A guy went skitching on the Interstate 30 bridge during the devastating Texas winter storm. More construction cranes popped up in our neighborhood, where restaurants and shops are booming along with the real estate market. Some lined up for vaccinations and unmasked for the first time in a year. Neighbors fought over zoning cases and came together for schools and nonprofits. Here are 22 more moments that made Oak Cliff in 2021.
Golden Bears on The Gridiron
The South Oak Cliff High School football team played a legendary season.
Name change
Several Dallas ISD schools shed the names of people associated with the U.S. Confederacy this year, the result of students researching their own schools’ names. Bishop Arts S.T.E.A.M. Academy is the campus formerly named for John H. Reagan, who served as postmaster under Confederate President Robert E. Lee and later became a popular Texas politician. The former Sidney Lanier Middle School, originally named for a guy who wrote patriotic poems about the confederacy, is now named after José Moroles, a sculptor who grew up in Oak Cliff and died in 2015.
For the community
A nonprofit, Behind Every Door, acquired the 50-year-old Cedar Crest Community Center, with plans for an $8-million renovation to serve the estimated 2,000 children and teens who live in that neighborhood. The Salvation Army previously owned the center at 1007 Hutchins Road until it closed in 2019 due to financial cuts. It comprises 8 acres and includes a 20,000-square-foot community center with a basketball court and workout center, a 4,000-square-foot chapel, a football field and a playground.
Horns blazing
The owners of Revelers Hall started a record label this year and have released two albums already. The Revelers Hall Band put out their self-titled album in May. And Steve Austin & The Bioniq Brass Band released Head of the Street in September.
Girl power
Female wrestlers from Oak Cliff made a strong showing at state in April. Sunset High School senior Maya Lewis took second place in the 5A UIL state championship tournament, competing in the 138-pound weight class. Ki’Aundra Green of Kimball High School won third place in the 185-pound weight class.
Cocktail craze
The Bishop Arts District’s first Indian restaurant opened in the corner space previously occupied by Hattie’s. Âme, from mother/daughter owners Afifa and Sabrina Nayeb, gives ambiance fit for a king, or at least, Instagram royalty. Its Elephant Bar, a “Parisian-style” lounge offering champagne cocktails, added another ruby to Oak Cliff’s cocktail crown. Not only does virtually every new restaurant offer a cocktail menu now, but upscale bars and “speakeasies” filled into every cranny hipster Oak Cliff has to offer. Cocktail bars Atlas, Ayahuasca, Casablanca, Mermaid and the Trove all opened in the Bishop Arts area this year. And you thought we had a lot of coffee shops.
Cafeteria rules
Luby’s lives! One of the world’s remaining Luby’s cafeterias does brisk lunch and dinner business almost every day at 5600 S. Hampton Road in Oak Cliff. Despite reports in 2020 that all of the Luby’s restaurants would be closing, this one hung on. And now the Houston-based Luby’s, currently amid liquidation, has struck a deal to sell more than 30 Luby’s stores to Calvin Ginn Associates, the founder of airline catering company Flying Food Group, for about $28.7 million.
Put some respect on it
It was announced this past summer that Octavio Medellín, a sculptor who worked out of El Sibil at Lake Cliff Park in the 1960s, will receive a year-long retrospective at the Dallas Museum of Art beginning this February. The Mexico-born sculptor and teacher founded what is now the Creative Arts Center, and his work can still be found in public places around Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.
Hot and unbothered
The world learned a name that won’t soon be forgotten: Sha’Carri Richardson. She wound up losing her spot on the U.S. Olympic team in July after testing positive for marijuana, and she finished last in a race against the world’s other fastest women in August. But the Carter High School graduate let the world know, in an interview that went viral: “This is one race. I’m not done. You know what I’m capable of. Count me out if you want to. Talk all the shit that you want because I’m here to stay.”
Sneaker scholarships
Pasos for Oak Cliff became a nonprofit in 2021 to raise money to buy shoes for kids who need them all over Dallas. Kimball High School teacher Jesse Acosta and his girlfriend, Alejandra Zendejas, are sneaker enthusiasts who started out raffling a pair of Air Jordan 1s and went from there. Since then, they’ve appeared on national TV a couple of times, and they’ve given away hundreds of pairs of shoes. In July, Pasos for Oak Cliff also awarded scholarships totaling $5,000 (and a new pair of sneakers) to 13 students in Dallas ISD.
