Kick Pleat owner Wendi Martin fully refurbished a former JK Chocolate warehouse for her new location. Read more on page 8. Photography by Lauren Allen.
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Advocate (c) 2025 is published monthly in print and daily online by Advocate Media - Dallas Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation based in Dallas and first published in 1991. Contents of this print magazine may not be reproduced. Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for the content of all advertisements and sponsorships printed, and therefore assume responsibility for any and all claims against the Advocate. The Publisher reserves the right to accept or reject ay editorial, advertising or sponsorship material in print or online. Opinions set forth in Advocate publications are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the Publisher’s viewpoint. More than 180,000 people read Advocate publications in print each month; Advocate online publications receive more than 4 million pageviews monthly. Advertising rates and guidelines are available upon request. Advocate print and online publications are available free of charge throughout our neighborhoods, one print copy per reader. For information about supporting our non-profit mission of providing local news to neighborhood readers, please call 214-560-4216 or email aquintero@advocatemag.com. You never know what the day will bring at CC Young. We’re dedicated to keeping assisted living residents as independent as possible — while making life as fun as possible. As one resident said, “There’s so much to do here, you’re wearing me out.” Put your dreams in motion at CC Young. Visit ccyoung.org or call 469-663-9541 for more information. License #: 147190
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Mural on the Flower Child patio in the Preston Royal Shopping Center. Photography by Lauren Allen.
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THROUGH THE LENS
Capturing the untold stories of military aviation
Story by NIKI GUMMADI
The popularity of movies like Top Gun is a testament to the public’s interest in the mystique surrounding military aviation. The Frontiers of Flight Museum’s newest exhibition is offering a way to learn more about the real-life stories that have inspired this fascination.
Aerials will be available to view at Dallas Love Field Airport’s Frontiers of Flight Museum until Sept. 2. The exhibition features aerial photography from U.S. military photojournalists depicting stories of military flight from the Vietnam Era to modern day.
The exhibition was born when museum staff reached out to local photojournalist Jeremy Lock, a retired U.S. Air Force Master Sgt., to inquire about showing his work. In response, Lock suggested curating an exhibition featuring work from not only him but also a number of other military photojournalists.
Lock worked with mass communication specialist Brien Aho and Tech. Sgt. Bennie Davis, both retired, to comb through the over 1,600 images that were submitted for consideration. From there, the team chose 90 images from 29 contributors to display. According to Frontiers of Flight Museum President and CEO Abigail Erickson-Torres, the process took more than 1,000 hours over a span of eight months.
“We talked about what was going to be the overall theme Aerials , and it came down to not only just the hardware but the (human) interactions with the hardware,” Davis says.
At the exhibition’s opening, Lock, Davis and Aho each spoke about why they pursued their careers as military photojournalists. They emphasized that those who serve in the U.S. military are heroes, and their job as photojournalists is to simply document what they do and tell their stories.
“As a military photographer, I get to experience somebody else’s life,” Aho says. “And then I get to go back and tell the world … ‘You wouldn’t believe what I saw.’”
Photos courtesy of (top to bottom) Airman 1st Class Joshua Hastings, Senior Airman Patrick Sullivan, Staff Sgt. Matthew John Bruch and Master Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock, via Frontiers of Flight Musuem.
music & medicine
How a Hockaday senior is composing a path in biomedical innovation
Story by NIKI GUMMADI
Photography by GABRIEL CANO
DURING AIMEE GUO’S FRESHMAN YEAR AT THE HOCKADAY SCHOOL, HER GRANDFATHER DIED FROM LUNG CANCER. The loss shifted Guo’s view of healthcare and led to her interest in medicine. She began to think about how she could use her skills to help people in the medical space.
Guo started building her coding skills in middle school, but the computational aspect did not interest her. An internship at the University of Texas at Dallas Intelligent Robotics & Vision Lab taught her how to combine her coding skills with the healthcare space, jumpstarting her love for biomedical engineering.
This love brought her to an internship at Johns Hopkins University, where she studied cancer treatment. Her project created a tool focused on improving the accuracy of radiation therapy for pancreatic cancer patients.
