Bolsa Mercado opened Dec. 12 on 614 W. Davis. It’s a market/cafe concept from the owners of Bolsa that make their dishes in-house. You can stop in to eat or pick up items to take home, items that are all natural, local and organic. In this video take a look inside the new place, located in North Oak Cliff.

Fort Worth Avenue is to have bike lanes from Stevens Park Village to the Commerce Street bridge.

The Fort Worth Avenue Development Group donated $15,000 and raised an additional $10,000 in donations to design and implement bike lanes along the West Dallas thoroughfare.

The bike lanes will run along Fort Worth Avenue and West Commerce, from Colorado to Beckley.

The two miles of bike lanes is part of an effort to “assist the city in developing bicycle infrastructure within the next six months,” as recommended in the Dallas Bike Plan. The group is expected to provide more information at a media conference Thursday.

This white blend from Bordeaux has been in and out of the $10 Hall since I started it 10 years ago — but not because of quality. Rather, what once was a $10 wine has been as expensive as $15 in around here, and though I like it a lot, it’s not a $15 wine.

The good news is that Spec’s, the largest retailer in Texas, has opened in Dallas, and they carry the Bonnet  (purchased) for $10. So it’s back at a good price and eligible again for the $10 Hall of Fame — the 2012 version of which is in this month’s magazine.

But I’m not sure the Bonnet is still a Hall of Fame wine. This is not to say that it’s not well made, because it is, crisp and fresh with lots of citrus fruit like lemon and grapefruit, and there is nothing off about it. It just doesn’t taste very Bordeaux-like. Call me picky (that’s a harsh charge for me, no?), but when wine is from Bordeaux I want a little minerality and not quite so much fruit. If I want this style of wine, I’ll buy any of the equally fine $10 sauvignon blancs from New Zealand.

This doesn’t mean the Bonnet isn’t a fine $10 wine, and it doesn’t mean that I won’t buy it again. I will, and drink it chilled on its own or with almost any white wine dish that doesn’t have a big sauce. What it does mean is that wines that make the Hall have to better than this; it is the Hall of Fame, after all.

Upmarket apartment developer Wood Partners announced it will break ground on a 207-unit apartment complex on the western edge of Winnetka Heights as soon as this week.

The complex, Alta West Davis, is planned for a former Incap Fund property on West Davis, between Rosemont and Marlborough, across the street from St. Cecilia Catholic Church. It will consist of two three-story buildings, and it is expected to open by April 2013. Dallas-based Good, Fulton & Farrell are the architects. One of the architecture firm’s 14 principals, Stephen C. Pickard, lives in Winnetka Heights.

Builders Wood Construction will pursue LEED Silver certification, plus amenities to appeal to cliffsters.

From the media release: “Alta West Davis will feature a state-of-the-art fitness center, resort pool and bike shop with storage. Selected units will include faux wood flooring and iPod docking stations with in-wall speakers.”

Atlanta-based Wood Partners also has built and manages new apartment complexes in the Design District, in Uptown and on North Henderson. Wood Partners also has been announced as the builder for the apartments at Sylvan | Thirty.

This complex is the second multifamily project planned for Oak Cliff since 2000. Lang Partners, a development firm that includes former Incap employees, opened the 260-unit Zang Triangle in November.

Have you read our Q&A with Gay Revi, the Granny Geek? If not, please do. She is a hoot.

Revi’s most recent pet cause has been “garage sales from hell,” and her blog, Dallas Garage Sales from Hell, drew the attention of City Council, which later passed an ordinance restricting garage sales.

Today, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the trend of cities restricting garage sales, and they used pictures from Revi’s site. Here is a link to the story, which you can read if you have a subscription.

Here’s Revi’s part of the WSJ story:

“In neighborhoods across America, sellers are offering ever- replenished supplies of often-unused goods, sometimes from the lawns of unoccupied homes, turning residential streets into impromptu parking lots. ‘Once we had to call 911 so that we could get out of our own driveway,’ said Gay Revi, a 72-year-old Dallas woman who launched a blog called Dallas Garage Sales From Hell, which she took down last year after the city began regulating garage sales, in part by requiring a $15 permit.”

Here is one more answer from Revi, which we cut from our interview in the January Advocate to make it fit the page:

Have you met a lot of people through your blog?

I’ve met bloggers from all over he country online. It’s been nice to meet like-minded people all over the country. Most of them are younger than I am. And that’s something that’s nice about blogging. I got a lot of responses from people who are younger than my kids. So it’s surprising that you’re kind of ageless on the Internet. It breaks down that barrier.

Keep up with the Granny Geek and garage sale hell at grannygeek.us.

One of the biggest winners in Trader Joe’s decision to open its first Dallas store on Lower Greenville in East Dallas could well be Oak Cliff. The reason? Because Oak Cliff’s redevelopment is following more or less the same path that East Dallas’ has taken, and Trader Joe’s arrival points to the success of the East Dallas approach.

How important is Trader Joe’s decision to open its first Dallas store on Lower Greenville, instead of the usual suspects like the Park Cities and Far North Dallas? Very important. Retailers don’t get much better than Trader Joe’s, which has a cult-like following among both consumers and retail analysts. It’s the kind of company that cities woo and shoppers start Facebook campaigns to attract. Consider just one fact: One of the selling points for the wets in last year’s wet-dry referendum was that the city couldn’t get top retailers like Trader Joe’s and Costco as long as its most desirable neighborhoods, like Far North Dallas, were dry.

