2020 May Oak Cliff

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PHOTO BY DANNY FULGENCIO

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People and places

DALLAS ISD FOOD AND NUTRITION SERVICES

workers made the cover of Time in April. The magazine tells stories of 12 people working on the front lines of society during the coronavirus crisis, including Yolanda Fisher, 48, who works at T.W. Browne Middle School in Oak Cliff. She said she was very afraid of catching the virus and that her daughter takes her temperature every day. But her work is too important. “We are feeding our community, and I love that,” she told the magazine.

3 things to do in Oak Cliff this month

Stream time

Movie theaters closed down because of the coronavirus crisis, but you can still stir yourself a cocktail and pretend you’re at the Texas Theatre. The historic theater is streaming its movies on Vimeo. Pay $10 to rent movies for a week. Buy tickets: thetexastheatre.com.

Read this

Oak Cliff’s own taco writer José R. Ralat published his first book, “Oak Cliff Tacos: A History and Guide.” Ralat, who is the taco editor for Texas Monthly, spent years researching the book, eating tacos in 38 American cities.

Buy the book: bookshop.org.

Pants off dance-off

DJ Sober and Sudie, two musicians who are roomies in Oak Cliff, put on a virtual dance party every Thursday on Facebook Live. No pants required, but sometimes costumes are requested. More info: Facebook.com/DJsober1

José R. Ralat (Photography by Danny Fulgencio)

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ABOUT THE COVER

Dutch irises blooming in the Stevens Park front yard of homeowner Van Johnson.

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MAPPING CORONAVIRUS

When the Dallas County Health Department first began mapping COVID-19 cases by ZIP code in the first week of April, there were between 107-166 cases in seven Oak Cliff ZIP codes: 75208, 75211, 75203, 75216, 75224, 75233 and 75232. Since then, our portion of the city has consistently had about 10% of all cases in Dallas County, based on the map, which is updated twice a week at dallascounty.org/covid-19/.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY

THE BISHOP ARTS THEATRE CENTER launched “Storytime at Bedtime,” a series of YouTube videos wherein members of the theater’s board of trustees, former summer camp students and parents read children’s books. The idea came from Emma Rodgers, who owned Black Images bookstore in Wynnewood Village from 1977-2007. To participate in Storytime at Bedtime, send your submission to admin@ bishopartstheatre.org.

#PICTUREPERFECT

Check out this photo of Dave Hoskins of the Dallas Eagles, whose home stadium was in Oak Cliff, @OakCliffAdvocate Instagram. Be sure to like and follow!

RESTAURANT NEWS

n Oak Cliff Coffee Roasters can help you fill your pantry without a trip to the grocery store. The company launched CliffMade Pantry in March, selling coffee and its Five Mile Chocolate products as well as bread, milk, eggs, jam and more. Owner Shannon Neffendorf says they’ve been working on the concept for awhile but expedited it because of coronavirus. Delivery is available in seven Oak Cliff ZIP codes, and delivery is free for orders of $40 or more. Find them at cliffmadepantry.com.

Two barista buddies have plans to open a coffee shop on West Davis this summer. Wayward Coffee Co. started out doing coffee pop-ups in a converted 1975 Volkswagen bus. Now they’re moving into the former Cheese and Chutney space at 1318 W. Davis St. The owners, Noah Irby and Trevin Willison, plan to open by June.

Restaurant tenants at Sylvan Thirty received three months of free rent from their landlord. Kessler Park neighbor Brent Jackson, whose company, Oaxaca Interests, owns the development, says he started thinking about what to do before COVID-19 became a crisis. Jackson and his partners decided to give food-related tenants three months of free rent.

638 FINLEY COURT $485,000 3 Bed | 3 Bath | 2,207SF/Tax Bishop Arts 906 KESSLER PARKWAY SOLD .95 Acre Lot East Kessler

N MONTCLAIR AVE SOLD 3 Bed | 2 Bath |

Mont Clair Acres

WOODLAWN AVE $325,000 2 Bed |1.1 Bath | 1,258SF/Appr Kessler

N CLINTON AVE, UNIT B 2 Bed | 1 Bath | 934SF/Tax Coming Soon

Vulnerable neighborhoods

THE CEDAR CREST NEIGHBORHOOD, ZIP code 75216, consistently has a slightly higher number of COVID-19 cases than most others in Dallas. Besides that, it’s part of a swath of Oak Cliff and South Dallas where poverty is higher and people are more likely to have risk factors for hospitalization and critical care, including heart disease, history of stroke, obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, diabetes and kidney disease, according to research from UT Health.

DIY PPE

Nurses and medical staff at Methodist Dallas Medical Center turned a conference room into a sewing workshop to make personal protective equipment. Safety wear like masks, gowns and gloves, called PPE, are in high demand, and hospitals across the nation are experiencing shortages.

Photo courtesy of Shurekkia Hudgen.

