilled” she is “to have the YMCA coming on to that property, investing millions of dollars to create an incredible community asset.”

According to a press release, the Y plans to close on the property this summer, and “the next step will be to begin to secure contributions from the community to continue the great work of the YMCA.”

Santos Martinez of Masterplan Consulting, who represented the YMCA in its request for new zoning, said at a neighborhood meeting in March the Metropolitan YMCA has the money to purchase the Trinity Lutheran property outright, and could roll money from the purchase of its current property into new plans. He also said the new White Rock Y facility would cost a projected $12 million, and would hopefully be open by May 2014.

The Y officially moving also means, of course, one less major hurdle in Lincoln Property Co.’s attempt to purchase of land around Gaston and Garland/East Grand to make way for a “high-end retail development” on that corner.

© Keri Mitchell for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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The $2,500 annual awards honor three public school teachers whose performance goes beyond their job descriptions. They must also perform activities that benefit disadvantaged or at-risk students, as well as show innovation and creativity in the classroom. among other criteria.

The Rotary Club presented Hirsch with the award at a lunch at the Belo Mansion this week. This is the second consecutive year that a J.L. Long teacher has won the award. Vanessa Rodriguez, AVID coordinator and soccer coach at J.L. Long, won last year.

© Rachel Stone for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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What I learned with 80 Jews and Christians in the Holy Land

“It’s complicated.”

That’s the phrase that stuck in all of our minds during a remarkable 10-day interfaith trip to Israel and Palestine last month. Eighty hearty souls traveled to the Holy Land — about half associated with Temple Emanu-El and half with Wilshire Baptist Church. Rabbis David Stern and Nancy Kasten (David’s wife) joined me as religious docents, complementing our two Israel-based travel guides.

The two congregations have nurtured a growing relationship for more than 20 years. We have worshipped together many times at temple and church. Rabbi Stern and I have spoken together at high schools, colleges and civic organizations. We long ago left behind the uneasy cordiality of initial probing conversations for the hard work of reckoning respectfully with our real religious differences. Those differences define our theology more than our faith and work.

“It’s complicated” is a phrase that describes so much of what we have discovered with and about one another over time and during our time in the Holy Land. Why do Jews practice the faith of Jesus without putting their faith in Jesus? Why do Christians put their faith in Jesus without practicing the faith of Jesus? In short, there is no short answer to these questions; there is only a long listening to each other about our histories as people of God. And we do have history, Jews and Christians — some of it growing from the common root of Jesse, some of it branching out so far we aren’t always sure we can rediscover that common ground. What’s clear is that it’s complicated and that we should seek simplicity only on the other side of complexity.

The lands of Israel and Palestine are complicated, too. For many Jews and Zionist Christians, the entire land belongs to the Jews because it was promised to Abraham and his seed in Genesis. Forget the borders of the British Mandate, United Nations resolutions, or peace treaties with the Palestinians: the Bible is all the deed they need. Most Jews, however, and Christians like me claim something else. God’s promise of the land, like God’s covenant with Israel, always required that the people of God act justly toward one another and toward their neighbors. Injustice invalidates any claim of God’s provision and protection. The security of the State of Israel can never last if it comes at the expense of justice for those who have been denied freedom and rights to live in the land with them. Peace has to be made before it can be kept. The military can’t make peace.

Likewise, Palestinians want a homeland in the land they called home before 1948. The Arab population poses a great challenge to Israel as a state. For one thing, the Arabs constitute 20 percent of the citizenry of the State of Israel, even though they are treated like second-class citizens because of the dual nature of Israel as a Jewish state and a democracy. The Palestinians who live in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza are divided Muslim and Christian, the former representing about a 98 percent majority. Native Christians — whose holy sites in the Holy Land such as Bethlehem (West Bank), Jerusalem and Nazareth (Israel) — are a small double minority as Arabs among Jews and as Arab Christians among Arab Muslims. They are tragically disappearing from the land Jesus called home.

Palestinians will never prevail against Israel as long as they continue to employ violence as a means of achieving their ends. Radical Muslim terrorism is no more effective politically than the Israeli military defense in securing a robust and hopeful future.

Eighty Jews and Christians have learned the path to peace. Trust and respect lead to friendship and even love.

It’s complicated, but it’s not impossible. With God nothing is impossible.