But Trader Joe’s isn’t opening in Far North Dallas, is it? It’s opening in a neighborhood that’s very much like Oak Cliff.

This doesn’t mean that top retailers like Trader Joe’s are going to start looking at Oak Cliff right away. Rather, it means that they’re open to neighborhoods that don’t fit the 1990s model for retail location — Anglo families with children and higher incomes that are neatly located inside 1-, 3-, and 5-mile circles around the store’s location. They’re looking for neighborhoods that are more urban, where density and foot traffic are as important as traffic counts. And that’s Oak Cliff.

In this, Oak Cliff is closer to current modern urban development theory than neighborhoods like Lake Highlands and Far North Dallas, which conform to 1980s models — strip centers built around larger single family homes, and where the car is paramount. And it’s another reason to stay the course for sensible development that reinforces what makes Oak Cliff unique, instead of development that turns the neighborhood into a Plano clone.

Photo courtesy of lpga.com

Bettye Mims Danoff, the Sunset High School grad and LPGA co-founder died last week. She was 88.

In 1947, Danoff won the Texas Open Championship, brreaking Babe Didrikson Zaharias’ 17-tournament winning streak.

Advocate columnist Gayla Kokel included Danoff in her February 2010 Back Story column about Oak Cliff’s golf heritage: “In 1950, the 5-foot-2, 106-pound Danoff, along with 12 other female golfers, founded the Ladies Professional Golf Association.”

The Mims family still owns Sunset Golf Club in Grand Prairie. That course was designed by Danoff’s brother, C.B. Mims, who was a pro golfer in the ’30s and ’40s. That’s where Danoff learned to play golf, starting at age 6, according to this ESPN obituary.

In lieu of gifts, the Mims and Danoff families have requested donations to the Delores Hope LPGA Foundation.

1. New In-N-Out burger planned for Dallas
And the biggest story of the year basically has nothing to do with our neighborhood, other than, you know, we like food. In-N-Out opened a store at Central Expressway and Caruth Haven, which turned out to be less of a circus than it had been up in suburbia, where a woman cried over a hamburger.

2. Oak Cliff resident killed in drunken-driving incident
The death of Roy Salinas in June broke many hearts.

3. Zang Triangle Apartments under construction
The 260-unit Zang Triangle Apartments opened in November. They were the first new apartments built in Oak Cliff since 2000, but many more are planned.

4. Barbecue with a side of heart
This is a Back Story column from Gayla Kokel, whose columns always get tons of hits, about the now-defunct Austin’s Barbecue. It was the year of barbecue in Oak Cliff. Lockhart Smokehouse moved into the old Grill 400 space in February, and I shudder to think what my life was like before. Papa Joe’s Barbecue is still open in Elmwood. But OC Smokehouse nee Luckie’s Smokehouse, is closed.

5. The History of Abel Moreno and family
Yet another awesome column from Gayla Kokel. Did you know the grandma from “The George Lopez Show” grew up in Oak Cliff?

6. The unofficial, incomplete Oak Cliff Valentine’s Day gift guide
No idea why this one got so many hits, but it proves our readers like to shop local, and that is why Oak Cliff is so cool.

7. Dreaming of a light Christmas
This is Gayla Kokel’s December 2011 column about the neighborhood’s most-lavish Christmas house in the 1960s. It would only score about a 2 on the Griswold Scale now, but it was wildly impressive at the time.

8. New furniture, design store to open
This store, 4Love, is one of several new businesses that opened this year in the up-and-coming Tyler Davis District, which now hosts a monthly block party.

9. Adamson Leopardettes pass the baton
Do watch this video about “vintage” Leopardettes who trained current Leopardettes to twirl.

10. Menu announced for Monica Greene’s new concept, Bee
Bee Enchiladería is just one of the many restaurants that opened in our neighborhood this year. Mesa, Bolsa Mercado, Jonathon’s and Campo Modern are a few of the others.

If most wine drinkers know Freixenet, it’s from the black bottle that they see at the grocery store. And the black bottle is decent enough $9 Spanish sparkling wine, or cava.

Sometimes, though, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll see the black bottle’s cousin, a rose cava called Rosado ($9, purchased, available Kroger). It’s a step up from the black bottle — a little fruitier and a little more polished. In this, it sits between two of my favorite rose cavas, the Cristalino at $7 and the Seguras Viudas at $10.

The wine is made with trepat, a Spanish grape used only for cava, and garnacha, the Spanish version of grenache. Hence some soft red fruit (strawberry?), as well as a little yeastiness and lots of bubbles. In this, it’s an excellent example of how a multi-national producer can turn out a cheap wine with character.

The Rosado will handle New Year’s ably, whether it’s for toasting on Saturday night, for brunch on Sunday morning or for sipping anytime this week. And it’s an excellent food wine; I drank it with oven fried chicken and it was delicious. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame.

Artist Shepard Fairey performs at the Dallas Contemporary on Feb. 4, but before that, he and his crew are planning to put up some propaganda in the neighborhood.

The Contemporary is working with Oak Cliff-based graffiti crew Sour Grapes to identify walls for Fairey and crew to paint in advance of Phenomenon featuring Shepard Fairey.

The crew will paint 10 murals throughout the city “with a focus on West Dallas,” says Contemporary spokeswoman Erin Cluley.

Fairey is an American street artist, propagandist and designer known for his Obey campaign and clothing line. He designed the iconic and much-copied poster for the Obama presidential campaign.