TEACHER PARADE

Teachers and staff from The Kessler School visited their students from a distance one day in April, parading past their students’ homes to say “hello” and “we miss you.” The school sent out a map of their 3-mile parade route, which passed many students’ homes, and they asked those who live elsewhere to hang out along the route for waving and cheers.

“The most important thing a gardener can grow is another gardener.”

— VAN JOHNSON, PAGE 19

UP FRONT

OAK CLIFF SHREDDERS

These BMX national champs have to wait for worlds

Two Oak Cliff kids should be heading to Houston later this month for the BMX World Championships. Lily Ashley and Oliver Craine won national races earlier this year that earned them spots in the tournament, now postponed, at the $25-million Rock Star Energy Bike Park that opened in Houston last summer. The 9-year-olds both train and race at DeSoto BMX, the dirt track that’s about 12 miles south of Oak Cliff.

Interview by RACHEL STONE | Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

Oliver Craine and Lily Ashley pose at DeSoto BMX. The 9-year-olds were supposed to compete in the BMX World Championships this month.

LILY ASHLEY is a fifth-grader at Sidney Lanier Expressive Arts Vanguard. Her parents are Miranda and Michael Ashley.

How she got into BMX:

Lily started riding mountain bikes at age 4, and her family often rides together at Oak Cliff Nature Preserve, which is about a mile from their house in Hampton Hills. That park closes when conditions are too wet, and during a rainy fall season in 2018, the Ashleys were getting antsy to ride. That’s how they found DeSoto BMX, which stays open when it rains because it has a roof. “She tried it, and she was hooked from then on,” her mom says. Now Lily is such an accomplished racer that she was picked up by a “factory team” and is sponsored by Little Dude Components, which outfits her with bikes and other gear.

How she qualified for worlds: After some practice on the DeSoto track, Lily started racing locally and then traveling for state and national races. She won first place in all four rounds at the Lone Star Nationals, which were held at the Houston track in October. Now she’s ranked No. 2 in the nation among 10-year-old girls.

How she trains:

Lily has a coach, professional BMX racer Shealen Reno. Normally Lily works out three or four days a week from a schedule that Reno provides, and on those days, she also does sprints on her bike or a long ride. Twice a week, she works out with Reno at the track.

The DeSoto advantage:

“It’s really great because the track is covered, so they can go out there and practice in almost any weather,” Miranda says. “The kids who come out of DeSoto are really good because they never have to take a break from racing.”

What life is like during the coronavirus pandemic:

“Boring!” Lily says. She and her parents frequently take long rides on the Trinity River levees for fitness. It’s frustrating because they don’t know when or if the world championships will be rescheduled. “It’s hard to train for BMX when you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Miranda says. “When kids come back from injury and can’t race for even a week, they lose seconds on the track, and seconds matter in BMX.”

What happens now?

“So I qualified for nothing!” Lily says. The agency that oversees the BMX world championships, UCI, hasn’t decided whether to hold this year’s races. Lily competed

for world championship qualification because of the races being in Houston, Miranda says, “Then she won the whole thing!” Next year’s BMX world championships will be in The Netherlands.

OLIVER CRAINE is a fifth-grader at the Kessler School. His parents are Patrick and Cindy Crain, and he has two sisters, Eloise, 10, and Ruthie, 7, who also race BMX.

How he got into BMX:

The Craines also started out at the Oak Cliff Nature Preserve, where Lily’s and Oliver’s dads are trail stewards. Oliver’s dad was into bicycle road racing as a youngster, and he enjoyed riding on country roads outside of New York City when he lived there. But he took up mountain biking after moving here to avoid tangling with Dallas traffic. The family started going to the DeSoto BMX track about two years ago.

How he qualified for worlds, at Black Mountain BMX in Arizona:

“I got in the gate, and I just felt like I had a desire to do something, and my desire was to win, and I just decided to go as hard as I could and try to win,” Oliver says. He’s sometimes too nice a kid to elbow his way to the front, his dad says. But he was aggressive enough that time to win second place behind the kid who is ranked No. 1 in the nation.

How he trains:

Oliver normally spends three or four nights a week at the DeSoto track, and he races there on Fridays and Saturdays. Sometimes they race on Sundays at Cowtown BMX in Fort Worth. He also has a pro racer for a coach, Damien Lacombe. Since the coronavirus lockdown, he does intense strength-training workouts and mostly rides his bike indoors on rollers.

The BMX scene:

“It’s a great family sport,” Patrick says. “There are good people, and it’s a great atmosphere where there’s people at all different levels. It’s a really great scene, and I feel like nobody really knows it exists. The sport in the U.S. has zero visibility. But then people don’t realize there’s this amazing place where you can take your kids to learn this individual sport that builds not only bike skills but also life skills.”

Racing on the national circuit:

USA BMX puts on national races almost every weekend, and Oliver has raced in 15 or 20 of them over the past year. Most races have three or four knockout rounds, and just this year, Oliver started making his main events.