© George Mason for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Aaron Barker and his girlfriend, Sarah Miller. Photo by Can Türkyilmaz

Carnival Barker is a neighborhood ice-cream upstart that offers delightful flavors such as the Fat Elvis, with peanut butter, bananas, candied bacon and a honey swirl. It’s available at Bryan Street Tavern, among a few other restaurants and grocers around town. Carnival Barker all started with a TV show about ice cream college. Ice cream college is a real thing. It’s a seven-day short course at Penn State University, and Aaron Barker and his girlfriend, Sarah Miller, watched a show about it while relaxing in their hotel room in Austin last summer. “I started eating ice cream more, and making it at home,” he says. “I started making two or three batches a week.” Everyone loved his ice cream, and friends often put in orders. Barker had just been laid off from his job as a copywriter for J.C. Penney, and soon after, his dad died. He had a small severance and a small inheritance, so he decided to go to ice cream college in January. “It’s everything from the cow to the cone,” he says. “I was highly overwhelmed.” But for one thing, ice cream college taught him what he didn’t want to do with his ice cream. Big manufacturers send their employees to the course, and among other things, they learn how far ice cream can be stretched with fillers and still be considered ice cream. “We don’t use preservatives. We shop at the farmers market, and we buy local as much as possible,” he says. Other flavors include Nutella and vodka, cookies and cream (it’s ice cream that tastes like cookies; not vanilla with cookies in it), raspberry chocolate and s’mores. Good stuff, but nothing too avant garde. “I’m not reinventing the wheel,” he says. “What I’m trying to do is make a handmade, great quality ice cream.” He rents a commercial kitchen from a caterer, and he and Miller make ice cream at night. He’s in the market for a batch freezer that he can afford, but for now, he uses a 4-quart electric ice cream maker and rock salt. Carnival Barker isn’t making a profit yet, but their ice cream is selling. Bolsa Mercado in Oak Cliff sold out of their first order quickly. And the manager of City Tavern called to place a second order because employees ate all the ice cream before they could even put it on the menu. The goal is to open an ice cream shop eventually. “I love seeing people happy, and people smile when they eat ice cream,” Barker says. “I want to live being happy, and this is a step toward that.

© Rachel Stone for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Rich and Karen Rogers opened Scardello three and a half years ago. Photo by Danny Fulgencio

Rich Rogers thinks he has the greatest job in the world: cheesemonger. The neighborhood resident and his wife, Karen, opened Scardelloat 3511 Oak Lawn about three and a half years ago. “I’ve always loved cooking and food,” Rogers says. “I love to make multi-course meals for friends and family.” About seven years ago, he “fell in love with cheese.” Dallas dairy cases, even at high-end grocers, couldn’t satisfy his constant search for new and interesting cheeses. “I would mail-order and try to find the weirdest piece of cheese I could get my hands on,” he says. Soon, Rogers decided to leave a 15-year career in film and video production to open Scardello.

Rich and Karen Rogers. Photo by Danny Fulgencio

The shop carries dozens of cheeses, and Rogers still is always in search of something new and different. There are cheeses from all over the globe, but Scardello, named after Rogers’s grandfather Pete Scardello, focuses on American and Texas makers. “All the cool things happening in cheese are happening in the U.S.,” Rogers says. European cheese-makers are bound by tradition, he says, and many American cheese-makers are coming into their own right now. Rogers considers cheese more than just a snack or an ingredient; he likes to serve a cheese plate as its own course at the end of meals. At Scardello, customers can order cheese plates and sandwiches, along with beer and wine. Monthly cheese classes allow students to taste 17 cheeses and pair them with beer or wine. “The best way to learn about cheese is to taste it,” he says.

© Rachel Stone for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Below: From foreground/cucumber martini, slurricane, a schooner of beer, hurricane. Photo by Lori Bandi

On weekends, Dodie’s rooftop patio is packed, sometimes with standing room only. The New Orleans-style restaurant has some creative cocktails to go with that Greenville Avenue nightlife. The hurricane is a staple, loaded with five liquors. “It’s a pretty strong and intense drink,” says bar manager Cami Hetmer. Mix in a margarita for the Dodie’s Sluricane. The menu also includes a long list of skinny options, such as the cucumber martini, for those looking for healthier choices, using natural fruit juices instead of adding sugar. “Most guys come here for crawfish and beer,” Hetmer says. “Our cocktail menu is geared more toward women.” Stop by on a Thursday night for a more low-key atmosphere on the roof.

Dodie’s Cajun Restaurant, 2129 Greenville, 214.821.8890

Ambiance: Festive

Price range: $7-$10

Tip: Happy hour is 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

|    more dining spots    |

1 Neighborhood Services Tavern
Here, you’ll find cleverly named cocktails that actually taste good, too. Try the meditating mule with Hangar One vodka, Buddha’s Hand Citron, Thatcher’s cucumber liqueur, Thai basil and Cock ‘n’ Bull ginger beer.
2405 N. Henderson, 214.827.2405

2 The People’s Last Stand
The cocktail menu here is so large, they have to break it up into different sections from classic to experimental.
5319 E. Mockingbird, Suite 210, 214.370.8755

3 Capitol Pub
The seasonal drink menu features an array of summer cocktails such as the blueberry yum-yum. Fresh limes and blueberries are muddled with agave nectar and topped with Stoli blueberry vodka, Sprite, club soda and a little St. Germain.
2404 N. Henderson, 214.887.9330

© Emily Toman for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Welcome to the 10th annual Advocate rosé column, where — despite the changes in the wine business over the past decade and even though the wine wise guys insist that rising prices are just around the corner — you can still buy a pretty good rosé for $10.