“I just feel like this experience was really cool because not only did it broaden my view on cancer treatment, but I learned so much about the research process,” she says. “It’s been a lot of trial and error. I guess you can say it’s frustrating at times, but I’ve learned so much.”
The frustration paid off. On Jan. 8, the Society for Science named Guo as one of the top 300 scholars in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search. The search is one of the oldest and most prestigious STEM competitions for high school seniors. Scholars were chosen based on their promise as STEM leaders, demonstrated through submissions of original independent research projects. As a chosen scholar, Guo and her school will receive $2,000.
Guo’s interests extend beyond just biomedical research. When she was 6 years old, Guo picked up the piano, a hobby she has carried on for the past 12 years. Last year, Guo received an honorable mention for her piano solo at the Texas Music Teachers Association Conference. Her passions for music and science go hand in hand in her desire to give back to her community.
Two years ago, Guo completed an internship focused on how music therapy could help patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or dementia.
“It broadened my perspective on how seniors who are struggling with memory care issues could really
benefit from listening to music, but also being able to see how much music can transform and build communities,” she says.
The internship inspired her to start the music volunteer organization Mind-full of Music. As president, Guo organizes student volunteers in the Dallas area to perform music in senior homes or memory care homes.
She says the organization has built caring and supportive relationships not only among the musicians but between the students and the residents of the homes they visit.
“It’s been really rewarding to see seniors almost anticipating our next performance and coming up to us being like, ‘When are y’all coming back? I’m really happy to hear your music,’” she says.
Giving back to the community is at the center of almost everything Guo does. In her free time, she has participated in hackathons and app-building challenges, which she says she enjoys because they allow her to use her knowledge of coding for social impact.
Guo’s time at Hockaday has also helped her discover new interests. She says her favorite class she has ever taken was an engineering design course during her first semester of senior year. She was able to construct a functioning robotic arm in the hands-on class.
“One of the things I’ve found to be really important is being able to combine your passions with something that can give back to your community,” she says. “I think that’s a really important part of your work or research or anything you end up doing.”
FROM THE DIAMOND DISTRICT TO DALLAS
How a special friendship and shared philosophy brought Marla Aaron jewelry to Texas
Story by NIKI GUMMADI | Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
Marla Aaron’s functional fine jewelry brand is unsurprisingly based in New York City’s Diamond District. Aaron is not from Dallas, and her jewelry is sold all around the world. So why did she decide to establish her first American shop-in-shop inside the newly-opened clothing store Kick Pleat on Lovers Lane? It was her friendship with Kick Pleat founder Wendi Martin that drew her to the area.
Aaron and Martin’s professional lives bear a striking resemblance. Years before meeting Aaron, Martin worked for Dell, helping to launch the computer in Latin America. Though Martin says she is grateful for her corporate experience and that it has helped with her business, she knew she needed a change.
“I just really knew it wasn’t for me, because I felt like I was dying on the inside with my cubicles and my punching in,” Martin says.
Before launching the Marla Aaron brand, Aaron was working in marketing and advertising while making jewelry on the side. After a particularly rough business trip, which ended with her having third-degree burns due to a rogue coffee maker, Aaron quit her job and began making jewelry full time.
“I had to be young and dumb to start (Kick Pleat),” Martin says.
As startups, both Kick Pleat and Marla Aaron started small. Aaron originally started working out of her home for the first four years. Martin started her business in a 1,200-square-foot house, and it was 14 years before she opened Kick Pleat Austin.
Kick Pleat now has three locations, and the Marla Aaron showroom in New York City averages six to eight appointments a day.
The Marla Aaron Bluebonnet Lock ($1,350), is a specialty lock engraved with Texas bluebonnets. The lock will only be available at the Dallas Kick Pleat location.
About 12 years ago, Martin and Aaron met in the Gary Graham store in New York City while Martin was scoping out Marla Aaron jewelry to possibly be sold at her store. Since then, the two owners — and their brands — have had a strong relationship. Kick Pleat was the first store Aaron sold to after launching her own line.
“We are very particular about the stores where we are sold. This is by far our most important relationship in the world for many, many reasons. That’s why it was important to do this here,” Aaron says.
Perhaps one of the best symbols of this relationship is the specialty item that will be available at the shop-in-shop. It features Aaron’s signature lock, engraved with bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas.