Lily Ashley races for a “factory team” that outfits her with bikes and gear.

On making jumps and taking risks in racing:

It’s scary sometimes, Oliver says. “Sometimes I feel like I know that I can do it, and I just send it,” he says.

Balancing school and sports: To race on the national circuit, Oliver has to leave on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, missing school. “We pack the bikes up into bags that look like golf bags and get them on the plane and get to the hotel and build the bikes in the hotel room. Then we go to the track and practice, and we’ve got to do makeup work in the process,” Patrick says. “It’s been fun watching him take responsibility for not only his training, which is about 15 hours a week, but also making the sacrifice

of having to do school and racing at the same time.”

What life is like during the coronavirus pandemic:

“It’s been hard not having a track,” Patrick says. “But it’s been good in a way because … you have to remind yourself that this is an 8- or 9-year-old kid. The level that they have to perform at in these races is high. It’s stressful. And sometimes there are moments that are not very fun.” Taking a break has been enjoyable after traveling almost every weekend, he says. “The quarantine time has been mostly hard, but there’s been a lot of moments when we’ve enjoyed having a meal together or playing a game at night instead of being at the track. There’s been an injection of life balance that’s been pretty nice.”

Lily Ashley qualified for the 2020 BMX World Championships, which has been postponed.

(Photo courtesy of Miranda Ashley)

Lily Ashley, No. 4, is a nationally ranked BMX racer and is known on the racing circuit as “Diamond Lil.” (Photo coutesy of Miranda Ashley)

FITNESS FOR ALL

ANYTIME FITNESS WANTED TO SERVE THE NEIGHBORHOOD

FULGENCIO

Story by RACHEL STONE | Photography by DANNY

Renee Reed and Jaqui Bliss started their Bishop Arts Anytime Fitness franchise in 2007, when there wasn’t another private gym in our neighborhood.

WHEN DALLAS COUNTY ordered fitness businesses to close, Jaqui Bliss and her business partner, Renee Reed, leapt into action to preserve their most important assets.

Bliss and Reed opened their Anytime Fitness franchise in the Bishop Arts District in 2007, when there wasn’t another gym in our neighborhood.

They knew they had to find ways to take care of their employees, their club and their clients. In a meeting the day after the shutdown, they decided they had to find ways to serve their clients as well as the greater community.

“What can we do for people while we’re closed so we can still serve them and keep people active and healthy?” Bliss says.

Now the franchise is offering free fitness classes and relaxation workshops for free every day on Facebook.

Their members have the choice of five online classes every day, and coaches call their clients to check in on their fitness and wellbeing.

But some of the content is free and available for anyone.

Get up and do something. Even if it’s only five minutes.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 a.m., there’s a live yoga class. Tuesdays are reserved for education, so a fitness coach goes live at noon to talk about a book they recommend.

The focus is on nutrition every Wednesday. They choose a vegetable to highlight and present a video about ways to prepare it using things most people have in the pantry.

Thursdays are for mentalhealth awareness, and Reed leads a meditation session.

Fridays are social days, so they host a 7:30 coffee talk, a family friendly workout at 4 p.m., a community workout at 6 p.m., and a 7 p.m. happy hour.

On Saturdays there’s a 9:30 a.m. yoga class and a 10 a.m. community workout. On Sundays, they offer some kind of devotional.

The club hasn’t laid anyone off, although they stopped billing clients on April 1, and revenues are down 90%. They’re still selling nutrition plans, personal training and workout accountability, she says.

“We’re just hoping we get some relief soon,” Bliss says.

Coaches lead the workouts from their homes using cellphones and iPads on Facebook Live. They found Zoom to be too slow and glitchy.

Anytime Fitness temporarily closed due to stay-at-home orders, but the gym still employs coaches who teach classes online.

Here are a few quarantine fitness tips from Bliss:

• The easiest thing is to get out and walk if you can. At least it’s a change of scenery and you’re moving.

• Follow us on Facebook because we post a bodyweight workout every day. It’s all scalable, so anyone can do them.

• Get up and do something, even if it’s only five minutes. Instead of doing a long workout, you can break up your workouts into three or four workouts a day, and maybe they’re only five minutes each.

• Drink plenty of water

VEGAN JUNK FOOD

ANGELA ALEXANDER says business is steady since coronavirus forced the world to stay inside.

Her West Dallas business, Da Munchies, is a takeout restaurant anyway, so the stay-at-home orders weren’t a huge interruption. “I can’t say it’s hurting me really bad,” she says. “It might be pinching a little bit, but it’s not hurting.”

In fact, some new customers have discovered the restaurant since stay-athome orders started, she says.

Da Munchies specializes in comfort food like mozzarella cheese sticks, jalapeño

Da Munchies

4121 N. Westmoreland Road

Hours: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, closed SundayTuesday 214.484.8811 damunchiesdfw.com

poppers and fried chicken. What’s different here is that everything on the menu is vegan, meaning it doesn’t contain meat, eggs or dairy.

