BY BUCK D. ELLIOTT
ATE
STAFF
BY ELAINE WILDER
KRISTIAN
JUAN R. GOVEA
INSIDE
Buck D. Elliott
Anthony Mariani, Editor
Lee Newquist, Publisher
Bob Niehoff, General Manager
Michael Newquist, Regional Director
Ryan Burger, Art Director
Jennifer Bovee, Marketing Director
Clint “Ironman” Newquist, Brand Ambassador
Emmy Smith, Proofreader
Julie Strehl, Account Executive
Sarah Niehoff, Account Executive
Stacey Hammons, Senior Account Executive
Tony Diaz, District Manager
Wyatt Newquist, Account Executive
CONTRIBUTORS
Christina Berger, E.R. Bills, Jason Brimmer, Buck D. Elliott, Juan R. Govea, Patrick Higgins, Laurie James, Kristian Lin, Cody Neathery, Wyatt Newquist, Steve Steward, Teri Webster, Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue, Elaine Wilder, Cole Williams
EDITORIAL BOARD
Laurie James, Anthony Mariani, Emmy Smith, Steve Steward
COPYRIGHT
Steve Steward
Cover photo courtesy TCU Athletics
March 2–September 7
Alex Da Corte: The Whale is made
with
Improvement
Matthew Marks Gallery, Fort Worth Promotion and Development Fund, Henrik Persson, Gió Marconi Gallery, and Sadie Coles HQ.
The Pied Piper 2019. Neoprene, EPS foam, upholstery foam, staples, thread, polyester fiber, epoxy clay, MDF, plywood. 120 × 120 × 6.5 inches. Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. © Alex Da Corte. Image: Karma
BUCK U
Serve and Volley
TCU women’s beach volleyball and men’s tennis have mastered the art of the imported athlete.
BY BUCK D. ELLIOTT
The Luka trade, the Stars’ Stanley Cup hopes, and the usual disappointment over the Cowboys’ draft have dominated local spring sports headlines. Fort Worthians, specifically, are sitting satisfied with TCU women’s basketball’s historic dribble to an Elite Eight finish, but two elite squads clad in purple have been mowing down opponents on their way to championships, one in the bag, the other in the works.
TCU women’s beach volleyball, which celebrated a decade of existence this season, enjoyed sharing the anniversary with their first national championship this weekend. The program, which didn’t win a match in its inaugural season, has been greatness-adjacent for the last five years, having reached the semifinals of the tournament twice. The championship tournament crowned the Horned Frogs as their ninth-ever champion (the 2020 season was cancelled), and the Funkytowners are the only squad to ever hoist the trophy that didn’t have a Bruin or a Trojan as their mascot. USC has won six championships, and their crosstown rival UCLA grabbed two back-to-back in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
The Frogs were dominant on the Gulf Shores of Alabama as they bumped, set, and spiked all over Georgia State and Texas with three wins and no losses to clinch each match. TCU then downed Cal Poly 3-1 en route to the championship spat. Their final opponent, fourth-seeded Loyola Marymount, had underdogged their way through both of their perennial-favorite-L.A.-based neighbors — USC and UCLA — on their way to a contentious loss to the Frogs 3-2. The final pairs to finish were the only three-set contest, in which the Frogs thundered back with a convincing 15-6 final game after dropping the first and buying themselves a lifeline in the second. The overall win delivered the first team championship for TCU women’s athletics outside of Rifle (who possess four titles) since golf won the whole shebang in 1983, which was the first in the history of the university.
TCU men’s tennis has become the standard to be measured against in college tennis, and similar to beach volleyball, they are usurping programs like USC, which was the previous keeper of the gold. David Roditi’s tenure has been nothing less than masterful, and the Frogs are in position to defend their outdoor national championship from last season.
Tennis and beach volleyball as sports are similar in that they both aggregate individual matchups to make up a team score. In collegiate tennis, three doubles matches account for one overall point (whomever wins two of the three takes the lone doubles point) before six singles matches comprise the rest, the first to reach four points prevailing. The NCAA tournament seeds via Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA)
rankings, and the Frogs are second behind Wake Forest, to whom the Frogs fell 3-4 during the Indoor National Championships in February. TCU has appeared in the last four indoor championship finals, winning their first two and falling last year to Ohio State and this year to the Demon Deacons. This year’s squad has only three losses this season, to the aforementioned Wake Forest, third-ranked Texas, and Central Florida, but are flawless on the purple courts.