One of the reasons Marla Aaron and Kick Pleat seem to be so compatible is their owners’ similar philosophies about fashion and jewelry trends. Aaron and Martin have both made a point to stick to their visions. Martin says that people have asked her if she is going to change her inventory to fit the Dallas market.
“No, we’re going to do what we do, and that’s what’s going to hopefully make people with like minds that like it come in,” she says.
Aaron has also stayed firm in her vision of her brand. This is easily seen in the manner in which the jewelry is displayed. Instead of the traditional stands with glass cases, Marla Aaron jewelry is displayed in a specialty bright orange case that is modeled off of traditional sewing boxes. The display ties into Aaron’s desire to portray jewelry shopping as a “moment of play.”
“I think the key to success is to just stay your course,” she says. “If you try to be something you’re not, it’s over.”
HOW TO COLLECT REGULARS
Greek Isles Grille & Taverna strives to embody Greek hospitality
Story by AUSTIN WOOD | Photography by KATHY TRAN
Xenia. It roughly translates to “guest-friendship.” Greek hospitality, which anyone who’s visited the country can tell you all about, is in large part based on this ideal.
At Preston Royal’s Greek Isles Grille & Taverna, xenia is a foundational aspect of the customer experience. Owner Chris Kostas and his wife/business partner, Amanda, aim to turn neighbors into customers, customers into regulars and regulars into family.
“If you go to Greece and visit, you can meet somebody, a total stranger, and they’ll invite you to their home and cook you dinner,” Chris says. “So that’s the kind of feel that we like to have people feel when they come in. And it just makes it special. Since I’m here all day, every day, I feel like people that come in are a little bit more than just customers. They’re like family.”
Chris grew up in the business. His father came over from Greece when he was 17 years old and immediately entered the restaurant industry, as did his uncles. He remembers “many a night there” when his father managed a Greek restaurant on Bachman Lake in the 1980s and eventually helped open the original Greek Isles in Plano with the elder Kostas in the ’90s.
The Preston Royal location opened in 2014 and remained open until the 2019 tornado devastated most of the shopping center and surrounding area. Chris was in the kitchen when the storm first started picking up and didn’t realize exactly what was happening outside the restaurant. Then his mother called him.
“I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I open the back door of the kitchen, I look out, I hear sirens, see things flying in the air, so this looks like it could be pretty bad,” Chris says. “We had some guests, and just kind of tried to calmly get them to move to a safer area. They all had to grab their glass of wine and start walking about halfway through the restaurant, and all of a sudden, the power went out. Everyone drops their wine glass, like, ‘Where are we going?’
Our walk-in cooler is kind of small, so we took everyone to the back area and just, you know, waited it out. And fortunately, everyone was OK, and we walked out into what looked like a war zone.”
Hampered by COVID-19-related delays, it took the Kostas family almost two years to reopen at Preston Royal. Chris’ father and brother stepped away from the business before the reopening, so the decision was made to shutter the Plano location after close to 30 years. On the bright side, the carnage gave Chris and
Greek Isles boasts a respectable seafood offering, which includes grilled shrimp served over rice.
Amanda a blank canvas to remodel the space with an expanded patio and brighter interior decor.
Amanda previously worked in hospitality management at bars and restaurants around Dallas and takes an active role in front-of-house operations, including the bar offering, which was also expanded following the reopening. Greek Isles’ cocktail menu includes drinks like the Palios Fashioned ($15), made with Clyde Mays Rye, Metaxa 7m, syrup and fig bitters, and the Tsipour-Go ($13), which comes with tsipouro, aperol, orange and bitters. Even with her industry experience, Mrs. Kostas has found Greek spirits to be an entirely new experience.
“That was something new for me, because I’ve been in the industry way before I met my husband, and so getting to play with all the different spirits and things like that, and they’re made with different things. Like a lot of the Greek spirits are made from grapes, so it’s all technically brandies, and so that was really fun. And just the different ways that they flavor them, or how they ferment them, that adds their own unique flavor. And then we have one mastika that’s made from the sap of a tree that’s really, really unique. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Greek Isles’ fare traditionally stuck to tried and true Greek classics, but following the reopening, expanded to include more experimental, Mediterranean fusion-esque dishes like lamb tacos ($13), which come served with jalapeño satziki, radish and feta. Mezedakia, or small plates the Kostases liken to tapas, were also added.
