Author Archive

Patricia Richards had no idea she was creating a tradition.

The longtime photography teacher was leading a class at El Centro Community College downtown and glanced at her calendar to notice that Nov. 22, the day President John F. Kennedy was shot, fell on a Saturday.

“I told my students, … more

Gloria Rubio and Jose Fuentes introduced much of Dallas to Salvadoran food in 1987 when they opened their first restaurant, in Oak Cliff. As Gloria’s expanded to Oak Lawn, Greenville Avenue and Addison, many Dallas diners for the first time tried handmade Salvadoran tamales and pupusas stuffed with spicy pork.

The WFAA-Ch. 8 investigative reporter lives in our neighborhood, and will be the featured speaker at tomorrow’s Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce food-for-thought luncheon. The chamber is billing the luncheon with the question: "What story will he reveal before we see it on the news?"

Shipp was one of the … more

Apartment complexes often are hotspots for crime. What is the Dallas Police Department doing to reduce crime in them?

In our capitalistic society, the tendency is to find the best deal, spend the least amount of time, and avoid the most complications. But are we better for it? Three Oak Cliff residents have banded together to challenge neighbors to change their mindsets about how we do business, with hopes … more

1 When eating at a neighborhood restaurant, ask the waiter if the menu contains any dishes made with local products. If so, order from those choices, which will reinforce the restaurant’s efforts to find food locally as well as support the farmers and producers who supply the food.

2 Before … more

The local food movement has gained so much steam that the practice has coined a new term — “locavores” are people who go out of their way to eat food locally grown or locally produced. One widely publicized example is California residents Alisa Smith and James Mackinnon, who in 2005 … more

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Dropping by a friend’s house, you spot the most fabulous new piece of furniture. When asked where it was purchased, the response is a casual, “Oh, I picked it up at a thrift store.” If such a statement makes you green with envy, wishing you had the same eye for … more

Did you see the photo of the wooden cow in August’s Oak Cliff Advocate? That mama cow and its calf, which live (for the most part) in the Merlino family’s East Kessler front lawn, have stories to tell.

One of Lynne Merlino’s colleagues at Rosemont Elementary, Heidi Maggio, devised a … more