Alexander originally started Da Munchies as a comfort-food place with meat and everything. But her sister, Elizabeth Bookman, has been vegan for years.

“She took me out to a couple of places to eat,” Alexander says. “And I was like, ‘I don’t want to eat healthy every day. Isn’t there any comfort food or junk food?’”

Bookman, who went on to open Vegan

Story by RACHEL STONE | Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

Vegan shrimp and oyster-mushroom po’ boy goes great with the national beer of Texas.

Da

Food House on Seventh and Tyler, helped Alexander develop vegan recipes based on her own specialties. She turned the place into a veganonly restaurant, and the niche concept took off.

Popular menu items include the Philly roll, jackfruit tacos, the Popeyes chicken sandwich and plates, such as chicken fried chicken or oxtails. There’s also vegan chips and queso and vegan banana pudding, cakes and pies.

Da Munchies has its own delivery drivers, who charge $10 for local delivery and $20 for places as far away as Lewisville and Midlothian.

The restaurant went vegan about two years ago, but Alexander herself made the switch a few months ago. She and a friend challenged each other to stop eating meat for 30 days earlier this year, and Alexander stretched it to 45 days and then kept going.

She says she’s lost weight and has noticed improvement in her overall health since the change. “I had to slowly come off the cheese,” she says. “The hardest part was the cheese. I just had to find the vegan cheeses that I like.”

Above: A daily special of vegan tamales, taquitos, jackfruit tacos and cinnamon chips. Below: Vegan Philly cheese steak eggroll.

“I don’t want to eat healthy every day. Isn’t there any comfort food or junk food?”

GROW OAK CLIFF

MEET THE PEOPLE AND PLANTS THAT MAKE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD BEAUTIFUL

Story

an Johnson gets so excited about gardening.

When asked, a fount of information springs up from a well of knowledge gained from his lifetime of experience as a gardener.

For instance, did you know that the cells on the outside of vines grow faster than those on the inside, which is what makes them spiral?

“When you garden, you learn about botany, but also meteorology, insects, birds, geology and soil health,” he says. “There are so many fields of science involved in gardening.”

Johnson is one of Oak Cliff’s super gardeners.

His front yard is full of flowers, butterfly attractors and native plants of all colors, heights and textures. There are grapevine trellis arches and mowed pathways lined with several varieties of fragrant mint.

He’s the administrator of the Oak Cliff Gardeners Facebook page, a vibrant online community with more than 2,500 members. Johnson and the group adopted an Oak Cliff hospice center, Legacy Founders

Cottage, and renovated a patio with plants and supplies donated by the group. They also planted a mini garden in front of the Texas Theatre.

Johnson is at the center of an in-real-life gardening community as well. “When there’s nothing to do here, then I go to my neighbors’ houses,” he says.

A couple of years ago, he began planting gardens in the easement behind his house in Stevens Park. It’s basically a grassy alleyway, and Johnson saw it as wasted space that he could use.

Now the alley garden spans the length of five houses, and there’s a 60-foot long compost pile.

He likes using sawdust, procured from a friend who works at a door factory, to make garden paths, and one path in the alley is so thick with sawdust that it feels like walking on a mattress.

His next-door neighbors grow butterflies by picking caterpillars off of plants such as fennel, parsley and dill, which the bugs like to eat, and putting them into an enclosure and fed until they make cocoons and transform.

Down the street is Pamela Mount, an Oak Cliff native and retired film

by RACHEL STONE | Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

industry location scout who bought her house about 15 years ago. Her shaded backyard was scarcely more than a mud pit back then, she says. After several truckloads of soil, sand, gravel and stones, she made a grass-free garden inspired by Japanese Zen gardens.

“I had to learn to live with a shade scape,” she says.

Gardens that get little sun are good for ferns and plants in hues of purple, Johnson says.

“In a shade garden, you sacrifice color, so you have to garden for texture,” he says.

In the front yard, Mount’s strategy was to create a focal point with her garden. So she formed a slight knoll in front of the entry. The rest of the landscape design flows from there, and she’s always adding elements and tinkering with it.

“It’s like it’s never good enough,” she says. “You always want to add more.”

At the end of their block is Sheila Newton’s house. Newton is another Oak Cliff native who went to Kimball High School but then got married and lived for many years in California before moving back to Oak Cliff about five years ago.

A fantastic xeriscaped front yard

came with her house.

“I was sold on this house the minute we pulled up,” she says. “A garden like this is something I’ve always wanted.”

She loves it, but at 73, she is new to gardening. Luckily, Johnson is there to keep it in shape.

He convinced her to plant an agave plant, which she’d found in an old bucket on the property, right in front of her picture window. The plant has flourished and given off pups, and she likes it so much that she gave it a name, “Big Blue,” and even a nickname, “Van Damme” because it’s such a strong guy.