Flashy, experimental dishes are good snares for first-time customers, but Greek Isles’ regulars come for Greek classics like gyro ($17), chicken lemonati ($27) and dolmas ($14), which are grape leaves filled with seasoned ground beef, rice, fennel and avgolemono sauce. Other crowd favorites include tableside flambe saganaki ($15) and lamb chops ($45).
“There’s so many things that are on the menu that are staples,” Amanda says. “If I look at one thing I’m trying to do to shorten the menu, I’m like, ‘Well, that person’s gonna come in and they’re gonna be upset.’ So the entrées and the staples we can’t mess with. We’ve added some things but haven’t taken anything away.”
Chris sources most ingredients himself and can typically be found at the Dallas Farmers Market in the early hours of the morning browsing tomatoes. It’s the way his father did it, and Amanda estimates Greek Isles only uses about five ingredients from big truck distributors.
After the Preston Royal location temporarily closed, Chris says Preston Hollow patrons would make the long drive to Plano to support the business during COVID lockdowns. Now, with the Plano location closed, Kostas says he may look at expanding to a second location up north. That way, he can get back to serving some old regulars.
“I think just that fact of having those relationships and getting to know them more than just they come in here and eat and then leave, really just makes it worth being here every day. Otherwise, I don’t think that I would want to do it,” Kostas says.
Greek Isles Grille & Taverna, 5934 Royal Lane, 214.484.8635, greekislesgrilledallas.com
Roasted beet salad (left) and chicken florentine (right) which comes stuffed with feta, mushrooms and vegetables.
FLY FISHING THE METROPLEX
Your next favorite fishing spot may be closer than you think
Story by NIKI GUMMADI
GREG DEMARS GREW UP IN TEXAS, AND AS HE SAYS, LEARNED HOW TO FISH “PRETTY MUCH AS EVERY LITTLE KID IN TEXAS LEARNS HOW TO FISH, WITH A RED AND WHITE BOBBER AND A WORM.” Since his brother-in-law introduced him to fly fishing over 30 years ago, DeMars’ fly fishing adventures have taken him all over the world. His newest venture, however, is a little closer to home. DeMars’ new book Urban Fly Fishing Dallas-Fort Worth offers readers an indepth guide to the best fly fishing spots hidden all over the metroplex. It will be available to purchase on March 4. We sat down with DeMars to hear more about how his book came to be.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT FLY FISHING THAT APPEALS TO YOU SO MUCH?
I’ve always enjoyed doing things with my hands. I’m a guitar player, so I just love that kind of tactile, manual thing. I’m an engineer as well, so there’s a little driving force of getting the technical knowledge of fly fishing.
WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT IT?
I was actually traveling to central Texas to fly fish with a good friend of mine Aaron Reed, who happened to have written the first book in this series called Fly Fishing Austin & Central Texas . It was a seven hour round trip for me, so I thought ‘Gosh, I need to find a place closer to home to fly fish.’ At the time, I was living in Victory Park, and it’s a short walk to the Katy Trail and Turtle Creek. I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s fish in Turtle Creek.’ I started fishing up Turtle Creek and other creeks around Dallas, and it’s like, ‘Wow, man, there’s all kinds of fish in these small urban creeks that no one thinks to fish.’ At that point, my buddy Aaron was like, ‘Well, you need to write the Dallas book.’ I had no
interest in writing a book, but he worked on me for a few months and helped me put together a proposal for his publisher. This was about when COVID was starting to happen, and it was just kind of a perfect thing for me to be able to get out and get away. So I started fishing like crazy and taking all my notes and everything, and it ended up turning into this book.
WHAT DID THE WRITING PROCESS FOR THIS BOOK LOOK LIKE?
It’s a guidebook, so it’s fairly repetitive from a writing standpoint. But, my book is the third in its series, and the previous two authors had interjected some interesting little things in their books. I decided to use Texas Blues as kind of a musical theme for my book, because I’ve been playing blues guitar for close to 50 years, and I just really love that style of music. Dallas and Fort Worth are just hot beds, and have been for a very long time, of blues music. Everything from Blind Lemon Jefferson in the early part of the last century all the way up through new artists that are breaking in today. So that was a fun little thing to add some spice to the book, and I really enjoyed doing that.
