Someone in East Dallas won our restaurant essay contest, but that’s OK. Oak Cliff has lots of other food news. The new restaurant at the Belmont Hotel, Smoke, isn’t really a barbecue place, but it kind of is. The old place served a good burger, not that it matters now. Restaurant week is coming up. We tried this awesome taqueria where they have tamarind margaritas.

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Oak Cliff might get a streetcar line, if we land a $48 million federal grant. The new plan calls for the first leg of the system to run from Main Street to Methodist Dallas Medical Center. The city council could move forward with the Oak Cliff Gateway Plan this fall, finally. And our Jeff Seigel has some questions about privatizing the Dallas Zoo.

If you’re nice to those Oncor subcontractors, they might not hack your trees quite so badly. Speaking of which, the city might get its own tree drama soon.

Oak Cliff is alive with creative energy
. We want to spotlight that in an upcoming story about neighbors who make and sell their own crafts. As much as we’d like to, we won’t have room to feature everyone, but if you know someone we ought to consider, email us at rstone@advocatemag.com.