Johnson also convinced her to plant a nectarine tree. “That little tree gives off so much fruit, it’s amazing,” she says.

Johnson is mostly retired from the finance industry, but he still does some work from home. The rest of the time, he’s in the garden, or he’s spreading the gospel of growing.

“The most important thing a gardener can grow is another gardener,” he says. “Because now you’ve multiplied your effectiveness. There are more people planting trees, more people saving butterflies.”

Van Johnson’s garden.

HERE ARE FOUR GARDENING BOOKS THAT VAN JOHNSON RECOMMENDS:

GARDENER’S LATIN: A LEXICON, by Bill Neal. Understanding the Latin words used in horticulture is helpful because the name of the plant can help you understand how it behaves.

THE MOONLIT GARDEN, by Scott Ogden, explains how to grow an all-white garden that can be enjoyed at night, when temperatures are cooler. And it will smell great since many nightblooming plants are highly fragrant so that bees and bats can find them.

THE GARDENERS

WEATHER BIBLE, by Sally Roth contains all kinds of things about weather. For example, a mackerel sky portends a major weather change in the next few days. It also has tips for “planting by the birds,” for example, what to plant when you start seeing robins. “Planting by the weeds” explains what to plant when dandelions bloom.

THE DALLAS PLANTING MANUAL, which is produced by the Dallas Women’s Club. It’s been printed since the 1950s, and it’s now in its 14th printing. “It’s worth it for the calendar pages alone. It has a two-page spread of what to plant, prune harvest and fertilize month-by-month through the whole year. It’s got a lot of other good stuff too.”

les Montgomery IV started the Oak Cliff Veggie Project with his mother, Bettie, and their church, St. Luke Presbyterian, in 2014. The nonprofit organizes several community gardens in Dallas food deserts. And they run The Veggie Store, a monthly produce giveaway in South Oak Cliff.

He encourages more experienced gardeners to consider setting up community gardens in their neighborhoods.

“It doesn’t take a whole lot of people to set up a successful community garden,” he says. “And it can be done with social distancing. It’s outdoors, and everybody doesn’t have to be on top of each other to go out get some soil, get some seedlings and put them into the ground.”

HERE ARE MONTGOMERY’S TIPS FOR NEW VEGGIE GARDENERS:

Look for a local source of clean organic soil rather than finding something that’s bagged. Find a local source for seedlings. Keep all of your vending as local as possible. That way you’re working with resources that are proven in our climate, and you’re supporting local businesses and growers.

Visit locally owned garden store and farmers markets to find local seedlings. Or ask gardener friends to share seeds from their successful crops.

If you don’t have a raised bed, don’t plant anything without having the soil tested first. There is a chance the ground could be contaminated.

It’s not too late to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, melons, okra and beans if you start them from seedlings.

Have a garden delivered. Several local businesses offer to deliver everything you need to start a veggie garden. One of them is Restorative Farms, a nonprofit focused on urban agriculture and food deserts that runs two seedling farms in Dallas. Their Victory GroBox costs $110 and comes with two wooden boxes that serve as raised beds, soil and seedlings. Find more information at restorativefarms.com.

Seed library

Use the Dallas Public Library’s seed bank, located on the sixth floor of the Downtown library. Your library card can give you access to seeds for your garden. “Check out” seeds from the library, plant them, and let your best crops go to seed. Then donate those seeds back to the library.

Oak Cliff artist and farmer Cynthia Mulcahy describes a product of the seed bank:

“In 2018, I picked up a packet of mustard green seeds at the free seed library at the Dallas Public Library’s central branch. The seeds from a local gardener were labeled as ‘heirloom mustard greens passed down through four generations in East Oak Cliff.’ I’ve never seen anything I’ve planted grow like this other than native wildflowers and sunflowers. It’s like a super plant that’s been cultivated locally for decades, and the amount of fresh spicy organic mustard greens they’ve put off is unbelievable. We’ve harvested over 25 pounds of greens for salads and for a collard and mustard green version of spanakopita.”

Find more information at dallaslibrary.org/ government/seedlib.php.

LET THERE BE VEGGIES

MASTER GARDENERS’ TIPS FOR GROWING YOUR OWN

he grocery panic around coronavirus, coupled with stay-athome restlessness combined to create a lot of new backyard farmers. To help make our neighbors’ gardens successful, we asked two master gardeners for tips on growing veggies.

Diane Sloan is CEO and principal partner of Kevin Sloan Studio, a landscape architecture firm in Oak Cliff.

HERE ARE DIANE SLOAN’S TIPS FOR NEW GARDENERS:

Start with a raised bed. That way, you don’t have to do all of your own soil amending, which involves a lot of digging and compost. Build or buy raised beds ready to assemble. Buy the best quality of landscaper’s mix that you can. If you have some good soil already, mix it with compost if you have that.

Start small. Don’t make something huge. Don’t make it any larger than 4 feet wide because you want to be able to stand outside of it and reach inside.