In this, rosé is close to the perfect cheap wine. It’s fresh and easy to drink, pairs with almost any kind of food, and its style means that it’s easier to make well than cheap red wines. What else do you need to know about rosé?

• Rosé isn’t white zinfandel (or white merlot or whatever). Rosés are pink wines made with red grapes, and they aren’t sweet. Why are they pink? Because the red grape skins are left in the fermenting grape juice just long enough to color the wine (which is how all wine gets its color, actually).

• Rosés’ fruit flavors are mostly red berries, like strawberry or cranberry, and sometimes even watermelon. Rosés should be served chilled, and if you put an ice cube in, no one will tell the wine police.

• Don’t buy old rosé. Look for 2011, and be careful with anything dated before 2010. Rosés are not made to age, and go bad quickly.

What should you drink? The Yalumba ($10) is an Australian rosé with flavors of mango and lemon, believe it or not, and just 11.5 percent alcohol. It’s as close to a perfect New World rosé as you’re going to find. The Cline Mouvèdre ($12) is one of the best California rosés I’ve tasted in years, bone dry and not much fruit (maybe some cranberry) and a longish mineral finish — more French in style than Californian. The Falesco ($10) is one of my all-time favorites, made by one of Italy’s great producers, with strawberry fruit and a soft elegance.

Ask the wine guy

Why don’t Americans drink more rosé?

Two reasons: They confuse it with white zinfandel, and think it’s sweet. Or they don’t think it’s real wine, something inferior to a red wine. It is different, of course, but it’s supposed to be — bright fruit and no tannins.

Ask The Wine Guy taste@advocatemag.com

With your wine

Mushroom and ham soufflé

Soufflés befuddle most of us, even though they’re just a fancy version of a baked omelet. This is made without fancy equipment. But if the directions still seem intimidating, just sauté the vegetables, mix with the eggs, and bake in a 375° oven for 20-30 minutes until the eggs set. Any rosé is a wonderful match with this.

Grocery List

3 egg yolks, 5 egg whites

4 oz chopped ham

1 c sliced mushrooms

1/2 c fresh bread crumbs

1/2 c grated parmesan cheese

3 Tbsp all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp canola oil

1 1/2 c chicken or vegetable stock

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Sauté the mushrooms in olive oil. When soft, remove from pan and set aside.

2. Use butter to grease the sides of a 6-cup gratin dish that is about 1 1/2 inches deep. Mix the bread crumbs and 3 tablespoons of the parmesan, and use half of the mixture to coat the sides and bottom of the gratin dish. Shake out the excess.

3. Heat the canola oil in the sauté pan and then add the flour. Mix with a whisk over medium to high heat for a minute or so, and then add the stock and salt and pepper. Keep whisking until the mixture boils and thickens. Remove from heat and add the egg yolks, whisking well. Mix in the mushrooms and ham.

4. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until they are firm but still soft. Fold the egg whites into the sauce mixture, along with the remaining 5 tablespoons of parmesan cheese. Pour this mixture into the prepared gratin dish, and sprinkle the top with the remaining bread crumb mixture,

5. Bake in a 375° oven for 30-35 minutes, until the soufflé is puffy and brown. It should be set inside, but still a little moist. Spoon onto plates, and serve immediately.

Serves four, takes about 45 minutes

© Jeff Siegel for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Kyle Noonan and Jeff Sepkowitz plan to open Bowl & Barrel, the city’s first new bowling alley in decades, this fall. Photo by Danny Fulgencio

The last of our neighborhood bowling alleys, Jupiter Lanes, closed two years ago, even though its owner had just spent $2 million renovating it. The popularity of bowling has dwindled in the past several decades, but a new wave of upscale bowling centers is setting trends.

The first new bowling alley Dallas has seen in decades is set to open in the Shops at Park Lane this fall. Two Lakewood-based entrepreneurs, Kyle Noonan and Josh Sepkowitz, are planning the center, Bowl & Barrel, which will offer specialty beers and gourmet pub grub, along with plush banquettes at the lanes’ ends. The wildly trendy Brooklyn Bowl in New York City inspired their business idea.

Noonan and Sepkowitz, who were SMU fraternity brothers, knew they eventually wanted to go into business together. Noonan had a 12-year career with Pappas Brothers restaurants, and Sepkowitz has a background in investment banking and real estate.