As the second seed, the Frogs hosted a regional at TCU this past weekend, where they sliced past Abilene Christian without dropping a match before winning against a pluckier-than-anticipated 24th-ranked Oklahoma. Roditi’s squad easily took the Big 12 regular season championship this season — easy because third-ranked Texas is now in the SEC and Baylor has fallen from the prominence they’d enjoyed proximally before the pandemic. That said, the Frogs found themselves banged up and injured at a particularly inopportune time and lost the conference tournament in the finals to Central Florida 3-4, who are now 15thranked and will visit Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center at noon on Saturday for a super-regional match.
Tennis rankings — both for individuals and teams — are heavily influenced by Universal Tennis Rating (UTR), which is a proprietary algorithm that ranks players based on scores with opponents over time, as well as the future performance of those participants. As someone who works in the tennis world, it’s frighteningly accurate. Normal chaos factors still exist (though far less in tennis compared to true team sports), but the projected rankings tend to hold true in many instances in which there is any appreciable separation. The Frogs are ahead of the Knights both in team rankings and the individual matchups that are likely
to materialize, though the fancy computers cannot account for when an individual may not play their best due to injury or otherwise. These Frogs know how to win. Lui Maxted and Pedro Vives have won a national team championship of some kind for the last three years and along with Jack Pinnington are all ranked in the Top 40 players in the nation. TCU’s roster has the firepower to return to the NCAA championship, which will be held in Waco at Baylor this season, though the Bears were already eliminated by Texas A&M.
Aside from stellar coaching and athletes, how have these relatively small TCU athletic programs become such powerhouses in recent years? Utilizing foreign weaponry. Both Roditi and Hector Gutierrez were born outside the United States. Roditi is from Mexico City, and Gutierrez is native to the Canary Islands. They each have professional backgrounds in their sports and experience playing in professional circuits overseas or at least outside of U.S. borders. Of the six volleyball athletes who won their finals matches, four are from Spain and one from Ukraine, and the only American hails from Puerto Rico. Roditi has built a dynamic roster with only one native-born son, Cooper Woestendick, a freshman and Top-5 recruit in the nation last year who has been active in the junior circuit, Junior Wimbledon, and training at the national center while completing nontraditional school. The remainder hail primarily from Europe. In the easy-transfer-NIL era, the most surefire way to stay dominant is to be dominant. Development is still important, but players capable of success in these sports are arriving at an extremely high level and want to compete for championships right away. Roditi and Gutierrez have positioned their programs to compete for championships every year. l
TCU beach volleyball usurps the national title from Los Angeles-based schools for the first time since the national tournament began.
Courtesy TCU Athletics
Lui Maxted (pictured), along with partner Pedro Vives, are the current NCAA men’s doubles champions. Courtesy TCU Athletics
March 30–June 22
This exhibition has been organized by the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, in cooperation with the Kimbell Art Museum.
SCREEN
‘What Have You Done?’
Single
shots and violent manhood distinguish Netflix’s latest hit show.
BY KRISTIAN LIN
Sometimes when a cultural phenomenon seems to come out of nowhere, I’m already on top of it. The British crime drama Adolescence quickly became a bigger hit on Netflix than even Bridgerton or Squid Game, and its roots were in a movie that I saw four years ago. Director Philip Barantini and star Stephen Graham collaborated on Boiling Point (which became another Netflix show) and shot the entire 92-minute film in a single take to convey a London restaurant chef’s downward spiral during an evening’s dinner service.
They’ve brought the same approach to Adolescence, all four episodes of which have been shot in one take. Working like this is a challenge for directors in terms of planning and logistics, and it’s fun for actors, who have an easier time following their characters’ arcs and get to harness live theater-like energy in a much larger environment. I’m not sure that this show needed the gimmick, but it is powerful television regardless.