OF ALL THE SPOTS YOU WROTE ABOUT IN YOUR BOOK, WHAT IS THE ONE YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD CHECK OUT?
Well, it depends, because there’s so many different species of fish you can catch. White bass live in lakes, but every year about March or April, they start coming up into the creeks to spawn. It’s just insane activity, so if you can experience that, that’s amazing. There’s also the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area, below the dam on Lewisville Lake. It’s just the Trinity River, but it fishes like something in the mountains. That’s a really great fishery to kind of try your luck in, but all these little creeks are so much fun. I just love getting in the water and having the water flow around my legs and feeling connected to the earth.
WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NEW TO FLY FISHING?
The number one thing I would say is don’t be intimidated. I think a lot of people look at fly fishing and go, ‘Oh man, how do you do that? That looks crazy hard.’ I think there’s kind of an intimidation factor, but as long as you can get the fly in the water, you can fly fish. So I would say the number one tip would be just give it a shot.
WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT THE BOOK?
It gives everyone in the city, everyone in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, a resource that can show them places to fish 5-10 minutes away from their house. There’s this idea, I think, among a lot of people that you have to go to the mountains or some remote wilderness to do your fly fishing, and a lot of people think you can only fly fish for trout. This perception is one of the things I really hope to change. You can fly fish anywhere, and you can fly fish for any kind of fish. You can fish in warm water, you can fish for bass and anything else you want to catch, and it’s right around the corner from your house.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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OUR NEIGHBORHOOD
By JACK DRAKE
THE TOWN OF PRESTON HOLLOW
Post-annexation period
The annexation of Preston Hollow coincided perfectly with the suburban boom of postwar America. At the time of annexation, Preston Hollow was an island surrounded by Caruth land to the south and east, the holdings of other farm families to the west (which were slowly being developed) and the vast North Texas countryside to the north. Many historians have described Woodall Rodgers as having a “manifest destiny” to extend the boundaries of the City of Dallas to the northern edge of Dallas County and beyond. He did not want the new parts of his city to be filled with farmland but with attractive suburban developments. This wish was granted in the 1950s, when the areas around Preston Hollow were filled in within a few decades. This rapid increase of population required original neighborhood institutions to expand to keep up with the demand. Hillcrest High School (after dropping “Vickery” from its original name) joined Dallas ISD, outgrew its 1938 building and received a major expansion in the 1950s. The Texas Country Day School merged with The Cathedral School (the child of the St. Luke’s and Terril School combination a few years earlier) to form St. Mark’s in September 1950, creating one of the most powerful schools in the nation. Just down the road, Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church watched its membership more than double from 1953 to 1958, outgrowing the original sanctuary (Founder’s Hall), which held 250. Land was acquired from the Stichter family south of the original campus, and famous Dallas ar -
chitect Mark Lemmon was rehired to design a new sanctuary that, in present day, can seat almost 1,000. The commercial parts of Preston Hollow saw similar trends. Neiman Marcus and Sanger Harris both opened large department stores in Preston Center in the 1950s. Increasing demand for retail led to the development of Preston Royal Shopping Center in the late 1950s. When the original Preston Hollow City Council men first started meeting in The Little White House in the late ’30s to govern their little country town, I doubt they could have ever imagined two major department stores and one of the most luxurious shopping centers in Dallas being across the street from them a few decades later. The new developments may have ended the country feel and isolation
that brought people to the area in the ’30s and ’40s as the boundaries became blurred with the surrounding neighborhoods, but Preston Hollow would always remain the anchor area of North Dallas. To this day, many people in the general North Dallas area still refer to their home or business as being in “Preston Hollow.”
JACK DRAKE is a sophomore at The Ohio State University studying aviation management. The Preston Hollow resident is known for publishing Preston Hollow: A Brief History . Drake is a member of Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church, a volunteer at Vickery Meadow Food Pantry and creator of the Facebook group Preston Hollow History.
Photo courtesy of Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church.