“We started looking at the major trend-setting cities — New York, Chicago, L.A. — and we saw this undercurrent that people wanted to go bowling,” Noonan says. “And it’s people you wouldn’t necessarily associate with your typical bowler.”

After a visit to Brooklyn Bowl about two years ago, they hired a consultant to determine whether such a business would work in Dallas. The answer, overwhelmingly, was “yes.” So they quit their jobs about a year ago and have been working on their upstart fulltime since then.

It took a year for Noonan and Sepkowitz to find the right location for their lanes.

“That’s why there’s not bowling in the city, because it’s hard to find the right building,” Noonan says.

Their space at Park Lane comprises 15,000 square feet. It will have 15 lanes, a 3,000-square-foot restaurant and bar, and plenty of parking.

A couple of other bowling lanes have been proposed in the area recently. One was announced for the former Copper Tank Brewery in Deep Ellum in 2010. And another was announced for Lower Greenville, in the former Lucky’s Roadhouse space. That idea, from Barcadia owner Brooke Humphries, was shot down by the City Plan Commission. The building’s owners sued the city over the building’s zoning, and that case is still in litigation.

So it seems Bowl & Barrel will be the first bowling alley of its kind in the city. Noonan and Sepkowitz have an advantage, they think, because they’re not renovating. Bowl & Barrel will go into a big empty retail box. It takes AMF about six months to install lanes, and they expect restaurant construction to take about that long, too.

“We want to get away from the old, tired bowling alley — the dingy, stale-smoke bowling alley — and make it a very comfortable, sophisticated, upscale place,” Noonan says.

It is a place, they say, that their wives would want to go for a ladies night out. It’s a place to socialize and meet new people.

“If the three of us went bowling together,” Noonan says, “we could walk out with six new friends.”

Where we used to bowl

In the early 1940s, bowling was so popular that the daily newspaper carried league scores as well as a weekly bowling column, “On and Off Lanes,” which reported local bowling news. Rolling a perfect 300 game in league play was enough to land a mention on the Associated Press newswire. Practically every neighborhood company had a bowling league, including the Lakewood Theater, WRR and Sears & Roebuck. There were also ladies leagues, including one for housewives. In 1943, 100 teams competed in a citywide bowling tournament at Lakewood Lanes on Oram.

By the late 1960s, however, bowling leagues were mentioned less frequently in the local paper, and Lakewood Lanes, in the building that now houses Teeter’s Faucet Parts, is mentioned only in retrospectives after 1965.

Bill Lillard in his professional days. Photos courtesy of Bill Lillard.

Bowling hall-of-famer Bill Lillard rolled his first ball at Lakewood Lanes, against his mother’s wishes, when he was a student at J.L. Long. He remembers that the owner, Sid Henry, who built the lanes in 1941, seemed unhappy in the bowling business.

“There was no automation. You had to have pin boys,” Lillard says. “And it was hard to get pin boys, so Mr. Henry would be in the back setting pins.”

Lillard says he set pins for 4 cents a game on Friday nights, and then he would spend all his earnings on bowling every Saturday. Lakewood Lanes was updated in 1950 with “electric semiautomatic pin setters,” according to news reports.

Lillard went on to bowl for the Budweiser team in St. Louis with Don Carter, and he was a charter member of the Professional Bowlers Association. In the early 1960s, he left team bowling and became one of the top individual bowlers in the nation. In 1968, Lillard moved with his family to Houston, where he still lives, and started five bowling centers there. Two are still in business.

“We’ve had very good success with our bowling centers,” Lillard says. “Our business is based on leagues, and people nowadays will not sign up to bowl 35 weeks out of the year. Participation is down all over the country, and it’s hard to get people to sign up.”

The M.O. Rush Automotive bowling team poses in front of Lakewood Lanes before their trip to a tournament in Atlantic City, March 1949. From left to right: Bill Lillard, Sonny Loy, Lynn Carter, M.O. Rush, Buddy Behrends and Don McClure. Photo courtesy of Bill Lillard

The transition in popularity from team bowling to individual bowling started in 1958, with the creation of the PBA, Lillard says. The PBA won over TV audiences, which was its goal, but it resulted in a loss of interest in team bowling, he says. That’s one factor in the decline of bowling in general, he says.

Noonan and Sepkowitz found that league bowling often deters the casual bowler. “Leagues were taking up all the peak times to bowl, and you could never get a lane,” Sepkowitz says.

The business plan for Bowl & Barrel is not based on league bowling. The center will host leagues on weeknights, and they are expected to carry about the same level of seriousness as league kickball, which hit a popularity peak a few years back. Weekends at Bowl & Barrel will be reserved for individual bowlers who want to drink good beer and have a nice dinner.

“It’s like bowling for non-bowlers,” Noonan says.

© Rachel Stone for Advocate Magazine, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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