Drama and resiliency
Arts nonprofits in our city lost an estimated $95.5 million in the last nine months of 2020, but Dallas philanthropy stepped up. The Arts Community Alliance, led by Oak Cliff native and Kessler Park resident Terry Loftis, gave $30,000 in emergency funding to arts nonprofits before the end of that pandemic year. In February 2021, TACA handed out $210,000. And in October, TACA awarded $276,500 to 50 nonprofits, including the Bishop Arts Theatre Center.
Long-time coming
This colossal bovine will not be moved. Kessler Theater owner Edwin Cabaniss announced plans to purchase the historic Longhorn Ballroom in September. Cabaniss wants to preserve the theater, which is best known as the place where the Sex Pistols opened their disastrous U.S. tour in 1978. It has a history going back to the early 1950s, when it opened as Bob Wills’ Ranch House, and the list of country-and-western luminaries who performed there is as long as your arm. It was also once owned by Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby.
Marching up a storm
Jesús Mata became the first Latino drum major for Prairie View A&M University’s Marching Storm band. Mata started his band career playing trombone at Greiner Middle School. He says Sunset High School band director Rametria Smith encouraged him academically. “I didn’t have a plan to go to college. I just thought I’d graduate high school and go straight to work. But now I have lots of goals and things I want to do in life – teaching, directing my own band and working my way up to the college-teaching level,” he says.
Rah-rah history
The Carter High School cheerleading team became the first all-Black cheer squad to place at the Texas state 4A UIL competition, coming in ninth. The 13 cheerleaders, currently ranked fifth nationally, have set their sights on the national competition in Orlando in February, but they’ve needed to raise a total of at least $21,000 to get there. Donations may be dropped off at the school’s office, 1819 W. Wheatland Road, or given via Go Fund Me.
Surprise release
Microsoft surprised gamers by releasing a beta of Halo: Infinite for free on the 20th anniversary of Xbox, Nov. 15, and the game features sounds from Oak Cliff. Alex Bhore of Elmwood Studios composed and recorded all of the music for the game. Bhore worked on it from about April-November 2020. “I’m just happy players are enjoying it,” he told WFAA.
Photo by Danny Fulgencio.
A light shines
A story in The Guardian exposed to the world how hyper development has resulted in a loss of affordable housing and a rise of $1,600-a-month apartments in Oak Cliff. Residents and small businesses showed how they’re being pushed out of our neighborhood because of its newfound high value as a place to invest. “For those who can maintain, it’s great, right? Their property value goes up, and if they want to flip their house and make loads of money, then they can. But ‘if’ is the big word, because if you can’t, then you’re displaced,” Cimajie Best told the publication.
A park with meaning
The City of Dallas recognized the contributions of Oak Cliff landscape architect Kevin Sloan with a proclamation to name a park in his honor, before he died of brain cancer in November. A park that will replace the five-lane Jefferson/12th Connector in South Winnetka will be named Kevin W. Sloan Park.
Suiting up
Gary Blair will end his career as the winningest basketball coach in Texas A&M University history when he retires at the end of this season. He tied the previous record of 438 wins on Nov. 30. Blair has led Aggie women’s basketball teams to five conference titles, including the 2011 national championship. Blair was the first girls’ basketball coach at South Oak Cliff High School, starting in 1973, and he also started the boys and girls golf teams at SOC.
Standout schools
Two Dallas ISD high schools in Oak Cliff were named National Blue Ribbon Schools. Trini Garza Early College High School at Mountain View College and Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy were among 26 in Texas to receive the coveted honor from the U.S. Department of Education. They were recognized, along with 325 schools across the nation, for “overall academic performance or progress in closing achievement gaps.”
Beautiful burn
Kimball High School came this close to winning its seventh 5A state title in March. The Knights lost by one point in the final seconds of overtime. Head coach Nick Smith told Inside High School Sports that the team’s discipline is “something you can’t teach, but the culture at Kimball High School, that’s something that’s been embedded in in them.”
Roundabout ways
Major construction on our neighborhood’s new roundabout was completed. The plans to convert Tyler and Polk to two-way streets connected by a roundabout near Kidd Springs Park at Sylvan and Canty have been nearly a decade in the making. Take it easy around the curves, and expect traffic lights to activate and lanes to reroute as soon as the end of the year. Advocates for the project say the changes will slow traffic and boost retail and restaurant business in our neighborhood.