The first episode begins with a police SWAT team smashing in the front door of Eddie Miller (Graham), a plumber in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, to arrest his 13-year-old son, Jamie (Owen Cooper), for murdering one of his classmates. The boy
shouts, “I haven’t done anything” in a voice still unchanged by puberty. Jamie doesn’t fit the profile of a killer and seems terrified to be in a police station, but his public defender (Mark Stanley) warns Eddie that the police wouldn’t assemble a tactical team to arrest a minor unless they had compelling evidence. They do, and seeing CCTV footage of the murder leaves Eddie weeping beside his son and asking, “What have you done?”
My main issue with the film version of Boiling Point was that the filmmakers didn’t really have a story. This series (which was created by Graham and Jack Thorne, with Barantini directing all the episodes) is stronger on that point, as Jamie’s family, friends, and teachers as well as social workers and cops cast about for reasons why. Turns out the kid and his friends have been watching Andrew Tate’s videos, and if you don’t know who that is, consider yourself lucky.
Yet the show refuses to give us pat answers, and so we see the lead homicide detective (Ashley Walters) taking advice on decoding Instagram comments from his son (Amari Bacchus), who’s a classmate of both Jamie and the victim. Episode 3 largely takes place in one room at the juvenile facility where Jamie is being held and where a child psychologist (Erin Doherty) interrogates him and triggers the boy’s violent side.
That’s where the show’s one-shot strategy is effectively discomfiting, as you’re trapped in a room with this emotionally troubled kid for longer than you’d like to be. It also spotlights the performance by Cooper, who has no other film or TV credits to his name and effortlessly captures the self-confidence that can be undone by a girl turning him down for a date. Recalling that old TV show Homicide: Life on the Street, I still think this could have been filmed in a conventional way without losing too much power. The one time the tactic really shines is at the end of Episode 2, when the camera is mounted on a drone and flies over the city of Doncaster from the school where the police are questioning kids to a parking lot several blocks away, where Eddie is laying flowers at the impromptu shrine where the murder happened. It’s a great shot (underscored by a children’s choir singing a cover of Sting’s “Fragile”), and it couldn’t have been done another way.
The show’s creators have emphasized the element of class in this story, and, yeah, it’s quite a sturdy thread to follow. Jamie’s parents are too busy working to pay much attention to him, and his school is underfunded and staffed by only a few teachers who actually give a damn. This environment doesn’t just victimize him. The dead girl’s
best friend (Fatima Bojang) has zero faith in the ability of the adults around her to address the situation, and so she calls the police a bunch of useless idiots to their faces, then jumps Jamie’s best friend (Kaine Davis) and beats him until the teachers pull her away.
Inevitably, I take away something different. Right now, my hometown of Phoenix is talking about Preston Lord, a 16-year-old who went to a Halloween party in 2023, got into a verbal altercation, and was stomped on by a group of similarly aged boys until his body was unrecognizable. The parallels between that case and the show’s are not exact, but it seems to me like both the real-life killing and the fictional one could have just as easily happened in 1983 or 1943. This culture of macho crap that we’re all drowning in goes back decades, and it tells us that what makes a man a man is his ability to inflict pain and suffering on other people. That reverence for cruelty comes all the way down from the rapist in the White House to the manosphere to more than a few of the movies I see each month. Maybe some of this cult of violence is hardwired into the human male — I’m certainly not immune to it — but Adolescence steps back and wonders if this is the best we can do. I’m afraid it might be. l
Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper confront irrefutable evidence in a police interrogation room in Adolescence.
Courtesy Netflix
Ate Days of Your Mom ’n’ Them
Did you think about where to take Mom this weekend for Mother’s Day? No. You only think about yourself. No worries. We got you covered.
BY ELAINE WILDER
From 9am to 4pm Saturday and Sunday, the Fort Worth Botanic Garden (3220 Botanic Garden Blvd, Fort Worth, 817-463-4160) is hosting a Mother’s Day Spring Sip & Shop, which is complimentary to attend with your garden admission. Shop with the 50+ vendors from Wandering Roots Market while enjoying a Mother’s Day card craft
station and live music. The park’s on-site restaurant, Rock Springs Cafe, will have drinks available to purchase via a mobile bar cart. Dogs are welcome, too, as it’s also the first Dog Day of the season. Admission is $12 for adult humans, $6 for kids ages 6 to 15, and $5 per dog.