Square-foot gardening is ideal for limited space. That’s dividing a plot by square feet, sometimes separated by string. It’s a way to organize crops and maximize space. An

engineer, Mel Bartholomew, wrote the book on square-foot gardening in the 1980s, and melbartholomew.com contains everything you need to know to get started.

Only plant things that grow well in our region. We don’t have to figure that out because Texas A&M University Agrilife Extension already did that for us. Everything you want to know about crops that grow in Texas, when to plant and harvest and how to tend a garden can be found at aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu. The Texas growing season is year-round, so there’s always something to plant.

Another resource is the free Dallas County Master Gardeners help desk. Call, 214.904.3053, or email dallasmg@ag.tamu.edu, and a master gardener will answer your questions. If they don’t know the answer, they will research it and call you back.

SOURDOUGH OBSESSION

BREAD-MAKING JUST GOT REAL

LOW-CARB FATIGUE, widespread anxiety and stay-at-home orders combined for a gluten-filled storm of bread obsession while people were on pandemic lockdown. These Oak Cliff home bakers turned their sourdough skills into cottage industries, producing small batches of loaves out of their kitchen ovens to satisfy a surging demand for homemade bread.

KULUNTU BAKERY

Stephanie Leichtle-Chalklen started Kuluntu Bakery in Coppell, where she grew up, upon returning to Texas after

living in New York City and South Africa.

The business moved to Oak Cliff when she and her husband, Warren, moved here about a year ago.

Normally the bakery offers a variety of breads to order as well as pastries and cakes. But during stay-at-home orders, demand was so high that Kuluntu was only offering sourdough loaves via its “loaf of the week club.”

It’s an exclusive club. She only makes about 48 loaves a week. Customers pick up their loaves, which cost $8 each, at their home at 826 N. Bishop Ave. They devised a basket-drop

Story by RACHEL STONE

Above: Stephanie Leichtle-Chalklen shares the love from the bakery she runs out of her home. (Photo courtesy of Kuluntu Bakery) Oppostie page: An artisan loaf from Department of Bread. (Photo courtesy of J.P. Hossley)

system from their second-story balcony for notouch pickup.

The couple also offers events in their home, normally. Stephanie teaches baking classes, including a full-day intensive sourdough bread course for as many as eight people at a time. Two online sourdough classes with 70 seats each sold out quickly when they were offered in April.

“Those are opportunities for learning something about baking but also a communal event,” she says. “I want people to get to know each other, and there’s a lot of time for socializing. It’s a fun, social class.”

She moved the classes online during stayat-home orders. But their other offering can’t be done online, hosting “supper club” dinners for eight people at a time, focused on South African cuisine and culture. Warren is from South Africa, and they lived there as a couple for six months in 2018.

“It’s a seated meal with paired wines,” she says. “Strangers sit around the table and get to know each other and learn about South Africa. It’s definitely my favorite thing to host.”

Before coronavirus hit, they were planning to launch a series focused on women in food, highlighting female chefs and business owners.

On post-coronavirus demand:

“It really has increased very dramatically, the demand for bread,” Stephanie says. “We had to start a new pickup date.”

On the bread trend:

“I’ve been baking bread for awhile, and just to see so many people baking and so many people making starters is kind of funny to me, but it’s great. There’s been a lot more interest in it lately. I think it also has to do with people supporting local products, local businesses and wanting cleaner foods.”

On low-carb blowback:

“It’s interesting hearing people’s responses to my business. They say, ‘Oh, no, I’m keto, I don’t eat any carbs.’ There are definitely people who are still on that wagon, but I do see that shifting.”

For more information, visit kuluntubakery.com

DEPARTMENT OF BREAD

Bread-making was just a hobby for J.P. Hossley of Beckley Club Estates. That is, until the pandemic shutdown the businesses he owns with his wife, Erin, Neighborhood Store and Gallery and their AIRBNB rentals. Now he’s turned his pastime into a hustle.

At the end of March, he was producing 10

The Department of Bread’s tips for new bread-bakers

When working with wet sourdough dough, I like to keep my gloved hands wet. It keeps the dough from sticking to you as much.

My bread is this:

1000 grams flour

800 grams hydration

200 grams levian

20 grams salt

Always “autolyse.” That is, mix flour and water and let it rest for two hours.

I don’t knead the dough, instead I use the “pincer and fold” methods, which can be found on YouTube.

I normally use water that is between 85-90 degrees.

or more loaves a day of several varieties — rye sourdough with caraway seeds; cranberry, orange zest and coriander sourdough; toasted walnut, lemon zest and herbes de Provence sourdough; and country white. With prices from $5-$9 each, and $2 for a ball of sourdough pizza dough, he’s not making a ton of cash, about $30 a day.

“I love that I can provide something made with love to people that need something to look forward to,” he says.

A friend who owns a restaurant is sourcing his flour. Most of his customers are his Beckley Club Estates neighbors, but he’s now supplying bread for the market at Oddfellows restaurant in Bishop Arts.