Saturday is also when Rusty Nickel IceHouse (2836 Stanley Av, Fort Worth, 817-528-1682) is hosting Mother’s Day Sip
’N Bloom noon-3pm at the bar’s outdoor turf area, with complimentary Tito’s drinks (for those 21+) and a bouquet-making class hosted by Megnolia’s. Tickets are $40 on Eventbrite.com.
Fort Worth Community Market is back for the season at the South Main MicroPark (105 S Main St, Fort Worth, @ HoneySuckleRoseEvents) every second Sunday of the month from 10am to 2pm.
This one falls on Mother’s Day, so bring her to do a little shopping. She’ll be proud of you for stocking up on your fruits and veggies. Along with the handmade/homegrown items from area artisans, expect to find MOM-osas, bath/body items, flowers, health/wellness products, jewelry, pottery, and more. There is no cost to attend. Free street parking and paid parking in several lots are available. Carpooling is always recommended.
Now, let’s talk brunch.
Brazilian steakhouse Chamas do Brazil (4606 S Cooper St, Arlington, 817375-0250) still has reservations available for Sunday starting at 11:30am. Cuts of meat served churrasco-style include beef, chicken, lamb, and pork, plus the salad bar is mouthwatering. Reservations can be made at ChamasdoBrazil.com, but if your party is
12 or larger, you will need to call. The cost is $42.99 per person.
Kava Culture NFW (3529 Heritage Trace Pky, Ste 155, Fort Worth) is hosting a Mother’s Day Brunch 10am-2pm Sun featuring a Brunch Flight Menu and booths with local vendors. No reservations are needed.
Flying Fish restaurants are celebrating Mother’s Day all day Sunday with the choice of a complimentary margarita, frozen Tito’s and lemonade, or a slice of key lime pie for Mom. All eight locations are participating, including Fort Worth (2913 Montgomery St, 817-989-2277) and Arlington (300 E Abram St, Ste 170, 817-303-3335). The menu includes Southern specialties like po’boys, jambalaya, grits, and gumbo, but a variety of grilled plates are available as well.
Local caterers Motte & Lavine Home Cooking are hosting Mother’s Mimosa Brunch at G&M Magnolia Event Center (1821 Everman Pky, Fort Worth) noon-3pm Sun. Sip, savor, and celebrate with cocktails by Silver Star Distillery, plus Champagne, coffee, and complimentary gifts. The brunch menu features Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, French omelets, quiche, prime rib, and more. Tickets are $60 on Eventbrite.com.
Thirsty Lion, with five locations in North Texas, including Glade Parks (1220 Chisholm Trl, Ste 100, Euless, 817-283-9000), is serving a prix fixe menu of scratch-made multicultural cuisine 10am-2pm Sun, starting at $49 (per person). Each course menu will be served with a glass of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay, Conundrum red blend, or La Marca prosecco. See the full menu and make reservations at ThirstyLionRestaurant.com/Texas. l
EATS & drinks
Yemeni Delights Balqees Coffee is
a taste of heaven in
Mansfield.
Balqees Coffee, 2041 U.S. 287 Frontage Rd, Ste 103, Mansfield. 225-278-3083. 8am-10pm daily.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY STEVE STEWARD
Until a recent, long-overdue dermatologist appointment, the only reason I’d ever been to Mansfield was to play paintball in the late ’90s, and neither trip suggested the city was hiding anything worth driving back for. It’s not personal. It’s just far. Or at least it feels
that way. Maybe that’s why a Facebook ad for a Yemeni coffee shop out in Mansfield hooked me. If I was going to brave the vehicular action thriller that is southbound 287, it might as well be for something I can’t find at home, right?
I live in east Fort Worth, so obviously, a trip to Balqees Coffee isn’t exactly the same as boarding a plane at DFW and emerging a day later on the other side of the world. But sitting in Balqees’ airy, softly lit environs and taking that first sip … I felt transported, forgetting for a little while that just outside the door is a Five Below and an Olive Garden, and a Best Buy, a Cinemark, and the thousands of cars trying to get to the Sam’s Club across the road.
Like any good coffee shop, Balqees’ atmosphere is as much a draw as the coffee. Here, the scent of Yemeni coffee steaming with ginger and cinnamon, the lo-fi oud melodies drifting from the speakers, the blend of sophistication and warmth from the shop’s decor — they all made me a little envious of someone who lived close enough to while away an hour or two over a jubani (light roast with husk, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, $5.50) or a sana’ani (medium roast Yemeni coffee, cardamom, $5.50) and a book.
Named for the Queen of Sheba in Islamic tradition, Balqees offers a nice variety of espresso drinks, teas, juices, and even an Oreo milkshake ($7) that looked amazing, but I think the Yemeni specialties of coffee and tea are why you’d make
continued on page 19
A medium roast coffee with cardamom and cream, Balqees’ mufawar ($5.50), paired with an olive croissant ($3), is a drink that the author will probably still be thinking about when he’s 80.
HearSay
News Bites
Lots of good 817 tunes have just come out by artists who are also playing out a bunch this month. Catch them while you can.
Punk rockers Labels have just released a new album and have been gigging steadily in support of the 10-track White Hot. After playing Double Wide in Dallas and Rubber Gloves in Denton, the band will hit The Boiled Owl Tavern (909 W Magnolia Av, Fort Worth, 817-920-9616) on Sat, May 24, and Tulips FTW (112 St. Louis Av, Fort Worth, 817-367-9798) on Fri, May 30
Phantomelo is still going strong. Now with some new band members, the indie rockers have just released their first single in over three years. “Home” is a pleasant, easy-listening head-bopper with poppy keys and chiming guitar. The band’s next gig is Sat, May 17, in Richardson as part of the Wildflower Music Festival with headliners Sugar Ray and the Spin Doctors. Other local openers include Darstar, Dome Dwellers, and Raised Right Men.
One of Darstar’s “hardest-hitting, most facemelting tracks to date,” the band says, “Milktooth” will hit all streaming platforms via Idol Records on Friday.
Part 1 of Denver Williams’ upcoming album Let It Ride hits streaming platforms on Sat, May 17, when he will also perform at The Post (2736 W 6th St, Fort Worth 817-945-8890) with Tommy Luke and Gabe McDaniel. The five tracks will be part of an upcoming 12-song record by the powerful Americana stylist. Let It Ride will be Williams’ third long-player (The Blooming Eye, Denver Williams & The Gas Money Live at Cloudland Recording Studios, Sing Along). Produced and recorded at three different studios (Studio 515 and EMP Studios in Fort Worth and The Cove in Arlington), Let It Ride was engineered by Gas Money drummer Peter Wierenga and mastered by Jordan “Son of Stan” Richardson.
Prog rockers Yandere just released their debut single, “Echoes,” and it’s a heavy headbanger with emotive vocals and guitar-grinding goodness. Their next show is 11pm Sat at Caves Lounge (900 W Division St, Arlington, 817-460-5510) as part of the bar’s 23rd anniversary. Casperflip, Crash Test, Basics, Drifters Atlas, and Olidaze are also slated to perform. What makes Yandere really interesting is that they recently founded an all-female queer-supportive record label called Scorned Productions
Punk rockers A Dangerous Affair will be releasing a new single, “Candy Coated (Picture Perfect),” on Friday and playing a show that same night at The Cicada (1002 S Main St, Fort Worth) with Mutha Falcon and Dave Cave. Cover is $15.
Alt rockers Darstar will release a new single, “Milktooth,” to all streaming platforms on Friday. “It’s one of our hardest-hitting, most face-melting tracks to date, and we can’t wait for you to hear it,” posted
guitarist Carson So. The song is out on Idol Records (The Wee-Beasties, DARYL, Aztec Milk Temple), and Darstar’s next show is at the Wildflower festival.