Hossley only started making bread a little over a year ago. His sourdough starter was born on Feb. 22, 2019. He found inspiration in Nancy Silverton’s book “Breads from the La Brea Bakery” and used her starter recipe. He also read Ken Forkish’s book “Flour Water Salt Yeast” and “Tartine Bread” by Chad Robertson.

“I taught myself how to make bread by reading from the pros and a whole lot of determination to get it right,” he says.

Always bake your bread to 210 degrees. That kills any bacteria and ensures a fully developed bread. Use a Dutch oven to get a nice rise out of your bread; the Dutch oven slows the bread to steam rise, much like a commercial steaminjected oven.

I bake at 500 degrees, 25 minutes with the Dutch oven lid on and then 15 minutes with it off.

Don’t burn your bread; cover it with tin foil if the edges start to burn. Things get very hot, so be careful. I’ve burned myself several times. Use long heat-resistant oven mitts.

All ovens are different, all kitchens are different, so you may have to adapt things to get your bread just right.

If you adapt a recipe, write it down just in case it works even better than your last.

They devised a basket-drop system from their second-story balcony for no-touch pickup.

“I love that I can provide something made with love to people that need something to look forward to.”

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WORSHIP

By SCOTT SHIRLEY

Three lessons from the pandemic

Take your anguish and use it later

Iam writing this after a very strange Easter. Normally, Easter is the time we emerge from Lenten disruption in the full elation of Spring. But this year we remain under the shadow of death. My guess is that you are probably reading this still under a stay-at-home order. I hope so. Lives depend on it.

The Easter story, the story of the resurrection of Jesus, is recorded in each of our Gospels. However, none of them tells the story the same way. This tells me that each author and each community they represent, needed something different from this experience, a different way of processing what happened.

The death of Jesus was a defeat. He spent years building a following, a people’s movement, that he then took to Jerusalem to confront the powers that be. All those people had invested, not just their time and energy, but their hopes and dreams of liberation into Jesus. Then he died. The Easter narratives are their attempts to cope with that loss.

Those who loved Jesus coped with his loss by realizing that his mission continued in them. His presence was palpably felt. That is a common experience after the death of a loved one. Each one would have felt that presence differently.

In the empty tomb, the women were robbed of their chance to grieve but received the news that all will be well. The men, who were hiding in fear, were visited by a ghostly Jesus. They felt his warm breath, and Thomas touched the wounds. The disciples on the way to Emmaus experienced Jesus’ presence in the familiar sharing of bread. And Mary Magdalene, perhaps the most distraught, wanted to hold on tightly, never letting Jesus transition into his new reality. Each of these responses is an authentic attempt at redeeming their loss.

Right now, each of us is experiencing some loss. It may just be the loss of normalcy. It may be the loss of a loved one or the diminishment of our own health. It may be the loss of a job. These losses should be mourned, just as the disciples mourned the loss of Jesus.

But the disciples’ losses were redeemed; ours can be, too. We can learn from this. We have to. Here are some things I hope we learn.

First, I hope that we are reminded that we have each other. I have been so proud of this community. While others are panic buying, we’re sharing the bounty of our gardens and chicken coops. Know that we are resilient.

Second, I hope that we learn that a little means a lot. Under the restrictions of social distancing, we are limited in what we can do, but what we have done has meant so much, even posting silly signs in parks to give people a respite of joy. Never think that what you can do is not worth doing.

WORSHIP

BAPTIST

CLIFF TEMPLE BAPTIST CHURCH / 125 Sunset Ave. / 214.942.8601

Serving Oak Cliff since 1898 / CliffTemple.org / English and Spanish

9 am Contemporary Worship / 10 am Sunday School / 11 am Traditional

GRACE TEMPLE BAPTIST Come to a Place of Grace!

Sunday Worship: English Service 9:30am / Spanish Service 11:00am 831 W. Tenth St. / 214.948.7587 / gracetempledallas.org

DISCIPLES OF CHRIST

EAST DALLAS CHRISTIAN CHURCH / 629 N. Peak Street / 214.824.8185

Sunday School 9:30 am / Worship 8:30 am - Chapel

10:50 am - Sanctuary / Rev. Deborah Morgan-Stokes / edcc.org

EPISCOPAL

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH / ChristChurchDallas.org

Sunday School: 11:15am /Mass: 9am & 10am English, 12:30pm Español

Wednesday Mass: 6pm English, 8pm Español / 534 W. Tenth Street

METHODIST

KESSLER PARK UMC / 1215 Turner Ave./ 214.942.0098 I kpumc.org

10:30am Sunday School/11:00 Worship /All welcome regardless of reed, cr eed, color, culture, gender or sexual identity.

NON-DENOMINATIONAL

KESSLER COMMUNITY CHURCH / 2100 Leander Dr. at Hampton Rd. “Your Hometown Church Near the Heart of the City.”