Troumatics frontman Stephen Troum says the country is run by a bunch of “insiders” and that we are all on the outside, but we’re there together. Maybe we can find some common ground. That’s the “positive message in this time of polarization” that is “Who Is on the Outside?,” a collaboration between the indie-rock band and hip-hopper ItsErnie. Produced by Mean Motor Scooter’s Joe Tacke at Cloudland Recording Studio last fall, the song hits all streaming platforms on Fri, May 16
Rising hip-hop artist JDiggs Tha Prodigy is releasing an upbeat new single, “Sunset Dreams,” on Tue, May 27, on all streaming platforms. It’s his 19th single along with two albums and a handful of EPs since 2018. Juan R. Govea l
art by Lisa Hardaway
Now with some new band members, indie rockers Phantomelo have just released their first single in over three years, “Home.”
Prog rockers Yandere just released their debut single, “Echoes,” and recently founded an allfemale queer-supportive record label called Scorned Productions. Yandere’s next show is 11pm Sat at Caves Lounge as part of the bar’s 23rd anniversary. Jae Grey
BULLETIN BOARD
ADVERTISE HERE!
Email Stacey@fwweekly.com.
4445 RIVER OAKS BVLD
CATTLE BARN FLEA MARKET
Every Saturday & Sunday 9a-5p Your favorite dealers will be there.
Robert O, Juanita, Billy, Tino, Mo and Joe!
American Residential
Heating & Cooling
As temps outside start to climb, the season for savings is now. $49 cooling or heating system tune up. Save up to $2000 on a new heating and cooling system (restrictions apply.) FREE estimates. Many payment options available. Licensed and insured professionals. Call today 1-877-447-0546. (MB)
Are You Road-Trip Ready?
CALL COWTOWN ROVER!
With our handy pick-up and drop-off services, having your car checked out could not be easier.
3958 Vickery / 817.731.3223
ERIE METAL ROOFS
Replace your roof with the best-looking and longest-lasting material steel from Erie Metal Roofs! Three styles and multiple colors are available. Guaranteed to last a lifetime! Limited Time Offer up to 50% off installation + Additional 10% off install (for military, health workers & 1st responders. Call Erie Metal Roofs: 1-888-778-0566. (MB)
GET PUBLISHED!
Dorrance Publishing, trusted by authors since 1920, is accepting submissions. Book manuscripts are currently being reviewed. Comprehensive services include consultation, production, promotion and distribution. Call 1-866-256-0940 or go online for your free author`s guide and become a published author. (MB) DorranceInfo.com/ftworth
HERITAGE for the BLIND
Get a break on your taxes! Donate your car, truck, or SUV to assist the blind and visually impaired. Arrange a swift, no-cost vehicle pickup and secure a generous tax credit for 2025. Call Heritage for the Blind Today at 1-855-503-1501 today! (MB)
HIGHER PURPOSE
Everyone has a higher purpose. Find yours at Higher Purpose Emporium (505 W Northside Dr, FWTX, 682-207-5351). HigherPurposeEmporium.com
NEED A FRIEND?
Ronnie D. Long Bail Bonds
Immediate Jail Release 24 Hour Service. City, County, State and Federal Bonds. Located Minutes from Courts. 6004 Airport Freeway. 817-834-9894
RonnieDLongBailBonds.com
NO MORE GUTTER CLEANING!
LeafFilter, the most advanced debris-blocking gutter protection, will help you eliminate gutter cleaning forever. Schedule a FREE estimate today. Receive 20% off entire purchase, plus a 10% senior and military discount. (MB) Call 1-877-689-1687
Prepared for OUTAGES?
Prepare today for POWER OUTAGES with a Generac Home Standby Generator. Act now to receive a FREE 5-Year warranty with qualifying purchase. Call today to schedule a free quote. It’s not just a generator. It’s a power move. (MB) 1-817-752-9457
SAFE STEP: North America’s #1 Walk-In Tub
Comprehensive lifetime warranty. Top-of-the-line installation and service. Now featuring our FREE shower package and $1600 Off for a limited time! Call today! Financing available. Call Safe Step 1-855-868-0192. (MB)
STUCK WITH A TIMESHARE?
Wesley Financial Group, the Timeshare Cancellation Experts, has over 450 positive reviews and has done over $50 million in successful timeshare debt/fees cancellations. Get free consultation, a free info package, and learn how to get rid of your timeshare today. (MB) Call 844-511-2581
WHAT’S YOUR STORY?
We work with guest contributors to publish SEO articles and press releases. For more info, email Marketing@fwweekly.com.