10:30 am Contemporary Service / kesslercommunitychurch.com

Third, I hope we learn that vulnerability for any of us is vulnerability for all of us. Lack of universally accessible health care; lack of a functioning social safety net; low wages; massive and expanding wealth inequality; and an economy that depends entirely on consumption add up to a very fragile society. We must emerge from this knowing that we can do better, and we have to do better.

I know this is a stressful time. I know that however you are responding to it is how you need to respond. Pay attention to the anxiety, the hurt and the worry. We’ll need all that later. Reach out if you need help. We’ll need those connections forged in crisis. For now, you’re doing great! Stay safe.

SCOTT SHIRLEY is the pastor of Church in the Cliff. The Worship section is underwritten by Advocate Publishing and the neighborhood businesses and churches listed here. For information about helping support the Worship section, call 214.560.4202.

TRINITY CHURCH OAK CLIFF / Love God. Love Others. Make Disciples. Sundays 10:00 am / Worship & children’s Sunday School 1139 Turner Ave. / trinitychurchoakcliff.org

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

“Pay attention to the anxiety, the hurt and the worry.”

By RACHEL STONE

Beauty college days

A 1949 textbook on hair, skin and nails

Neilson’s Beauty College opened on Jefferson Boulevard in the late 1920s.

Its founders, married couple Lester and Lillian Neilson, owned the school until 1964, when they sold it to two Neiman Marcus hairdressers.

The school is still in business today, run by a fourth owner, and the place has produced generations of stylists in its more than 90 years.

In 1949, the college printed the fourth edition of the school’s textbook, “Practical Cosmetology” by Lillian Vera Neilson. It originally cost $5, but we picked it up at an estate sale a few years ago for probably less than $1 and came across it in our unofficial Oak Cliff archives while staying at home.

Our book belonged to Lois Northcutt, and you can tell she really studied because she wrote notes neatly in pencil, underlined key headings and recorded her quiz grades for each section in the table of contents. She earned grades all in the 90s, except for an 88 in electricity, an 80 in anatomy and 100 in manicuring.

The book starts with rules for the college. Roll call was taken at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m., and students were required to ask permission to leave the building. Being absent on Friday or Saturday counted double. Students were required to dress in plain white uniforms and “in accordance with good taste.”

“Colored buttons or trimmings are not professional,” the book states.

Next is a section on shop management, the importance of bookkeeping and accounting for beauty supplies and tools. It says to make beauty suggestions without criticizing your clients’ looks. Always keep up-to-date on the latest beauty trends and techniques. And don’t bore your customers.

“Take advantage of all the lectures, news of the day, and keep posted on all topics of interest, so that you are really interesting to your customers.”

There are 14 paragraphs on being cheerful. “No smiles — no business.”

The “Neilson System of Beauty Culture” iterates that being a “good operator” is

good for the profession at large. “A poor operator is a nuisance to the profession.”

Being a beauty professional takes so much more than technical skill!

“An operator at all times should be neat and clean. Never appear to be tired and bored before a customer. Remember she is your source of income, that she is paying for your services, and that she is your boss while in your shop. Always be very courteous and glad to see each customer on every visit. Too often operators lose old customers by thinking they will stand for almost anything, such as a hurry-up job, or making her wait past the time of her appointment.”

It also requires learning about microbes and sanitizing tools. There’s chemistry, too. Consider this recipe for hair bleach: 1 teaspoon Lux [shampoo], 4 teaspoons peroxide. Beat with an eggbeater until very thick. Add ammonia if golden tint is desired. A few drops of oil can be added on very dry hair.

Peroxide and Egyptian henna were the primary hair-coloring agents at the time.

The section on facials contains a twopage spread of formulas. The egg-andhoney facial contains one egg yolk well beaten, 2 teaspoons of Fuller’s earth [clay powder], 3 drops of tincture of benzoin and enough honey to make a paste.

The “lemon bleach” facial contains one egg white beaten very stiff, the juice of one lemon and enough almond meal to make a paste. Sounds delicious!

Besides that, Neilson students had to learn the bones, muscles, ligaments and veins of the hands.

A 10-page section on anatomy explains the skin, the vascular system, cells and the lymphatic and nervous systems. The curriculum required student to learn the

principal nerves, muscles and glands of the head and neck as well as facial and cranial bones and the anatomy of the heart.

A 16-page insert from Modern Beauty Shop Magazine in New York City explained “The ABC’s of Haircutting.” Before there was the Ogle School or the Aveda Institute, there was Neilson’s.

“Be proud of your school,” the textbook says. “Be proud of he fact that you are Neilson-trained. Our school is one of the most reputable and widely known in the Southwest. Our students have helped us attain this achievement. By continuing to work together we can accomplish bigger and better things.”

oakcliff.advocatemag.com

Go online for more pages from “The ABC’s of Haircutting”

“The ABC’s of Haircutting” is a 16-page insert in the Neilson’s Beauty College textbook.

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